Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court stayed a family court order granting temporary physical visitation rights to a father in a child custody dispute and substituted it with virtual visitation through video conferencing, citing the possibility of clashes between the estranged husband and wife during the visits.The HC directed the man to interact with his son online after the wife challenged the family court’s Jan order permitting the biological father to meet the child between 9am and 2pm on the second and fourth Sundays in her presence.In this case, both the husband and wife are employed with IDBI Bank. The husband is posted in Mumbai, while the wife works in Ahmedabad. The couple married in 2018 and had a son in 2020. A year later, the woman left her matrimonial home with the child.In 2025, the husband filed a suit in the family court seeking restitution of conjugal rights and seeking custody of his son. The family court partly allowed his child custody application and granted him visitation rights at a mutually agreed location.After a couple of such meetings, the wife approached the HC through advocate Mehul Mehta, seeking to quash the visitation order. She alleged that the husband had filed the family court cases only to safeguard his legal interests and maintain appearances before society. She further claimed that during the five years of separation, the husband had remained negligent towards the child’s welfare, was neither emotionally nor socially connected with her or their minor son, and did not spend a single penny on the child’s upbringing.The woman also contended that the mandatory visits disrupted the child’s routine. Moreover, being a working professional with limited holidays due to her banking sector job, she said Sundays were her only opportunity to spend quality time with her son and attend to her own personal commitments.After the preliminary hearing, Justice J C Doshi stayed the family court’s order.“The place chosen with the consent of both the husband and the wife is problematic and may give rise to another dispute between the parties… The husband is permitted to have virtual visitation rights with the minor on every second and fourth Sunday between 10am and 12pm through video conferencing. Needless to state that the wife shall cooperate in facilitating the video conferencing visitation,” the court observed.
