Divorcing, separated, or never-married parents can mediate a workable co-parenting plan (access, visitation), adapt it for grandparent visitation, or modify an existing plan post-divorce to better suit changing circumstances in your child's best interests.
Benefits of Parenting Plan (Access, Visitation) Collaborative Mediation:
- Jointly structure time with your children that works for the entire family
- Focus on what's most important for children of different ages or development
- Improve co-parenting skills and communication
- Protect your children from a parental tug of war
You can stay out of court by mediating instead of litigating an original parenting plan (access, visitation) or a modification of a parenting plan post-divorce.
Parents can cooperatively parent apart and provide a safe and secure environment for their children. Your arguments about shared parenting time with children do not have to escalate into wars that permanently damage your children or their relationships with you and cost you dearly in family lawyer or divorce attorneys' fees. Remember, you will not be husband and wife anymore after your divorce, but you will always be Mommy and Daddy. Keep your children out of the middle and save money by reaching agreements over co-parenting time through mediation rather than going to court.
The law presumes it is in the best interests of a child in Texas for both parents to have custody (joint managing conservatorship) and quality time (access and visitation) with their children unless this would result in danger to the child's physical, psychological, and emotional development now or in the future. If the parents cannot reach agreement and there is no danger to a child in doing so, a family law judge will order parenting time under a Standard Possession Order that sets the same visitation schedule for every family. Parents who know they have a choice usually prefer instead of the Standard Possession Order to negotiate a custom parenting plan to suit their own family.
Needs change as a child grows up or a parent moves or changes jobs with different hours. It is much harder on you and your children and more expensive to modify a parenting plan post-divorce in court than it is to sit down together and work it out. We help parents structure a workable co-parenting plan that takes into consideration practical realities like the importance of other family member's participation in children's lives; parents' work and travel schedules; and children's homework, extra-curricular, and social activities. Parenting plan and child specialists in our resource network can make planning easier for special needs kids or disabled adult children.
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