Which Home for the Holidays?

Its that time of year again! I'm not speaking of inappropriately early to arrive Christmas commercials and Toy books, I'm talking about holiday custody disputes.

For families that have separated, or are separating, deciding on holiday custody arrangements can be difficult. Below are some thoughts from an experienced child custody attorney on how to work through these issues.

With Thanksgiving arriving in just two (2) weeks, and Christmas, Hanukkah and a host of other holidays just around the corner, I wanted to recirculate my previous holiday post, updated slightly. Though another year may have passed, it rings just as true.

On the Simpsons, Helen Lovejoy is often quoted as saying, “Will someone please think of the children?”

I think this is a particularly appropriate sentiment during the holiday season. For families who have not been “intact” for some time or others who are going through a transition, often the stress of the holiday season, coupled with the additional stress of new living circumstances, makes the holidays particularly trying.

I find clients who are transitioning to their new lives find the first holiday season to be particularly difficult. Everyone faces stresses associated with the holidays in the form of decorating, baking, buying presents, making merry and balancing budgets. Those facing the new world of contemplating whose Christmas festivities the kids will attend and what holiday traditions can survive the transition have it particularly hard.

To those of you who have already worked through these issues, and who know exactly what you will be doing this holiday season, where the kids will be over their break, etc., I commend you on the efforts that had to go in to finalizing these arrangements and making peace with the new schedule.

To those of you who are just facing these challenges for the first time, I wanted to share some thoughts.

1) Helen Lovejoy was right. We should be thinking of the children. The holiday season, Thanksgiving and Christmas break…these are magical moments for them and getting bogged down in the stress or fights over exactly how they will be spent detracts from that magic. Even if you are not so foolish as to try and discuss these issues with your children (which is hopelessly inappropriate), your stress still shows and they’ll still pick up on it. First off, never, ever, ever talk to your children about difficulties that you’re having making holiday arrangements, or tell them you’re sad that they won’t be there with you Christmas morning or anything of the like. They’re your children, let them stay that way. The world is going to do enough to disavow them of their innocence and hope; don’t speed up the process.

2) Do talk to somebody. Separation and divorce are incredibly stressful and emotionally painful experiences. Going through them alone and maintaining some degree of self and sanity is nearly impossible. Talk to your friends. Talk to your family. Talk to your priest. Talk to your therapist. Talk to somebody. Anybody—(except your children). You can talk to your lawyer, too, but it’s best that you rely upon them for some education on your legal rights and responsibilities and not the emotional issues. We bill at a higher hourly rate than therapists and we’re never covered by insurance.

3) You should talk to your co-parent. Now that you’ve talked out some of the emotional pain that goes with trying to navigate these new issues, it’s time to talk to somebody else, and that’s the other person, the person with whom you’re sharing custody of your children, not just for this holiday season, but for the rest of your lives. The sooner you can work out a schedule for how holiday custody will work and where the children will be over their break, the sooner you can close this chapter and move forward with actually enjoying the holiday season.

Not everyone can talk through their issues in a reasonable, productive manner. They may have to turn to lawyers or to the Courts for help. Let me assure you of two things:

1) There is emergency Motions Court on December 22nd which will be filled with almost nothing but last minute motions trying to resolve Christmas custody disputes; and

2) You do not want to be there.

Please make the effort at resolution. If you can’t talk it through between yourselves, perhaps you can try mediating, or having your attorneys negotiate, but I assure you, you do not want to be litigating where your child eats dinner or opens a gift.

Divorce or separation from the parent of your children will be hard. Nobody can make it easy. Talking to the right people, learning the right information, and addressing your outstanding disputes in a timely manner will make it easier.

There is no cure for the hurt, but there are many proactive things you can do to try to minimize how that impacts you and your children and how you navigate the co-parenting relationship moving forward.

In all likelihood, you will share custody of your children. It’s almost a guarantee that you will share custody on the holidays. It will be necessary to make new traditions and work on moving forward. The better you do that, the more positive lessons you teach your children about how to work with others, to manage your emotions and hurt, and to move forward in a responsible manner. As I said above, life will do plenty to eat away at your children’s innocence and hope. Don’t help it. What you’re doing now is teaching them the skills to deal with those upsets that will happen in their own lives.

Teach them well and enjoy the holiday season.

www.uncouplingpittsburgh.com

WHICH HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS?

