In family law, contact, visitation and access are synonym terms that denotes the time that a child spends with the noncustodial parent, according to an agreed or court specified parenting schedule. The visitation term is not used in a shared parenting arrangement where the mother and father have joint physical custody. Unsupervised visitation is the most common type, when the parent may take the child to his or her home or enjoy any outing with the child. In supervised visitation, another adult must be present, and there is sometimes a court order to occur at a predetermined supervised child contact centre. Virtual visitation uses video-conferencing technology to allow contact when a child lives far away from the parent.

In most jurisdictions the nature of a couple's relationship is established when a child is born to that relationship. In law, there may be differences in the consequences depending on whether the relationship is opposite-sex or same-sex, and whether it is in the form of a marriage, a civil union or registered partnership, or cohabitation without marriage. When one parent has sole custody of a child, there is usually court ordered contact/visitation with the non-custodial parent. The purpose is to ensure that the child can continue to maintain a relationship with both parents after divorce or separation, as well as in situations where the parents have never lived together. A common contact schedule is that the child spends every other weekend with the non-custodial parent, one weekday evening, certain holidays and a few weeks of summer vacation.

The court must attempt to avoid delay in making an Order. The court will only make contact orders for children over sixteen years old in exceptional circumstances. Contact can either be direct e.g. face-to-face meetings with a person or indirect e.g. by letter, video, exchange of greeting cards etc. Some orders will be very specific as to times, dates and arrangements for contact, other orders will be more open with detailed arrangements to be made between the parties by agreement. These orders are not just obtained by parents for contact with their children, there can also be orders for contact between siblings or the child and wider family members. Sometimes the order will give directions that the contact is to be supervised by a third person. The order may also only be for a specific period or contain provisions which operate for a specific period. These are Orders of the court and a failure to comply can be a contempt of court with serious consequences.