A Miami judge has granted Perez Hilton supervised visitation with his three children, according to court documents obtained by TMZ, meaning he will be allowed to see them but will not be permitted to be alone with them.
The order comes with conditions. Any visit has to be supervised by a therapist or by a family member that both sides agree on. Before any of it can begin, Hilton has to obtain psychiatric clearance. The arrangement stays in place until a court decides otherwise or until he and his mother agree to a different setup between themselves.
Supervised visitation is exactly what it sounds like, and it is more common in family court than most people realize. A parent keeps a relationship with their children, but a neutral third party is present the entire time. It is generally used when a court wants contact to continue while a parent works through something, rather than cutting the relationship off altogether. It is not a permanent finding about anyone’s fitness as a parent, and it can be modified.
The same order formally granted temporary legal custody of the children to Hilton’s mother, Teresita Lavandeira. She now has the legal authority to make decisions about their medical care, enroll them in school, and handle the other day-to-day matters that require a parent’s signature.
There is a detail in the order that explains why this had to go through a court at all. Hilton is the children’s only legal parent. All three were born through surrogacy, and there is no second parent who could step in. When he was hospitalized, there was legally nobody with the authority to consent to a doctor’s visit or sign a school form. His mother’s filing was the mechanism for fixing that, and Hilton signed off on it voluntarily from the hospital.
Anyone hoping for more detail than that is going to be disappointed, and that is by design. The judge has sealed the case, finding that confidentiality was necessary to protect the children. Barring a leak, the Perez Hilton supervised visitation order is likely the last piece of this that becomes public.The background is that Hilton, whose legal name is Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr., was hospitalized on August 4 after a severe mental health crisis at his Miami-area home that played out on a livestream. He has remained in inpatient care since. His family said his condition was serious but stable, that his recovery would be a long process, and asked repeatedly for privacy.
His three children, along with his sister and his niece, were inside the home in the minutes before the incident. The family has said they left immediately once it became clear what was happening. Hilton’s mother has lived with him and the children for years and has been closely involved in raising them, which is part of why the family has framed her taking over as continuity rather than upheaval. Practically, the order means Hilton is not being cut off from his children when he is eventually discharged. He will see them.
He just will not be by himself with them, and a doctor has to sign off before the first visit happens.
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