With Thanksgiving arriving next week, and Christmas, Hanukkah and a host of other holidays just around the corner, I wanted to recirculate last year’s holiday post, updated slightly.  Though another year may have passed, it rings just as true.

On the Simpsons, Helen Lovejoy is often quoted as saying, “Will someone please think of the children?” I think this is a particularly appropriate sentiment during the holiday season. For families who have not been “intact” for some time or others who are going through transition, often the stress of the holiday season, coupled with the additional stress of new living circumstances, makes the holidays particularly trying.

I find clients who are transitioning to their new lives find the first holiday season to be particularly difficult. Everyone faces stresses associated with the holidays in the form of decorating, baking, buying presents, making merry and balancing budgets. Those facing the new world of contemplating whose Christmas festivities the kids will attend and what holiday traditions can survive the transition have it particularly hard.

To those of you who have already worked through these issues, and who know exactly what you will be doing this holiday season, where the kids will be over their break, etc., I commend you on the efforts that had to go in to finalizing these arrangements and making peace with the new schedule.

To those of you who are just facing these challenges for the first time, I wanted to share some thoughts.

1) Helen Lovejoy was right. We should be thinking of the children. The holiday season, Thanksgiving and Christmas break…these are magical moments for them and getting bogged down in the stress or fights over exactly how they will be spent detracts from that magic. Even if you are not so foolish as to try and discuss these issues with your children (which is hopelessly inappropriate), your stress still shows and they’ll still pick up on it. First off, never, ever, ever talk to your children about difficulties that you’re having making holiday arrangements, or tell them you’re sad that they won’t be there with you Christmas morning or anything of the like. They’re your children, let them stay that way. The world is going to do enough to disavow them of their innocence and hope; don’t speed up the process.

2) Do talk to somebody. Separation and divorce are incredibly stressful and emotionally painful experiences. Going through them alone and maintaining some degree of self and sanity is nearly impossible. Talk to your friends. Talk to your family. Talk to your priest. Talk to your therapist. Talk to somebody. Anybody—(except your children). You can talk to your lawyer, too, but it’s best that you rely upon them for some education on your legal rights and responsibilities and not the emotional issues. We bill at a higher hourly rate than therapists and we’re never covered by insurance.

3) You should talk to your co-parent. Now that you’ve talked out some of the emotional pain that goes with trying to navigate these new issues, it’s time to talk to somebody else, and that’s the other person, the person with whom you’re sharing custody of your children, not just for this holiday season, but for the rest of your lives. The sooner you can work out a schedule for how holiday custody will work and where the children will be over their break, the sooner you can close this chapter and move forward with actually enjoying the holiday season.

Not everyone can talk through their issues in a reasonable, productive manner. They may have to turn to lawyers or to the Courts for help. Let me assure you of two things:

1) There is emergency Motions Court on December 22^nd which will be filled with almost nothing but last minute motions trying to resolve Christmas custody disputes; and

2) You do not want to be there.

Please make the effort at resolution. If you can’t talk it through between yourselves, perhaps you can try mediating, or having your attorneys negotiate, but I assure you, you do not want to be litigating where your child eats dinner or opens a gift.

Divorce or separation from the parent of your children will be hard. Nobody can make it easy. Talking to the right people, learning the right information, and addressing your outstanding disputes in a timely manner will make it easier.

There is no cure for the hurt, but there are many proactive things you can do to try to minimize how that impacts you and your children and how you navigate the co-parenting relationship moving forward.

In all likelihood, you will share custody of your children. It’s almost a guarantee that you will share custody on the holidays. It will be necessary to make new traditions and work on moving forward. The better you do that, the more positive lessons you teach your children about how to work with others, to manage your emotions and hurt, and to move forward in a responsible manner. As I said above, life will do plenty to eat away at your children’s innocence and hope. Don’t help it. What you’re doing now is teaching them the skills to deal with those upsets that will happen in their own lives.

Teach them well and enjoy the holiday season.

CHILD CUSTODY - What the Heck is Generations - Part 2

So, if the parties end up in Court, and aren't able to work out a custody schedule/parenting plan in their mediation session, there is still a long (and expensive ) road ahead of them:

A Generation’s Conciliation where the parties come with their attorneys and meet with a generation’s conciliator:

A judicial conciliation where the parties come with their attorneys and meet with the judge. There may be more than one of these if perhaps the judge wants the parties to go to the Impact program (drug and alcohol testing), psychological evaluations, or other treatment or testing. Typically, the judges will have a second conciliation to review the results of any testing;

And, if the parents are still unable to resolve matters, they proceed to trial.

