St. Paul family law attorney Allison Maxim explains how parenting plans can be helpful in a divorce using examples from her rich experience.
Transcription
A parenting plan is a document that parents can develop between the two of them or with the assistance of a mediator or attorneys that is flexible as far as the terms on how parties want to parent their children. For example, a parenting plan doesn’t require you to have custody labels. You don’t have to have a label regarding legal custody or a label regarding physical custody. What you can do is say who is going to be making decisions. For example, some parents will have mom continue to make all decisions about medical issues, but the parties will make joint decisions about education.
A parenting plan is meant to be flexible in that regard, it’s also meant to be inclusive of terms that the parents may want to include to govern their parenting situation that is unique to them. If they have a child with special needs, what are the terms around how they parent that child. So, it can be more inclusive and more flexible for parents.