N.Y. Domestic Relations Law § 241

DRL § 241: withholding visitation can suspend maintenance - but never child support

Domestic Relations Law § 241 lets a court suspend alimony or maintenance where a custodial parent wrongfully interferes with visitation, but not child support.

Official text N.Y. Domestic Relations Law § 241 — New York

§ 241. Interference with or withholding of visitation rights; alimony or maintenance suspension. When it appears to the satisfaction of the court that a custodial parent receiving alimony or maintenance pursuant to an order, judgment or decree of a court of competent jurisdiction has wrongfully interfered with or withheld visitation rights provided by such order, judgment or decree, the court, in its discretion, may suspend such payments or cancel any arrears that may have accrued during the time that visitation rights have been or are being interfered with or withheld. Nothing in this section shall constitute a defense in any court to an application to enforce payment of child support or grounds for the cancellation of arrears for child support.

Text as published in the 2026 snapshot of the code.

Source: Vaquill Open US Law, compiled from official state publishers (huggingface.co), reproduced under license CC BY 4.0.

Read this provision at the official source →

What it actually says

Where it appears to the court's satisfaction that a custodial parent who is receiving alimony or maintenance under an order, judgment or decree has wrongfully interfered with or withheld visitation rights provided by that order, the court may in its discretion suspend those payments, or cancel arrears that accrued during the time visitation was being interfered with or withheld.

Every element in that sentence limits it. The payments at risk are alimony or maintenance - money for the adult. The recipient must be the custodial parent. The interference must be wrongful and must concern visitation rights the order actually provides. And the remedy is discretionary: the court may suspend, and may cancel arrears for the period of interference; nothing is automatic.

The final sentence is the one that matters most and is most often ignored: nothing in this section constitutes a defense in any court to an application to enforce payment of child support, or grounds for cancelling child support arrears. The two obligations are not linked. A parent denied contact does not thereby acquire a right to stop paying for the children, and stopping is a step with its own consequences under § 244 and the enforcement provisions that follow it.

When it applies

  • A parent is repeatedly refused the contact the order provides and is still paying maintenance.
  • A payor stops paying support because the children are not being made available.
  • A custodial parent moves or changes the schedule so that visitation cannot happen.
  • A court is asked to cancel arrears that built up during a period of denied contact.
  • Parties argue whether a refusal was wrongful or was based on the children's own wishes.

What this section does not say

  • It never touches child support. The last sentence says so expressly, both as a defense and as grounds for cancelling arrears.
  • It does not permit self-help. The section describes what a court may do on being satisfied, not what a payor may do unilaterally.
  • It does not enforce visitation. Contact is enforced through custody and visitation proceedings, not through this section.
  • It applies to a custodial parent receiving maintenance - not to every recipient of support.
  • It is discretionary. Even proven interference does not require the court to suspend anything.

Worked examples

Invented situations, written to show how the wording bites. They are not real cases, not judgments and not precedent, and nothing here predicts what would happen in yours.

Illustrative example

A parent has been turned away at the door for most of the scheduled weekends since the spring. Out of frustration they stop the child support payments and say they will resume when the visits do.

How the wording applies

The section lets a court suspend alimony or maintenance - money for the adult - where a custodial parent receiving it has wrongfully withheld visitation. Its last sentence then says that nothing in it is a defense to enforcing child support or grounds for cancelling child support arrears. What decides this is the kind of payment that was stopped, not who is right about the weekends.

How the parties settled it

The support payments restart at once and are treated as separate from the contact question; the missed weekends are made up from an agreed list of dates rather than traded against money.

Illustrative example

A parent who has the children and receives monthly maintenance has changed the handover arrangements at short notice again and again, and the other parent has missed most of the contact the order provides.

How the wording applies

This is the situation the section is actually written for: where a custodial parent receiving maintenance has wrongfully interfered with or withheld visitation the order provides, the court may suspend the payments or cancel arrears accrued during that period. Two facts have to hold together - that the recipient is the custodial parent receiving maintenance, and that the interference was wrongful rather than forced by something outside their control - and even then the remedy is discretionary.