I will be doing a separate post about some of these later steps, along with want to expect and how to prepare over the next few months.

I want to emphasize for anyone reading this that the custody system is not set up for you to get your day in court. It is directly set up to remind you that your day in court may well be something you don’t want, that is bad for you, that is bad for children, and will cost a whole lot of money and headache. The system is designed to give you enough information that you should understand settlement and reason are preferable over litigation and naked emotion. It is very easy to be angry in a situation where you are deciding custody of your children. Often this can come on the heels of very difficult and tumultuous time in your life while you and your significant other have decided to no longer reside together as a couple. The pain and anguish the parties feel going through this process as well as the custody process creates a lot of very strong emotions, many of them focused towards anger, hurt, and heartache.

The entire Generations process and similar processes in other counties are designed to try to help you get past those basic emotions and move forward to a more enlightened position--focusing on co-parenting and working together rather than driving each other further apart.

In addition to the court system that will provide you with some background as well as bring you to a mediation session, the parties are free to and should regularly consult with their attorneys to get a perspective as to how the law would be applicable in their individual case. Custody is remarkably fact specific; we have over a dozen factors that the court can look at to determine what is in the best interest of your child and no two cases are exactly alike. Receiving input from an attorney will help you address how to best move forward through the system to reach a resolution that addresses the best interests of the children.

At all times throughout the process, the parties are free to engage in discussions directly with one another or through their attorneys to try and reach a resolution. You are not required to go to court if you can work out an arrangement that the two of you find to be acceptable under the circumstances. Seeing as how this is the goal of the court, it should be your goal as well. Anyone who is facing potential custody litigation, or has already found themselves in same, should consult with an attorney to get more information about the specifics of their case. Also, please speak with a counselor who can help you address the often difficult feelings that come as part of the custody process.

If you found this post to be helpful or if you have any questions, please feel free to comment, post, share, like, etc. and visit www.uncouplingpittsburgh.com or call me at 412-261-9900 to schedule a consultation.

CHILD CUSTODY - What the Heck is Generations - Or, How a Custody Action gets started

As I have mentioned before, one of the very common issues that comes up as part of the uncoupling process is how to address custodial arrangements for any children born of the parties’ relationship.  To be honest, that statement doesn’t actually cover all of the possible custody actions in Pennsylvania.  Obviously, children don’t necessarily have to arise out of relationships that would come with other uncoupling issues.  Further, there can be custody actions brought by “non-parents” like step-parents, grandparents and anyone who stands “in loco parentis” (which basically means that they discharge the duties of a parent regardless of their actual biological relationship to the child). 

In any case, to the extent the parties are able to do so, it is considered preferable to be able to work out a custody schedule between themselves.  While they will need an attorney or the court system to confirm the schedule by way of a written Agreement or Order that gets filed with the court, working through it together not only saves on time, expense and frustration, but also helps to start a healthy co-parenting relationship from the very beginning. 

However, not everyone is so fortunate, and they must proceed through what in Allegheny County is called the “Generations” process.

In Allegheny County and across the state, the entire custody system is set up with the fundamental goal of being able to reach settlement of the parties’ outstanding issues without the need for a trial.  Your custody action may go on for a very long time before you are entitled to a final hearing.  This is by intentional design in hopes that providing the parties with some education and compelling them to attempt to work through their issues, there will not be a need for a formal hearing. 

Here in Allegheny County, the process in place is called the Generations Program.  In Westmoreland County it is the CHILD Program.  Different counties have different names, but for the most part they all boil down to two components.

Once you file a Complaint for Custody you will receive, from your respective court, a “Scheduling Order.”  This Scheduling Order directs that each of the parties (and, in some cases, the children) must participate in the court’s custody process. This process typically includes an education session as the first step.   It has always been my strong belief that a little information can go a long way in forming the parties’ expectations and their ability to work through issues together. It seems that the court system shares in this belief.

This court-ordered education session lasts for several hours.  In Allegheny County, it includes the parents as well as children between the ages of 5 and 15.  The requirement for children to be involved varies from county to county.  You should always consult your local rules before making assumptions as to whether or not the children will be involved in this process.  However, across the board, the idea is that the education session provides the parties with information regarding how physical and legal custody work, the types of decisions that they need to make together, and that they must share input and information  with regards to their child. In general, it reinforces the idea that while you may no longer be an intact family, you must still function as an intact parenting unit and work with each other for the betterment of your children. 

