How to Create the Right Parenting Plan to Fit Your Needs

We sit down with Family Law Attorney, Alicia Doling, to discuss the most important elements that comprise a great parenting plan. In this episode, Alicia covers the following:

• Plans for important decisions that must be made in an emergency.
• What parenting plans do and don’t cover.
• Who gets to decide on what goes into a parenting plan.
• Sharing Information between parents and access to communicate with the child.
• Alternative arrangements for when the child is with each parent.
• Dealing with joint legal and physical custody.
• Addressing the child’s physical and emotional needs.
• Methods for resolving issues that arise.
• Modifying and enforcing a parenting plan.

If you would like to speak with one of our attorneys, please call our office at (503) 227-0200, or visit our website at https://www.pacificcascadelegal.com.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this communication is intended to provide legal advice nor does it constitute a client-attorney relationship, therefore you should not interpret the contents as such.

Transcript

Intro:
Welcome to Modern Family Matters, a podcast devoted to exploring family law topics that matter most to you. Covering a wide range of legal, personal, and family law matters, with expert analysis from skilled attorneys and professional guests, we hope that our podcast provides answers, clarity, and guidance towards a better tomorrow for you and your family. Here's your host, Steve Altishin.

Steve Altishin  0:31  
Hi, everyone. I'm Steve Altishin, Director of Client Partnerships here at Pacific Cascade Legal. And today we have our firm attorney Alicia Doling to talk about creating the right parenting plan to fit your needs. So Alicia, how you doing today?

Alicia Doling  0:47  
I'm good. How are you, Steve?

Steve Altishin  0:50  
I'm doing well. I love that we're talking about this. And I really love that you'd like to talk about this because this can be really confusing. And so let's start with sort of the, what I call my 101 question, What is a parenting plan? And why is it important to have a good one? 

Alicia Doling  1:11  
Yeah, so a parenting plan is the framework for what the parents parental responsibilities and parenting time regarding their children are, how they share it, all of that information. And it can be an agreement, it can also comes through the court ordering it if if your case goes to trial, it's always better to have an agreement. But obviously, that's not always possible. So the very basics that are necessary in the parenting plan is who gets to make decisions regarding the child or the children. And that's what we call Legal Custody, which we'll get into later, and how the child is spending their time with each parent, what that looks like what that schedule is, but that's the very basics, the plan is not, you know, if you're in a divorce, and you know, you're trying to deal with separating assets and property, the parenting plan is not going to deal with that. The Parenting Plan itself also doesn't deal with child support is closely tied to it, and is going to depend on what the parenting plan is. But they're not together, the parenting plan is going to be custody, and how that you know, and what we call parenting time, who's deciding what for the child and where the child is going to be, and how they spend their time. 

Steve Altishin  2:42  
I love it. So just want to make this clear. For me. A parenting plan has to happen if you have kids. I mean, it can be like you said very minimal, but it has to happen. So my thought is if it's going to happen, anyway, try to do it together and not make the judge decide, because that's never a good thing.

Alicia Doling  3:02  
Now, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. 

Steve Altishin  3:05  
So let's talk about the best interest of the child. Because if the judge were to do it, that would probably be a term they use 50 times and trying to figure it out. So let's talk about what the best interests of the child mean, and how they fit into a parenting plan and why it's important to consider that.

Alicia Doling  3:27  
Yeah, so you know, we'll kind of focus more on the colloquial sort of understanding of the best interests of the child, it sounds like it would be really simple to think about, but there's a lot to consider, which is, you know, their physical needs, where they're living, if they have a bed in each home, if they're able to get food at each home, or, you know, wherever they're staying, their clothing, you know, getting to school, etc. But it's also considering their emotional needs. So if the schedule the agreement, whatever the plan is able to provide them with a sense of, of safety, and, you know, comfort and also their emotional needs in terms of their parents being able to have healthy relationships with both parents and being able to maintain those. And so considering all of that, that's sort of what situation is going to be able to best serve the child in all of those aspects.

Steve Altishin  4:27  
It sounds like you know, unfortunately, in a lot of divorces, on all the issues that the parents may not agree and have vastly different ideas of what they want to have happen. But it seems almost especially important that in this ditch not a winning or losing it's not a fight to the death. You really need to try to work something out.

Alicia Doling  4:57  
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's I always think in Family Law, there's no winners and there's no losers. And a parenting plan is a huge example of that. The most important thing is going to be what is best for the child. It doesn't matter if you as the parent feel like it's fair, or if it if you're winning, it's what is important is, is the child being served? And so yeah, definitely, in that way, it is best to come up with an agreement, because as the parents, you, you know, your child, you know, what's in their best interests.