How the parties settled it

They fix a handover time and place that neither can change without seven days' notice, and maintenance carries on unchanged while the new arrangement is given three months to prove itself.

Illustrative example

A teenager has begun refusing to go on alternate weekends. One parent says they cannot physically put a fifteen-year-old in a car; the other says the refusal is being encouraged.

How the wording applies

The section reaches interference that is wrongful, which is not the same as contact that simply does not happen. It turns on whether the custodial parent is causing the refusal or is genuinely unable to overcome it, and the section leaves the court a discretion even where interference is proved.

How the parties settled it

They move to a schedule the teenager helped choose, and neither treats a missed evening as a breach unless it happens three times running, at which point they come back to the table rather than to court.

How courts have read it

Decisions construing this provision. The question and the summary are ours; the quoted sentence is the court's own words, taken from the published opinion. These are the decisions in our corpus, not every decision there is, and nothing here predicts any other case. Reported 2003 to 2017.

Whitaker v. Case, 122 A.D.3d 1015 (2014)

Appellate Division

What the court had to decide

Whether a court may retroactively suspend a noncustodial parent's child support obligation under Domestic Relations Law § 241 when the custodial parent has wrongfully interfered with visitation.

What it held

The court may suspend child support retroactively to the date an escrow fund was established, but may not order reimbursement of child support payments made directly to the custodial parent before that date because of public policy against recoupment.

In the court's words
Similarly, we find that, under the circumstances, the court properly suspended her child support obligation retroactively, but only to the date the escrow fund was established (compare Matter of Luke v Luke, 90 AD3d at 1182; Matter of Alexander v Alexander, 129 AD2d 882, 884 [1987]) and directed the return of the escrowed monies to her.

Lew v. Sobel, 91 A.D.3d 648 (2012)

Appellate Division

What the court had to decide

Whether the Supreme Court providently exercised its discretion in granting the father's motion to pay one half of his child support obligation to the mother's attorney for deposit into an escrow account due to the mother's continued interference with visitation rights.

What it held

The Appellate Division held that, in light of the father's showing that the mother continued to deliberately interfere with his visitation rights, the Supreme Court providently exercised its discretion in granting that branch of the father's motion under Domestic Relations Law § 241.

In the court's words
In light of the father’s showing to the Supreme Court that the mother continued to deliberately interfere with his visitation rights, the Supreme Court providently exercised its discretion in granting that branch of the father’s motion (see Domestic Relations Law § 241).

LS v. LF, 10 Misc. 3d 714 (2005)

trial courts

What the court had to decide

Did the mother's conduct rise to the level of deliberate frustration or active interference with the father's visitation rights such that the court should suspend maintenance payments under DOM § 241?

What it held

The court held that the mother's conduct did not rise to the level of deliberate frustration or active interference with the father's visitation rights, so suspension of maintenance payments was not warranted.

In the court's words
It cannot be said in the instant application that the testimony adduced at trial has shown that the mother’s conduct rose to a level of a deliberate frustration or an active interference with the father’s visitation rights that it would be an appropriate basis to eliminate the obligation of the father to pay maintenance

Source: Caselaw Access Project, CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication).

Related sections

N.Y. Domestic Relations Law § 244 DRL § 244: turning unpaid support into an enforceable money judgment N.Y. Domestic Relations Law § 248 Maintenance ends on remarriage – N.Y. DRL §248 N.Y. Domestic Relations Law § 72 Grandparent Visitation: N.Y. Domestic Relations Law § 72

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We copy this text from the official publisher and re-check it against that source on every page load, but we cannot guarantee it is complete, current or free of error, and we accept no liability for any reliance on it. An amendment can take effect before a consolidation catches up. The publisher's own copy is linked below; where the two differ, it is the official one that counts.

This page reproduces the text of N.Y. Domestic Relations Law § 241 in force at the date shown and explains it in general terms. It is not legal advice and takes no account of the circumstances of your case, which can change the answer completely. For a live dispute, for limitation periods, and before taking any step in court, consult a qualified lawyer in New York.

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