Custody & Parenting of Minor Children

When I create a Parenting Plan for my clients, joint legal custody generally means that both parents have control over decision making while sole custody gives the decision-making ability to one parent. Shared parenting generally means that each parent will spend about the same amount of time with the children as the other.

The primary residence of your children is the place where they reside on a day-to-day basis while shared parenting is the term we use when the children will spend an approximately equal amount of time at the residence of each parent.

Although not required, if you would like a specific agreement as to when the children will be with each of you, we can help you develop a detailed Parenting Plan during the mediation sessions.

Some of the topics you might wish to have in your plan include:

• the specific days and times the children are with each of you on a weekly or monthly basis.
• what holidays are important to you and how you will share them with your children.
• how you will spend vacations with your children.
• the circumstances that must exist before the children are introduced to a new “significant other” before that happens.
• an understanding about which school the children will attend.
• a specific radius beyond which neither of you will move the residence of the children.
• an understanding of any specific values, religious or otherwise, that you want to maintain with respect to the children.