It is generally understood that it is in the best interest of children that their parents be able to cooperate with one another and to share custody, both physically and legally. 

In addition to being scheduled for the education session where they get some of this co-parenting background, the parties will also be scheduled to appear for a mediation session.  In some counties, the first session includes the attorneys, but here in Allegheny County, it is only the parties that appear for the mediation session.  They come unrepresented and meet with a mediator who assists in trying to engage in dialogue to help them resolve their outstanding custody issues.  They will have the opportunity to present what schedule they would like to see, why they are opposed to the other side’s schedule, what issues can be worked through to try to resolve these differences, etc. 

If the parties are able to reach an agreement through mediation, this agreement can be memorialized and executed by both of the parties as a final agreement as to custody.  If they don’t reach an agreement, they will continue to move through the custody process which I will discuss in my next post.

If you found this post to be helpful or if you have any questions, please feel free to comment, post, share, like, etc. and visit www.uncouplingpittsburgh.com

CHILD CUSTODY - Vacation (custody) All I ever Wanted

I am sure that if you haven’t already, at some point this summer just about all of you have had a conversation with a friend or relative about their plans for their big summer vacation this year: where they are taking the kids, what they are doing, how much those ride-all-day passes cost at the amusement park, etc.

What they probably didn’t share with you is whether or not their attorney had to go to court to make that happen. Seems kind of crazy, doesn’t it? That somewhere between airfare, hotel rooms, and tickets to Wally World, your friend or relative may have also been paying someone $300 per hour to go to Motion’s Court to ask for permission for a relatively mundane thing like a vacation with their children.

Unfortunately, I can assure you that this is an issue that arises in family cases and which has me spending a couple of days every summer standing in Motion’s Court along with numerous other attorneys (also billing their clients) to fight about the right of someone to take their children to the beach.

Maybe some of you reading this had to do exactly that.

Maybe some of you reading this are the reason someone else had to do exactly that.

In either case, it seems like a timely topic and a good opportunity to provide some advice:

1. You aren’t stopping a vacation request.

Are you co-parenting with Charles Manson?

If the answer to that question is no, then the answer to their vacation request is yes.

Even people who have minimal custody time throughout the year are going to have some entitlement to summer vacation. Yes, there are exceptions.

Family court is ruled by exceptions, not governed by rules.

Certainly, if there has been a history of abuse, substance abuse, etc., this may raise more questions about vacation time than your average case, but even in these situations, chances are the other side is getting a vacation with their kids. They may have to take a supervisor. That supervisor might be a parent, sibling, or some other relative/agreed upon third party. People on Megan’s List have taken their children on vacation. I am aware of more than one.

Saying that the court recognizes a very strong right to be able to take your children out of town for a week would be a gross understatement. While there may be whistles and bells and stipulations, chances are the vacation is happening. As always, the particular facts and circumstances will dictate whether or not there should be strings attached, and if so, what strings, but chances are you are losing your anti-vacation argument, or at least compromising your position considerably.

2. No, there is not an absolute right to throw your child in the car and drive towards the sunset. Much like any other issue that involves co-parenting, there has to be a sharing of information. Both parties are entitled to know where their kids are, on vacation or otherwise. This is true whether they are in town or out of town. It is particularly true when crossing state lines, international boundaries, etc.

At a bare minimum, the other side should know where you are going, how you are getting there, and how you can be reached once you have arrived. Depending upon how much the parties trust each other, there could be more or less information that needs to be exchanged, like how often you will communicate with the children via phone, if there is to be Skyping, exactly what family members will be there, whether or not alcohol can be consumed, etc. Itineraries for flights should be exchanged, hotel address and phone number should be provided, and agreeing to send a text to confirm you arrived safely isn’t going to kill anyone.

3. Vacations are generally also a “good for the goose, good for the gander” situation. You would like to take a week’s vacation to the beach and you want to tell the other side that they can’t? Again, unless you are sharing custody with Charles Manson, they are getting the same vacation rights you are.

