Creating a Co-parenting Plan
By Teresa Harlow
After you and your child’s other parent split up romantically, your relationship as co-parents lives on. How well that works out is up to both of you. It will require intention, compromise, thoughtfulness, and focus on the right things. Establishing a parenting plan can provide you with a blueprint for success.
Many local court systems offer divorcing parent coaching programs which will walk you through the basics. There are also many highly qualified co-parenting coaches, mediators, and divorce attorneys who can guide you through the process. However you decide to proceed with laying out your co-parenting plan, be sure to incorporate these principles as you create it:
Strive to minimize conflict and encourage cooperation
This isn’t a competition. It’s a team sport. Regardless of your past as a romantic pair, the two of you can move forward with a positive relationship as co-parents. Aside from those who have endured relationships with abusers, criminals, or unreformed addicts, think of this as a brand-new relationship starting with a clean slate.
Also, when you are early in the divorce or separation, it’s natural to be consumed by your own emotions and needs. You will need to exert extra effort to think beyond yourself as you draft your plan. Be sure to consider everyone impacted - the child(ren), both parents, extended family, and other agreed parties to be taken into consideration. This could include current or future stepfamilies, unmarried partners of the former spouse, and close friends of the parents or children.
Plan for flexibility and changing circumstances
While it is relatively easy to decide what is best for your children and you now, we cannot predict the future or grasp easily what our kids or we may need in 10 years. Create the plan based on everyone’s current circumstances while working to anticipate the future. You can do this by listing out what if scenarios and seeing how each parent responds to them and then arriving at a compromise on how such things would be handled. Traveling, moving, the introduction of new romantic partners, and changing financial needs are four common area of change that co-parents must navigate at some point.
Still as hard as you try, you won’t be able to think of everything. Be as comprehensive as you can without expecting that there will never be items you didn’t cover. For this reason, I suggest setting up a time to review your co-parenting plan with your child’s other parent at least once a year. Do it more often if needed.
Additionally, it’s important to remember that the plan is just that. A Plan. It isn’t the end of life as we know it if something doesn’t go according to plan, right? The plan is your best effort to establish expectations, consistency, and fairness. But exceptions will be needed from time to time, and it is best to build in a process to rationally handle these situations. And of course, strive to ensure exceptions are rare.
Your Co-parenting Plan will serve as your future reference in times of disagreement or uncertainty
Creating a comprehensive and thoughtful co-parenting plan will provide you and your child’s other parent with a tool to use down the road. It serves as a reference point when you forget what was decided. It is a tangible reminder of the agreement you made to each other and to your children. And it can be used to both get things back on track if they go awry and keep you out of court down the road. Having said that, bear in mind that future changes to the co-parenting plan will require that you both agree or go through the court system to get it changed. So be sure to take time creating it and give it your due attention and care.
Basic components of a co-parenting plan should cover the following:
Parenting time (a.k.a. Physical custody plus visitation schedule) will be the section in which you lay out the time each of you will spend with your children in your care. You will want to create schedules that apply when school is in session and when it is not. It’s also best to layout schedules to be followed for family vacations, holidays, and special occasions such as birthdays. That doesn’t mean they have to be the same every year. Maybe you rotate holidays or keep the vacation schedule to something simple like “each parent will have the opportunity to have 10 days of uninterrupted time with the children each year.” In this case, planning the specific dates and any travel is left open for future conversations.
Decision Authority (a.k.a. Legal custody) establishes which parent makes big decisions on behalf of the child. Things like school and medical treatment. Decision authority can be given to one or both parents jointly. And it can be established at the topic-level too. For example, one parent could be responsible for education decisions while the other is responsible for medical decisions. For high conflict couples, this section alone may bring you to conclude that you will need to work with a professional to create your parenting plan.