Steve Altishin  5:32  
And that doesn't mean that it's not, there are interests for each of the parents, because you know, some parents have different work schedules, some parents live in a weird place and fireplace. I mean, there's all those things are to consider as well, it just don't, they aren't necessarily the end all be all of how it's run.

Alicia Doling  5:53  
Yeah exactly. Yeah. It's kind of looking at everything together and figuring out what's best for the child based on what's what's going on, and what what is reasonable and what's actually able to happen.

Steve Altishin  6:05  
So you talked about a little bit about what kind of goes into it. And we talked for just for a couple minutes about legal custody, and physical custody, and joint legal custody, what that kind of really means because again, I think people think legal custody maybe means Oh, I get I get kid the whole time.

Alicia Doling  6:29  
Yeah, so I think it's really confusing. You know, I mean, there's a lot of confusing things about law. But the the colloquial terms versus what the legal terms are, can be really confusing. And so for legal custody, it's just about who is making important major life decisions for the child. And so that includes stuff like the child's education, you know, where do they go to school, the child's medical care, their religion, and sort of their cultural practices, cultural norms, with legal custody that auctions are, one parent can have sole legal custody, which means that that parent who was given sole legal custody is making all of the decisions. That doesn't mean that the other parent isn't involved, it just means that if for some reason the parents don't agree, or aren't able to come to an agreement about those decisions, then the parent with sole legal custody is the one to make that decision. Then there's joint legal custody, which in Oregon, is only possible if the parents agree that they can share joint legal custody. And so with joint legal custody, the parents both have to collaborate and communicate with each other, and come to an agreement on all of these major decisions. And then if they're not able to, then typically, there are, you know, with a very robust parenting plan, there are sort of provisions in order to help with that decision making if if for some reason, there's an issue that that they're just not agreeing on.

Steve Altishin  8:08  
Yeah. And the joint concern thing is interesting, because I know also talk to people, and who sort of assume that if we have joint custody, that means we, you know, the kids live with be half the time and you have the time? Yeah, that's certainly what that means. 

Speaker 2  8:25  
No, no, not at all on joint, like the custody part of it, the legal custody is separate from the parenting time. And so that's kind of why, you know, you'll hear a lot of legal professionals call it parenting time versus, you know, custody or physical custody, because it just gets so confusing. So, whatever, whatever happens with you know, custody is not going to directly impact necessarily, I mean, it has an impact, but it doesn't mean you know, if you have joint legal custody, you don't have to do 5050 parenting time, it can look like however you want whatever is again in the best interests of the child.

Steve Altishin  9:06  
So that kind of leads to parenting plans, and sort of the two ends of the spectrum seem to be that it's either going to be 50/50 or you get them on the weekend. It's more flexible than that, isn't it?

Alicia Doling  9:24  
It is absolutely more flexible, especially if you come to an agreement. Obviously, it depends on how old your child is sort of, you know, what's been happening but if you come to an agreement, you can do whatever you want with your parenting time plan. It doesn't have to necessarily be like a week on week off it doesn't have to be like parent a only sees the kid on the weekends or every other weekend. There's there's so many different options, so many different ways to divide parenting time, you know, it is whatever works best for the child. And again, you know, it's it's important and is the priority to think about what is best for the child for you know, in terms of, you know, 5050 custody or not custody sorry, 5050 parenting time. So it's so confusing. It's, again, it doesn't have to be week on week off, there's a number of different options, we call them like a 3344 plan, which is parent a has three days, parent B has three days with the child. And then parent as four days, parent B has four days, and then it's just a cycle. It's like a two week cycle. There's also the two to five, five, which is similar, or, you know, depending on what it is, I know, I haven't seen this in practice yet, but just in personal experience, I've seen it where just a kid at my school spent half a year with his dad, and half a year with his mom, you know, whatever works for you, whatever works is best for your child, you can get creative. And it's also really important to consider sort of what time what time of day like exchanges are, when one parent will drop off the child or you know, vice versa, or, you know, picking them up from school. And you know, one thing that a lot of people don't really think about with parenting time that I think is always really important is holidays, and vacations, it is so important to consider sort of what is going to happen when the kid is out of school, you know, if they're school age, or on special holidays, whatever that may be for you, you and your family. Because you don't want to have to, you know, it, you don't want to have to like, argue about it every single time. And that's sort of what's really important about a parenting plan, and especially having a detailed parenting plan, you know, even if you and the other parent are getting along really well, in the historically your co parenting relationship has been really fantastic. And so you fill into creating a parenting plan and feel like it's sort of like, well, you know, it can be whatever, unfortunately, you don't know what's gonna happen down the road. And having that detailed parenting plan really helps. Because that's, that's sort of like the default, if you are not able to agree or, you know, if, if something happens, you're able to look at this and be like, Look, you know, we can't come to an agreement right now, let's just follow the parenting plan. And that way, everything is detailed, everything is lined up. And, you know, they really reduces any conflict, any stress on the child for figuring out what to do.

