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Archive for the ‘Pareting Plans’ Category

When to Consider a Custody Battle

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

Engaging in a contested custody dispute is a last resort proposition because it usually produces two losers, and no winners. It may be warranted if you believe that your children’s current situation places them in serious physical or psychological danger ”not discomfort” but danger. Your sense of danger is discriminated from one of discomfort when the custody and access arrangements create serious problems for your child (not you!) by seeing or living with the other parent. If you feel the child will be exposed to physical or sexual harm, or to persons and behaviors that compromise the other parent’s ability to care for the child properly or make sound judgments about her needs, AND if the situation cannot be mediated or ameliorated with outside help, then you may need to contest custody or visitation. Examples include a parent who is using and/or dealing illegal drugs, having multiple sexual encounters which the child witnesses, or who is experiencing an abrupt shift in mental functioning, such as psychotic episodes which involve the child. In these cases, it could be necessary to fight with a parent who is not thinking or acting rationally in order to protect your child. Click here for an article on custody battles.

When you are determining whether or not to contest custody, you must carefully weigh the costs. There are your legal fees, your children’s legal fees, and fees for the court-ordered evaluator. Sometimes these costs can be greater than what you’d expect to pay for your child’s college education. However, the costs of a contested custody matter reach far beyond the literal dollar cost of your case. You and your children will feel stressed beyond human endurance during the process. Contested custody trials, and matters which are headed toward contested custody trials but which ultimately settle, can be extremely time consuming, emotionally exhausting, and damaging to a family unit. Do not underestimate the trauma that this will cause your family if you and your spouse are unable to reach an agreement concerning your children’s upbringing. If you are holding out on the schedule in order to win some other concession, financial or otherwise, think again. Ask yourself, “What makes it worth it? Are the costs to my ongoing relationship with my spouse and to my children worth holding out for? Will the schedule my spouse wants me to agree to inconvenience me, sadden me, or actually harm the children or me?

Courts are set up to assist you in reaching your own agreement about your children. However, when parents are unable to resolve their differences, the court will step in to assist. The “assistance” requires that your lives and past decisions get examined in minute detail, by you, your spouse, the evaluator, and the judge. You may have to testify about your spouse’s faults and shortcomings in the same detail. You will also have to listen while your spouse testifies about every perceived misdeed and defeated expectation, and every criticism he or she has of you, your parenting, and your relationship with your children. After that, you also have to listen while the court-appointed evaluator testifies about your strengths and weaknesses as a parent, and about how your behavior has affected the children during the divorce process. Click here for 5 tips on custody battles.

Excerpted from Your Divorce Advisor: A Lawyer and a Psychologist Guide You Through the Legal and Emotional Landscape of Divorce (Simon & Schuster/Fireside 2001). For more information: http://www.yourdivorceadvisor.com/.

For more information contact Peace Talks www.peace-talks.com

Tags: Child Custody, Children in Danger, Custody Battles, Protecting Children
Posted in Co-parenting, Custody, Pareting Plans | Comments Off

Where Child Support is Spent

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

If you pay child support, you don’t have any say in how it is spent by the recipient. That sounds harsh, but it’s true. If you are legitimately concerned that you’re paying support and that the recipient is buying drugs, taking expensive vacations leaving your child at home, or making other inappropriate expenditures, you look at changing residential custody arrangements, not controlling the child support. Each state’s guideline calculations take into account the fact that the person with whom the child lives will have to have a larger home or apartment because of the child; perhaps a newer, larger car; and any number of “hidden” expenses (insurance, fenced in yard) over and above the obvious expenses like school lunch and diapers.

If you are concerned that the support you pay will not be used for the children’s benefit, you may wish to negotiate specific payments that you can make directly on behalf of your children in exchange for a reduction in the amount of support you are required to pay to the other parent. For example, you could put the money into a trust fund for the child’s college education. Or, you can pay the daycare provider or school tuition directly, and receive a dollar-for-dollar reduction in your support amounts. You can work to fashion an agreement which assures that the basic needs of the children are met no matter how financially irresponsible the other parent. Use an attorney or mediator to assist you in creating a plan. Click here for good article on the mis-spending of child support.

At all costs, however, keep the interests of your children in mind. You want them to have the best that you and your spouse can afford, and all of the opportunities that they would have had if you had remained married. Don’t let resentment about your loss of control of money interfere with what your children need, and what they deserve. Click here for an article on reducing conflict over child support.

