[DONNA DELLINGER]

Dear lawyers,
My son is fighting for full custody of his son. The mom has not held up her end of the visitation agreement twice. Now she was suspose to come and get their 2 year old son on 11/29/08. She has not shown up or bothered to call. My son has called her house and the phone is shut off and so is her cell phone. We have no way to contact them, they live 10 hours away in virginia. She has not called to let us know what is going on, or if she is even going to come and see her child.. my son wants to know if he can now go back to court and file for child abdonment against the mom.

[ScottGem]

No, he can't. Child Abandonment is a criminal charge that applies when a child is left alone without any supervision. That's not the case here.

What your son wants to do is petition the court to give him full custody and to either end or modify the visitation schedule. He can use her failure to show up when the schedule calls for it as grounds to get that modification.

[stinawords]

As ponited out no, this is not abandonment. What scott said is correct what he needs to do is to file for a modification of the visitation with her failure to show up as grounds for the modification.