Steve Altishin  12:32  
Is there a hierachy in parenting time, with the days? What I mean by that is, you know, what happens if a, if you know, a holiday falls on the other person's normal day? Or a, you know, summer vacation that you're supposed to have for two weeks a holiday falls there is? Can you kind of, is there like a hierarchy you have to follow? Or is that something that can be, you know, negotiated and put in a parenting plan?

Speaker 2  12:34  
It can absolutely be negotiated and put in a parenting plan. Typically, the hierarchy is if it's not in the parenting plan, it's going to be what's the normal schedule is so your parenting plan just says, you know, parent a, has weekends, parent B has, um, you know, Monday through Friday, then okay, well, if you know holidays off on the weekends, well, then parent ain't gets all those holidays, unless you and parent, the each parent can can speak with each other and agree. And so the parenting plan can discuss that. It can make provisions you know, if you don't want to go through every single holiday in a year, and there are a lot so I'll you know, I understand. If you don't want to have to directly discuss each and every one of them, then the the parenting plan can say okay, well, that's gonna be based on this hierarchy or, you know, every other year or something like that. So, you know, if you come to an agreement, that's really helpful, because then you can decide how that works. The court is going to be a lot less detailed about going through all those holidays. You know, depends on the judge depends on the situation depends on how much you know, judicial time you have. But it really, really depends. And so that's especially why it's so helpful to come to an agreement and create a parenting plan together.

Steve Altishin  14:44  
I like it, just makes such good sense because trying to do the negotiations after the decree aside, you know, never works out really great if you can, but a lot of people can't and so having that fall back works.

Alicia Doling  15:00  
Absolutely, absolutely.

Steve Altishin  15:03  
And this can change, I think you said, the days, especially, you know, it probably a different parenting plan for a six month old than a four year old, that a junior in high school. 

Speaker 2  15:17  
Yeah, you know, it's really easy to kind of think, Okay, this is just now that it's official, it's, it's signed by a judge and everything this is, this is the only thing that's going to happen. But life happens, kids grow older, especially if you're starting with a really young kid. And so it is really important to be flexible. And it's also important to consider that things will change. And so what's really helpful and coming to an agreement is making those extra provisions about what to do as things change. So how you and the other parent are going to agree on changes or agree on whether it has to be like an official judgment, or if it can just be like, a written down agreement, you know, however, however, that is, is is really helpful, because I think the biggest thing is, you don't want to have to go to a judge every single time. There's an issue. 

Steve Altishin  16:14  
Yeah, exactly. And before we just kind of leave the parenting time thing, I just kind of want to throw out what a lot of people do, there is not a magic age, well, less than 18 years old, that kids can decide who they want to live with?

Alicia Doling  16:33  
There is not a magic age, it really depends on the child. And it depends on your also you know, your your relationship as the parent with the child, you know what, what the child is communicating to you, etc. It's really important to consider that, and to remember at the forefront, that one of the big aspects of what's in the best interest of the child is to have a relationship with both parents. And making sure that that is a healthy relationship, and that it's fostered and nurtured. So if you want the child to have input, it's, it's definitely a tricky, tricky situation, for sure. And I think it really just depends on the situation. 

Steve Altishin  17:21  
Yeah, that makes sense, you know, best into the child, you know, clearly the kind of driving most important thing, but I think number two, just may be also trying to prevent conflict. Yeah, to the kopecks. And this is where stuff like, you know, who who does the transportation? What time is it? How is it done? What happens if someone's like, I mean, that whole kind of thing a lot of times is you don't find it those, and they can be the biggest bones of contention. 