For more information contact Peace Talks www.peace-talks.com

Tags: Child Support, Finances, Spending Child Support
Posted in Child Support Issues, Pareting Plans | Comments Off

Special Issues Associated with Earning Capacity

Monday, September 6th, 2010

There are special issues associated with earning capacity. One such issue is salary history. Most states include overtime, predictable bonuses and commissions as income for purposes of calculating child support. If you have historically worked a certain amount of overtime, received a bonus each year, or earned a commission on sales, the court will most likely consider these “extras” as a part of your regular income for purposes of calculating the amount of child support due.

In order to be fair, and to protect yourself in the event of a dispute, be inclusive in your calculations. Review your overtime, bonuses and commissions over the past five years. Have they been stable? Or were they linked to unusual circumstances which no longer exist? Are they regular, seasonal, or cyclical with the economy? Have market forces made bonuses erratic both in terms of amount and regularity? Has competition or new additions to the sales force eroded your commissions over time?

For instance, if you are a postal worker, and every Christmas you are required to work an enormous amount of overtime, average your income over the entire year. If your child support is based solely on your Christmas earnings, it will be much higher than is appropriate during the other eleven months of the year. If you work in construction, the summer months may be very busy, but you may be unemployed during the winter time. If you are a daycare provider, your summers are probably busier than the rest of the year. If you are a commissioned salesperson, make sure that your income history–and future– is presented realistically. Click here for more information.

A striking example of this situation was Henry, a commissioned salesperson for an office supply company which had been owned by his father. When his father retired, he passed his accounts on to Henry, who continued to work in the small, family owned business. He earned a very comfortable living….until the office supply superstores invaded his territory. Suddenly, his little Mom-and-Pop enterprise was turned upside down as competition entered the marketplace, eventually forcing him to sell the business to a mega-store. He was offered a job with the store, but had to start from scratch with no accounts to his name. His $350,000 per year income plummeted to less than $50,000. It was important that the judge take into account the new climate in which he was forced to work, and his new compensation structure. A salary history alone would have had devastating results on the Child Support Guidelines. The future became much more pertinent than the past. Click here for another terrific article.

For more information contact Peace Talks www.peace-talks.com

Tags: Child Support
Posted in Co-parenting, Pareting Plans | Comments Off

Can I Relocate?

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Many parents ask “Can I relocate?” and the answer always depends on the individual circumstances at the time. Given our increasingly mobile society, it is not at all unusual for one spouse to need to move out of state, or even out of the country. Increasingly, the courts are trying to determine whether it is in the child’s best interest to move, even if the child has lived with a primary physical custodial parent for quite some time. Click here for an article about relocating after divorce.

The court will consider all of the factors that have gone into the original custody decree, as well as the reason for the move, the ability of the child to maintain contact with the other parent, what kind of visitation would be set up for the parent left behind (as well as extended family), and the living situation for the child in the new city or state.

If you anticipate a relocation you should probably deal with it as part of your divorce up front. If you think that maybe some day you might want to relocate, putting a notice provision with respect to relocation into your settlement agreement is important. Many such provisions call for 90 to 180 days notice before someone can move. Sample relocation clauses are included in the appendix. This notice enables time to negotiate or motion the court to prevent the move while it is being worked out by the parents. Relocation is not a good bargaining chip, as it evokes a sense of threat, and often pushes the other person to become more intransigent and stubborn out of fear of losing contact with the children. Click here for another great article on relocation after divorce.

In most jurisdictions it will be up to you to prove that moving out of state is in the children’s best interests. While you may have many reasons why it’s in your best interests to move, is it really in the children’s best interests? How will they maintain contact with the other parent? How involved are they in their school and school activities? Will close friends and extended family be left behind? How well does your child adjust to new situations?

The legal custody designation (i.e. joint legal custody) has little to do with whether or not you will be permitted to move. The actual circumstances of your case will be the determining factor. The more involved the other parent has been in the children’s lives, the more difficult it will be for you to prove that it is in the children’s best interests to move far away from them. Therefore, having sole legal custody doesn’t automatically permit you to move with the children, and having joint legal custody doesn’t automatically prevent you from moving with the children. Sometimes the court will say, “Sure you can leave, but your children will stay with their other parent.” This has happened even when the children have always lived with the leaving parent.

