A Beijing court is planning to solve child visitations online after witnessing the success of a pilot program during the COVID-19 outbreak.

From January to March, an online platform called Yunfating, which literally means "trials in the cloud", was used 64 times by the Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court in hearing domestic cases, "and it has played a bigger role in alleviating the problem of child visitations among divorced couples," said Shan Guojun, vice-president of the court.

He said they concluded 122 domestic disputes over the past three months, noting that those caused by child visitations made up a large proportion.

"Child visitation rights must been guaranteed in line with the law, but the epidemic, which reduces travels and activities to prevent the risk of spreading the virus and keep people from being infected, has been increasing the difficulties of visitations," he said.

Given that some divorced parents have not visited their children for a long time, especially during the outbreak, the court successfully organized visitations via the online platform several times, he added.

In one case, a man appealed to the court as he was unhappy with the alimony awarded by a districtlevel court in the capital.

"The father told us he missed his son very much, because they hadn't seen each other for some time due to the divorce dispute and the epidemic," said Zhang Lin, a judge with the intermediate court.

"It looked like a dispute caused by child support, but the real conflict was the failure of visitations," Zhang said.

"So we opened the second trial via the online platform and talked to the man's ex-wife to take their son to attend the hearing."

The father met his son online and his ex-wife also agreed to lower the 8,000-yuan ($1,149) alimony considering the man's financial situation, according to Zhang.

The judge welcomed the online visitations and took it as an innovation in hearing domestic disputes, saying it can not only improve the emotional communication between the divorced couples and their kids, but can also offer convenience for those with difficulties meeting their children.

"Therefore, we're planning to apply online visitations to solve more domestic cases in the future. For example, it will be better to solve disputes in which the divorced couples are not living in the same city, or where someone has a disease, making it inconvenient to visit children," Shan said.

Couples should negotiate how to handle visitations after divorce under the Chinese law, "and if they reach an agreement, we will make it clear in a ruling to ensure the rights can be effectively implemented," he added.

"In other words, visitations online must be agreed by both parties in a lawsuit. Judges won't be allowed to decide on online visitations directly with one litigant's application," Zhang said.