Living arrangements is the section in which you will define where everyone lives. It’s most common that when parents split up, they establish two separate homes and the children spend time at each locations. But there are many other options including maintaining the family residence for the kids while the parents rotate in and out. Some parents even chose to remain in the same residence. This can work well in large homes or in homes where separate living areas for each parent can be established. Still, the idea of sharing driveways and being aware of each other’s comings and goings can be awkward or even upsetting.
Whatever living arrangements you choose initially, I highly recommend including a maximum distance from which parents can live from each other. This will ensure that one parent can’t up and move to another city, state, or even country without getting the plan changed either with the other’s agreement or through the courts. You may not think you need this today. But who knows who or what could influence either of you in the future?
Financial support for the children may include child support, shared expenses beyond or instead of child support, tax considerations such as who claims the child as a dependent each year, college funding, insurance, and transportation (for teenagers and those who leverage public transportation). Regardless of whether you two decide to go with the court-designated child support or some other arrangement, it is good practice to choose a tool where you can centrally track expenses that are not handled under the legal child support. And as mentioned earlier, this is one of those cases where you’ll definitely want to plan for exceptions. The tool you use could be a basic spreadsheet that you share online or a co-parenting app such as Our Family Wizard. Decide what will be tracked. Is it items over a minimum amount such as items over $20? Is there a schedule for paying each other for any differences such as a monthly reconciliation and payment date?
Communication - This may be the most important section in the plan. Why? Because if you lay out good communication practices that the two of you will follow, it can help you navigate and resolve conflicts in other areas of the plan without having to involve the courts and without a bunch of unnecessary pain and anger. Your communication plan should cover communication between parents, between parents and children, and if necessary, between parents and other significant parties in your children’s lives. Designate the methods (i.e., in person, via parent’s phone, child’s phone, email, text, app) that you will leverage for communicating with one another and how often. Will there be a weekly touch-base? Will you use an app such as Our Family Wizard that can also be used as a legal record should conflicts arise? Will you use a shared calendar? These can be very helpful since there is more than one schedule to track. It can also provide children with a tool that helps them know what to expect each day.
Other Sections in the Co-parenting plan
Don’t forget to include processes to handle exceptions, modifications, and disagreements
Health Care details – who are your children’s doctors? Who provides medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage? Does your child require medications, durable medical equipment such as a wheelchair, or ongoing medical treatment? If so, provide relevant details. Are there other conditions (i.e., cognitive impairment, mental disorders) that need to be addressed in the plan?
Education plans – school choice, funding for primary and secondary education, ewxpectations concerning academic support such as access to school information, attending conferences and school events, etc.
Extracurricular activities – Is participation a joint decision? What are the arrangements for transporting and/or accompanying the child to practice and games; attending events when the child is not in your care; paying for equipment, lessons, camps, fees, etc.
Childcare details – who will care for your children when they are not with you or at school? Who will transport them to the childcare provider according to what schedule? What happens when the child, caretaker, or parent is sick?
Travel expectations and/or restrictions – what type of notice must be given to the other parent as it pertains to the child traveling to other locations? Are there any parameters around travel such as only domestic, only in state, or only with approval from the other parent? Be careful not to lock yourselves into overbearing rules. Approval from the other parent for international travel is reasonable. But going beyond this in the details of your written plan may just complicate matters than can be handled in rational conversation later. I suggest only getting more specific if you are in highly volatile situation and there is a risk that one parent may flee with a child.
Special circumstances: Military members, long distance parenting, parents who frequently travel for work, special physical / emotional / mental needs of the child or either parent.
After reading the list above, it is easy to become overwhelmed by it. To avoid having that happen to you, take each item one at a time and work through it with your co-parent either directly or through an intermediary such as a co-parenting coach. By breaking the effort down into small chunks, it will become more manageable and less stressful.
Want to engage Teresa to help you create a co-parenting plan? Email CoparentPlan@TeresaHarlow.com to set up a free consultation. For more in depth information on all of these topics, check out Teresa’s website and her bestselling book, Combative to Collaborative: The Co-parenting Code available at TeresaHarlow.com, Amazon, and anywhere else books are sold.