You will probably get the same vacation rights every year so long as you are sharing custody of your children. Some people need these to be memorialized and go into painstaking details in a formal agreement as to who gets to select their vacation dates first in odd years versus even years, how many days’ notice you must provide, how detailed your itinerary has to be, etc. But, again, you are going on vacation.

Quite frankly, in more than a decade of practice, I don’t know that I have ever seen a vacation request denied. Certainly not in a situation where someone has provided reasonable notice, has a reasonable plan and is willing to reasonably accommodate the concerns of the other side.

Noticing a theme about reasonableness here? It is the golden rule in custody arrangements between parties. Make reasonable requests, grant a reasonable permission, don’t pay $300 per hour to go have a judge decide whether or not your kid should get to go to Disney World. They probably already think that they do.

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CHILD CUSTODY - But what if we can’t agree? Ways to resolve legal custody/co-parenting issues.

In light of the fact that the vast majority of parents share the right to make major decisions with regards to their children (as discussed in my last post), it is not uncommon for disputes to arise between them as to what is in the best interest of their child. There are several ways they can go about trying to resolve these issues:

1. Litigation: Right, wrong, or other, a traditional way to “resolve” these disputes has been to run to court. In Allegheny County, there is at least one judge hearing motions pretty much every day of the week—sometimes as many as three. A lot of what fills their dockets is people coming to court because they have not been able to make a decision regarding the upbringing of their child.

To the extent that anyone may be harboring delusions to the contrary, let me be clear: The judge does not care about your child’s soccer participation. They don’t care if they play, they don’t care where they play, and they don’t care how well they play. To the extent that you are paying an attorney hundreds of dollars per hour to go to court to try to convince the judge to care about those things, you are wasting your money.

Does this stop people from going to court about these issues? No, not at all. It is probably half of what the judges have to endure each day they hear motions. However, the court does not wish to micromanage the raising of your children or any of the other legal issues that may arise in the course of your uncoupling. I therefore advise people look into some of the alternatives below.

2. Mediation: As I discussed in a prior post, in mediation in PA each of the parties appear together with the mediator to try to work through issues that they have not been able to resolve between themselves. The focus of mediation can be as broad as all support, asset division and custody issues arising in a divorce, or it can be on an isolated issue, like where a child should go to school. A mediator helps guide the parties to a mutually agreed upon resolution and largely serves to help facilitate a dialogue between the parties to reach an understanding and compromise. What happens in mediation is not, however, binding between the parties and they will need to have a formal agreement drafted by attorneys to confirm any arrangements to which they agree.

3. Collaborative Law: As I have talked about previously, in collaborative law each of the parties hires a collaborative attorney and agrees that they will not pursue litigation at any point in time—otherwise they must remove themselves from the collaborative process and find new counsel. Depending upon the nature of the dispute between the parties, they may require the assistance of a collaborative coach to help facilitate their conversations and ultimate resolution. They may also employ a child specialist to provide input from the children involved or a financial expert if matters relative to money are in play. Again, the topics addressed can be quite broad, involving a wide range of issues attendant to uncoupling or more specific discrete issues. At the end of a collaborative process, with the assistance of their collaborative attorneys, parties will enter into a finalized agreement with regards to their collaborative agreement.

4. Co-parenting Counseling: Sometimes, if the parties are having difficulty reaching agreements with one another or being able to share in their co-parenting responsibilities, the court may refer them to co-parenting counseling. In this arena, the parties work through a therapeutic process with a counselor who has a focus on assisting them in improving their relationship with one another as they go about raising their child together. This can be very helpful for people just starting the uncoupling process, as many of these counselors provide insight to the parties’ communication style and where they have difficulty hearing each other and voicing concerns. Parties can be ordered by the court to co-parent counseling and this will often happen if you show up too many times asking the court to micromanage how you are raising your child.

5. Co-parenting Coordination: This was all the rage a few years ago. Parties who exhibited extreme difficulty in working through their co-parenting issues would be sent to a parenting coordinator, who would hear their minor custody disputes. (Usually this happened after parties tried to use the litigation route too often.) The co-parenting coordinator would have the authority to order the parties to do certain things. The parenting coordinator, in essence, acted like a mini-judge that would hear smaller disputes with regards to activities, exchange times, etc., but could not make major changes to the physical custody schedule or the parties’ legal custody arrangement. However, co-parenting coordination has fallen out of favor with the courts, and judges can no longer order parties to participate in the process. However, there is no prohibition on the parties jointly agreeing to enter into co-parenting coordination together and agreeing to be bound by what decisions the co-parenting coordinator might make if the parties are unable to reach an agreement. Similar to going to court, co-parenting coordination was more an avenue of last resort than a first choice, as needing a third party, be it a judge or a coordinator, to make decisions for you is an indication that there are significant communication problems between the parties.