For more information contact Peace Talks www.peace-talks.com

Tags: Custody, Modifying Custody, Projtecting Children
Posted in Co-parenting, Creative Problem Solving, Life After Divorce, Pareting Plans | Comments Off

Does Your Child Need a Change in the Visitation Schedule?

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

Other indications that children may need adjustments to the visitation schedule–or to something that’s happening in your home–include:

sudden behavioral changes that are aberrant from your child’s normal personality (e.g., very quiet in an outgoing child, sadness from a generally happy child)
bursts of temper and moodiness
aggression or violence toward others, pets, or themselves
a sudden drop in grades at school

Find out why your child is behaving differently. If you cannot ascertain what is going on because your child is uncommunicative, or because you and your spouse view it so differently, consider having your child meet with a school counselor or a therapist. Choose someone who will not exacerbate problems, but will normalize what the child is experiencing and will help him deal with it. Someone who is experienced in treating people of your child’s age, and familiar with divorce and family systems work, is optimal. When possible, include the other parent in your child’s therapy. It is working together as parents that will be the most assistance to your child. For an article on changing a visitation schedule, click here.

Parents often report anger at how their spouse deals with their child, in ways that are not harmful but which undermine your parenting values. Common examples include letting him watch movies you don’t think he is ready for, exposing him to rude humor or vocabulary, allowing him to be in the presence of people you think are unsavory characters, and so forth. As annoying as these matters are, they are generally not matters with which the court will interfere. You should try and work things out with a mediator or therapist adult-to-adult, appealing to reason and your child’s future. Some of these differences you will have to learn to live with, and in your own parenting time.

If you’re not able to address these issues as co-parents, then you will have to do it on your own. Once you’ve determined the reasons why the problems are happening, and have thought through possible solutions, pose them to your ex-spouse. See if together you can work with your children to modify the parenting plan to support them. If you reach an impasse, then it’s time to approach a mental health professional, and then the court about changing the visitation or custody orders. Click here for another article on changing visitation.

For more information contact Peace Talks www.peace-talks.com

Tags: Changing Visitation, Modifying Custody, Observing Changes in Children, Protecting Children
Posted in Co-parenting, Pareting Plans, Sensivity to Children, children of divorce | Comments Off

What if We Can’t Agree?

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Once you understand the emotional issues and possible variations of parenting schedules, it will begin to become clearer to you whether or not you and your spouse are headed toward a custody dispute. Because divorce is a time of great emotional turmoil and feelings of loss, sometimes parents are afraid that they will lose their children. Both you and your spouse will be spending less time with the children (in the rare case when a spouse disappears, of course, this would not be true), but in all likelihood, you will continue to have sufficient quality time with your children, and you will also have some free time for yourself. While this may not sound attractive in the middle of your divorce, soon afterwards you may be grateful for a little bit of adult time to pursue your own interests. Most parents, given time and the place to talk, are able to resolve disputes about their children. Sometimes, however, they need help. Click here for a parenting plan overview. Another terrific article is listed here.

For more information contact Peace Talks www.peace-talks.com

Tags: Changes in Parenting Styles, Co-parenting, Disagreeing on a Parenting Plan
Posted in Emotions During Divorce, Pareting Plans, Sensivity to Children, children of divorce | Comments Off

Parenting Plans for the Teen Years

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Teens are interested in sexuality, individuality, peer involvement, and achieving independence. Their primary tasks are to come to terms with their changing bodies and changing moods. Social responsibility and adopting a moral code of behavior are crucial challenges that usher in the beginnings of adulthood. Although children at this stage are notorious for pushing their parents away, they need you to hang tough with them in order to feel secure. Let them push but you stay firm. They want to be heard and consulted about all aspects of parenting arrangements. They want the freedom to move between houses, sometimes to change their primary residence. Whether such moves are in their best interest depends upon the reasons and timing of their request: is this a chance to identify with the other parent and acquire some psychological space from the parent they feel most dependent on, or are they looking for lax rules and little supervision? Children at this age often believe they are more mature than they are, so be advised to gather input but to maintain final decision making authority. For excellent, free resources to help you create a parenting plan, click here.

