Parenting Plans: Providing for Parental Responsibilities
Introduction to Parenting Plans
Parenting plans are one of the primary documents in a divorce with children. The parenting plan is used to allocate decision-making responsibilities between you and your spouse and to assist in implementing the court’s order in allocating parenting responsibilities. You are generally free to prepare a parenting plan with your spouse where you can agree on the allocation of parental responsibilities. Courts will generally affirm your agreement. However, a court does not have to accept your plan. It can choose to alter the terms you provided in the plan or completely disregard the plan and form its own plan. If you cannot come to an agreement with you spouse, the court will make a decision parental responsibilities.
Parenting plans are not carved in stone. They can always be amended down the road, either by agreement between you and your spouse or by seeking a court order as necessary.
I. What should our plan include?
There is no specific requirement as to what needs to be in a parenting plan. What you choose to include in the plan will depend on your specific circumstances. However, a parenting plan may address the following:
- Parenting time allocation including a division of holidays and vacation time
- Educational issues
- Care of a sick child
- Religious training
- Medical, dental, and mental health care
- Residence
- Dispute resolution
- Transportation issues
- Provision for telephone contact or e-mail contact
- Communication methods
- How to handle emergencies
- Modifications of parenting time
This is not an exhaustive list. There may be other things you would like to include in your plan. And, you may choose not to include all of the items listed above such as extracurricular activities, methods of discipline, curfews, and dress. The following gives more detailed examples of topics you may want to address for specific areas of allocation of parental responsibilities.
A. Education:
All important agreements concerning the education of the child should be included in the parenting
plan. Areas of agreement may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Choice of public or private school (and expenses)
- Tutoring
- Responsibility for transportation to and from school
- Extracurricular activities
- Allocation of expenses for books, supplies, field trips, and other costs
- Parental involvement
- School information
- College expenses
B. Religion:
If you come from different religious backgrounds, consider putting something in the plan regarding religious training and education. Some items to be addressed regarding religious upbringing include the following:
- Choice of religion
- Choice of church, synagogue, mosque, or other
- Exposure to different religious beliefs
- Holiday celebrations
- Attendance at religious activities
- Expenses regarding religious activities
C. Medical, Dental, and Mental Health Care:
Areas of decision-making responsibilities for medical, dental and mental health care include the following:
- Health insurance coverage
- Payment of uninsured medical expenses and copayments
- Choice of doctors, dentists, and other medical providers
- Choice of treatment (including nontraditional treatment)
- Mental health counseling
- Responsibility for routine medical, dental, and optical care, and rights to obtain care
- Responsibility for care of a sick child
- Access to medical information.
Emergency medical treatment may be obtained by either party without violating the parenting plan or any custody order. It’s a good idea to provide for this in the plan as well as a provision that the other parent be promptly notified of any emergency medical treatment.
D. Finances:
Many provisions regarding your child’s finances will be addressed in child support determinations. Not all provisions, however, will be included in a child support determination. Examples of other financial issues your parenting plan may address include the following:
- Periodic exchange of financial information
- Payment of uninsured medical expenses
- Payment of non-essential expenses, such as those for sports, lessons, and trips
- Life insurance and designation of beneficiaries
- Tax issues
- Transportation costs
II. Should our plan be detailed and specific or general?
Your plan can be as detailed or general as you need it to be. The level of detail will be based on your specific circumstances. However, a detailed plan may be preferable for the following reasons:
- To establish areas of agreement, means of communication, and provide notice of the decision-maker’s intentions on major issues, such as choice of religion.
- To facilitate involvement of both parents to the extent possible
If you and your spouse have a hard time agreeing on how to raise your child, coming to agreement ahead of time on many issues involved in raising your child may help to avoid conflict later. If you are able to come to agreement on most issues, you may not need to set them forth in detail, or at all, in your plan. This will depend on you and your spouse. Remember, a parenting plan can always be modified to add or remove detail. However, if you needed to return to court later to resolve or modify an issue, this will require your time, will likely add stress to your life, and will likely incur a cost if you need to hire an attorney or take time off of work to go to prepare for and go to court. Deciding ahead of time may be preferable.
III. How should our plan allocate decision-making responsibilities?
Your plan can be flexible based on your circumstances. You may want to provide for joint decision-making if you feel that that you and your spouse can come to agreement on decisions. A plan like this may also provide one of you with final decision-making authority in the event that you and your spouse cannot come to agreement on a particular issue. You may want a plan that gives one of you all major decision-making responsibility. This type of plan may also require consultation with the other parent to attempt to reach a mutual decision before any major decision is made. Some plans may give decision-making responsibilities for some areas to one of you and other areas to the other. For example, you will make healthcare decisions and your spouse will make education decisions.
As you can see, there is substantial flexibility in how you prepare your plan. It will depend on your circumstances and needs and your child’s needs.
Conclusion
Not everything that you may want to include in a parenting plan has been set forth here. Nor is every concern or problem that could arise with regards to a parenting plan discussed. However, this post gives you a birds-eye view of what you could include and how to divide responsibilities. The Colorado Courts have a form parenting plan that you can access off of their webiste. If you have additional questions regarding or would like assistance with preparing a parenting plan, contact us. Please click here for pricing for various family law services.