6. The final and probably the best answer to all this is simply talking to each other. While you may need to speak with an attorney to hear what your rights are or speak with a counselor to understand better how your relationship with your co-parent affects you, the most cost effective, long term, and relatively simple answer is to figure out how to work with each other. Maybe you are better if you only communicate via emails, maybe it’s better if you only communicate via telephone, maybe you should try to minimize your communication as much as you can, but the bottom line here is you have to learn how to communicate with each other and the sooner you can get yourselves to a point where you don’t need third parties to help you do that, the better off you probably are.

As always, if you found this post helpful, please share and feel free to comment with questions or suggestions for future posts.

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CHILD CUSTODY - Who's the Boss? An Introduction to Legal Custody

When most people think about custody, they think about where their child is going to be, with whom and at what time.

This first kind of custody that most often comes to mind is what we call physical custody.  It is the actual schedule that dictates with which parent (or grandparent or in loco parentis person) a child will be with at a particular period of time.  The physical custody components may include rules for vacations, holidays, when and where you meet, etc. 

However, as most folks know, there is a whole lot more to raising a child than just showing up somewhere.  That is where we get to the second type of custody that people don’t think about nearly as often. 

This second component is what we call legal custody.  There are a lot of different ways that parties can divvy up the physical custody time with the child: equally shared, shared, primary, partial, visitation, supervised, etc.  These are all terms that have to do with the amount of time a party has with their child.

Shared legal custody is, in some ways, much more simple and, in other ways, much more complicated. 

There are only two answers with shared custody: yes or no.  The answer is going to be “yes, you are sharing legal custody” in about 99.9% of cases.  Unless someone is currently incarcerated or has habitually been just a raging, uncooperative pain in the ass, legal custody is typically shared.

So what is “legal custody,” you ask?

Legal custody is, in essence, decision-making rights.  While you needn’t agree on the most minute of issues with regards to your child (i.e. skim milk or 2% milk?), you are expected to be on the same page for the major, life-altering events such as education, religious upbringing, medical decisions and the like.

 These major decisions tend to trickle down into some smaller ones.  For instance, what type of activities your child will participate in, will they play travel baseball, who is going to be responsible for getting them there, etc.  Some of these smaller decisions, as far as participation in activities, can have major impacts on what your physical schedule looks like. It is very difficult for a child to spend weekend time with one of their parents if weekend time is being eaten up by going out of state for travel sports events.  Deciding to commit your child (and therefore, your-co parent) to these types of activities is part of legal custody.  Neither parent should be making decisions that significantly infringe upon the time spent with the other parent over the other parent’s objection or without their knowledge.

If you are sharing custody, a child’s participation in sports or other activities is likely going to affect both parties’ custody, and they need to be on the same page before anyone starts signing Johnny up for baseball or even talking to him about whether or not he would like to play.   Grownups need to be the ones making the decisions here, and simply because a child says he would like to do something doesn’t mean that is the definitive answer if the other parent is not in agreement.  It’s also not fair to tell your child they can do something before having this sort of conversation with the other parent. 

Similar ideas apply in medical situations. If Johnny is on his way to the ER with one parent, the other parent should be called.  They should know what is going on as it is happening, not days later when you get around to it. Even more routine doctor visits should be discussed between the parties, at least until they work out a system of how those are handled. You probably both don’t need to be standing in the pediatrician’s office for every single well visit, but you ought to be on the same page as to who your child’s doctor is, how to get ahold of them, and when your kid needs to go see them. 

As I have mentioned previously, you can end your relationship with someone as your partner, but you cannot end it as co-parents.  You need to be able work together to address the decision making aspects of raising your child together.  There are some ways to work through these, be it through co-parenting counseling, mediation sessions, or perhaps even voluntary parent coordination.  However, as more and more parents are sharing custody of their children, these legal custody issues are coming into play in front of judges in Motions Court when parties can’t work through disputes.  I can assure you this is not anything that the court likes to see.

In my next post I will discuss how counselling, mediation, or parent coordination can help you work through these issues before you end up in Court.

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Thank you.