During this time, the schedules for younger children may still work well. But teens often request more spontaneity, drop in times, and flexibility. Teens can benefit from every weekend away if parents live close by to one another. If not, summers away are often welcomed by all involved. However, employment, girl/boyfriends, and special projects generally provide the guidelines around which sensitive parents must conform. Click here for more terrific information.

An Additional Note about Overnights

Despite the guidelines listed above, there are many children who can tolerate overnights sooner rather than later. The controversy about when and how often children can tolerate overnights is still just a theoretical argument. We just what kids can tolerate. Overnights provide an important means of parent involvement: bedtimes are special moments is a child’s day. Much discussion, cuddling, teaching, and sharing can take place around evenings or mornings. If you are a father or mother who: has been involved with your child from birth; knows your child’s needs and habits; has time to focus in on your child when he is in your care; and shares a mutual, loving bond recognizable to those who know your family—then overnights should not automatically be ruled out because your child is an infant or toddler.

For more information contact Peace Talks www.peace-talks.com

Tags: Custody, Parenting Plans, Protecting the Children, Teenagers
Posted in Custody, Emotions During Divorce, Emotions of Teenagers, Pareting Plans, Teenagers and Divorce, children of divorce | Comments Off

Some Common Shared Parenting Schedules

Monday, July 12th, 2010

For parents who want to share their children’s time more equally, there are many possible schedules. Some common ones are:

every other week,
every two weeks,
Monday morning through Thursday morning and Thursday afternoon through Monday morning,
Wednesday morning through Saturday morning and Saturday morning through Wednesday morning,
September through June and summers for parents who live in different states.

Every schedule has different pluses and minuses associated with it. Which schedule works for your family will depend on how close you live to the other parent, your work schedules, ages of your children, the children’s individual temperaments, school demands, and their hobbies and activities. The schedule you choose should depend on how important it is for the children to be in the same house during weekdays (i.e., school nights) and how well your children adapt to the transition between homes. Can your children organize their school work when they make transitions between homes during the school week? If they have religious, sports, music, or other training on a regular basis, then maintaining the consistency of such classes is important. Children shouldn’t have to miss activities on a regular basis because they have to be at the other parent’s house. For a great article on shared parenting, click here.

How children go to school and return home also will affect your schedule. Do they need to be driven, can they switch busses, are they in a carpool?

Do your children have a maximum amount of time they tolerate being away from either of you? The length of time may differ from their primary caretaker and their secondary, if that is how your family has been arranged in the past. All of these factors are considerations in determining the best parenting schedules.

Are There Alternatives to the Typical Shared Parenting Plans?

Some less common, but important, variations on schedules also deserve mention. For reasons that will become obvious in the descriptions below, these arrangements are harder to maintain than more common ones, and they often require greater cooperation and sacrifice on both parents’ parts. However, when values or circumstances dictate creative solutions, these are worth considering.

Parents who can successfully do it report great satisfaction with “nesting”. In this arrangement, the children stay in one place, and the parents move out of the home and into an apartment or family member’s home. Sometimes the parents share one other dwelling, other times they can afford to rent or own two different ones. Sometimes they each return to a parent’s or friend’s home as their secondary residence. Parents then move in and out of the family home according to the dictates of schedules that work best for them. Click here for an article on nesting.

Sometimes parents live far away from one another. In these situations, children may spend school years with one parent, and longer holiday periods, vacations, and summers with the other parent.

When parents live near each other, they may choose to alternate the child’s primary residence every other year. The children do not spend much time living between homes, but they do visit the other parent regularly. However, each parent gets to be the primary parent some of the time, smoothing over the sense of one parent being the less central figure. This schedule, though often proposed, is counter to children’s best interests in most situations. This arrangement erodes consistency in discipline across phases of life, as well as the child’ sense of belonging in a home.

For more information contact Peace Talks www.peace-talks.com

Tags: Co-parenting, Custody, Parenting Schedules, Protecting Children
Posted in Creative Problem Solving, Custody, Life After Divorce, Living Arrangements, Pareting Plans, Sensivity to Children, children of divorce | Comments Off

Common Living Arrangements

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

The most common arrangement today is still for the children to live primarily with one parent and spend time with the other. How families spell out specific arrangements are as varied as families themselves. One common form is for the children to live with Mom, and spend time with Dad every other weekend and an evening per week for dinner. Sometimes the weekend ends on Sunday, and other times the children stay until Monday morning when they are dropped off at school. Variations on the theme include a cycle in which the child spends one overnight during one week, and a four day weekend (or a three day weekend) the following week. Click here for an article on living arrangements after divorce.

Many divorce orders provide for “liberal and reasonable” access, without specification of a schedule. This works out fine when parents communicate effectively and are flexible with one another. This does not work when parents are unable cooperate, yet they enter into an agreement for “reasonable and liberal visitation” in order to gloss over problems in favor of expediting the divorce. In order to bring predictability and order into your lives, and your children’s, you should specify a schedule in your divorce agreement. Having a schedule in place need not discourage both of you from being flexible about rescheduling when either parent requests modifications. For an article on co-parenting after divorce, click here.

All kinds of details can be written into an agreement to forestall problems particular to your family. For example, if you feel that your time with the kids is often reduced when they are sick, which occurs particularly with young children, you can write into the agreement that if a child is sick and has to miss a visitation, then compensatory time will be scheduled if it is not too disruptive to the child’s own schedule. Similarly, if your spouse hires a babysitter to watch the children when you would normally be available, you can specify that the other parent gets first right of refusal for extra time with the children. This is especially important to do when the child sees her parent fairly infrequently. By the same token, using your spouse’s desire to be involved with the children to call upon him/her every time you have some small need is taking advantage of the situation. You want him or her to be available for you without feeling imposed upon, and certainly the reverse would be true. The idea behind “right of first refusal for babysitting” is that the spouses support each other, and that the children maximize the amount of time with each parent, and minimize the amount of time with babysitters. In the event such a provision becomes manipulative rather than supportive, such as when it is used to influence how the other parent spends free time, it should be discontinued immediately.

For more information contact Peace Talks www.peace-talks.com

Tags: Custody, Needs of Children, Parenting Plans
Posted in Creative Problem Solving, Custody, Living Arrangements, Pareting Plans, children of divorce | Comments Off

Developing a Schedule for Living Arrangements

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

The decision about with whom children will reside primarily may be a stressful one and can add to the ongoing conflicts between spouses. Therefore, you may be tempted to defer to your children to avoid the conflict and decision making. It is true that for older children (usually ten years or older), the court will consider where your child wants to live. This does not mean that you should ask your child with whom he or she wants to live. It is not uncommon for children to tell both parents that they wish to live with them; sometimes they change their minds based on whomever they are speaking to at that very moment. This may be a tactic to make each parent feel good, or the child may genuinely change his mind when with each parent. Children may choose the parent that they feel the most sorry for, scared of, or who has the least restrictive household rules. Your child is worried enough about the divorce situation without your adding to his concerns by asking him to choose between two parents. Click here for an article on living arrangements after divorce.

If a child is given this decision, you run the risk of invoking guilt toward the parent that was not chosen. In addition, the parent not chosen could punish the child by showing displeasure. Down the road, your children may become angry with you for passing this responsibility on to them, when it is one decision they wish you had made.

However, children often do have a preference, based more on their own needs for familiarity within their home and neighborhood than on a choice of one parent over another. They want to be near their friends, with the parent who has the best computer, with the parent who has more time to spend, or the parent whose home is most conducive to sleep overs with friends. Children can tell you where they’d like to live instead of with whom and indicates that they want to be heard about WHAT matters to them, not who. Having their opinions considered makes them feel included, valued, and recognized as persons with independent needs.

Talk to your children along with your former spouse, and encourage them to express their preferences for schedule rather than place, and be clear that the adults will make the final decisions. For more on living arrangements after divorce, click here.

For more information contact Peace Talks www.peace-talks.com

Tags: Custody, Living Arrangements, Physical Custody, Protecting the Children
Posted in Creative Problem Solving, Custody, Life After Divorce, Pareting Plans, Sensivity to Children | Comments Off

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Archive for the ‘Pareting Plans’ Category

When to Consider a Custody Battle

Where Child Support is Spent

Special Issues Associated with Earning Capacity

Can I Relocate?

Does Your Child Need a Change in the Visitation Schedule?

What if We Can’t Agree?

Parenting Plans for the Teen Years

Some Common Shared Parenting Schedules

Common Living Arrangements

Developing a Schedule for Living Arrangements