Alicia Doling  17:53  
Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, that's part of what the parenting plan can do, is adding provisions about where pickups or drop offs happening, what time they happen, what happens if a parent is late or early, how emergency situations are handled and communicated to the other parent, one of the things that is I think, is really important is including provisions about how the parents communicate with each other? And how, how to handle that sort of communication, even like the the method of communication, depending on the situation. And so a parenting plan, can, can and I absolutely, wholeheartedly believe, should include as many detailed provisions in order to just reduce conflict as much as possible.

Steve Altishin  18:49  
Yeah, the whole communication thing is interesting, because if they don't end up agreeing, and they do have to go to court, there's nothing really in writing as to what you know, has been going on, that's going to just make it harder for the judge. And you know, you can say, well, I've talked about this 20 times, but Okay, show me. Yeah, that kind of leads to that. I mean, is there are there are there certain ways that seem to be better at communication than others? Or, you know, I use the term because, you know, I hardly know what it means apps that could be used. There ways to make that easier for the parents to communicate.

Alicia Doling  19:37  
Absolutely. There's, I mean, ever there's an app for everything. Now, one of my favorite apps that I recommend to most of my clients is our family wizard. It's a communication tool. It's really helpful because each parent can see like, you know, read receipts so you know if it's been read, it also integrates like a calendar There's a tool that is really helpful in really sort of more contentious co parenting relationships where it has like a tone meter, and can let you know if the message is, is potentially a little bit heated, but nicely and to kind of make you stop and think and reword what you're saying. So that was really helpful, I think, you know, it really does depend, every lawyer says it, you know, it depends on, and it really just depends on the situation, and what's how you and the other parent feels most comfortable communicating with each other. 

Steve Altishin  20:39  
Well, and that leads back to, you know, like you said, the situation, I mean, you can go from being very amicable and they work together, and they are there, they got it there, everything going to restraining orders, and everything else, I mean, a parenting plan, it sounds like from what you're saying, and all the things you can put in it. You can you can, you can have one for all those situations. So it's not like just throw up your hands, and let the judge decide you're gonna do it sounds like you can actually craft one for every situation.

Alicia Doling  21:14  
Absolutely. And on top of that, too, is you can craft provisions. So that when there are issues, I think I mentioned before, just just how to come to an agreement. And so one of the provisions that I love putting in parenting plans is that any disagreements, you know, parties aren't able to resolve on their own, you know, instead of immediately going to a judge is to do mediation that way, you know, it's, it just helps you not have to go back to court all the time. And, but it could be any number of things, you know, I mean, if you wanted to, you could put it in that you flip a coin, you know, I don't recommend that. But you can do what you want.

Steve Altishin  22:03  
I never win a coin toss. How about changing plans? This can be such a sticky situation, because, again, talk people and it's like, well, you know, the parenting plan is is, but we've been doing that. And you know, that that's okay, we've been doing that. And then, you know, come back, oh, they've decided they want to go back, they can't go back. And the parenting plan, limited writing, it's part of the decree. So it's really an order, isn't that true?

Alicia Doling  22:29  
It is true, it is part of the decree, it's part of the order. But again, you can add provisions that help you be able to change things, whether temporarily or permanently, just based on the situation, and including that language is really helpful. Because if it's something like one day, like, you know, a has an event and can't have the child overnight, then, you know, do you want to have to go back to court on that? No, you can, you know, you just won't be able to talk about it or communicate. And so you can, you know, just depending on on your comfort and how you feel, you can say that just any changes are, you know, any temporary changes are okay, whatever form they're in, or, you know, anything has to be in writing or, you know, if it's, you know, it could also just be that it has to go to, to the court, it has to be a modification proceeding. But there are options again, there's always options.

Steve Altishin  23:28  
Yeah. Like, like always, we just blasted through the amount of time it should have time to talk about this. And I'd love to talk about some more stuff about parenting plans, but I don't before we before we do go. I want to know if there's, you know, if you have someone sitting in front of you, and they're standing there, you know, talking about parenting plans, or why do I need a parenting plan? And what do you is there something like a takeaway that you would give someone to think about parenting plans, not just making them but as they go on, because they're gonna last for years?

Alicia Doling  24:04  
Yeah I think the most important thing is to remember who this is for, and who this is for is for your child. That child should always be the focus, their best interests should be the focus. And that's, I think that's the most important thing, regardless of I mean, I think that should be the most important thing for just thinking about like a parenting situation in general, it's all gonna be about your child. 

Steve Altishin  24:34  
Yep. I love that. I love that. Well, we are, unfortunately, out of time. So thank you so much for being here today. That's really, really wonderful. You know, you talk about co-parenting, parenting plans and all of that stuff in a way that even I can understand it. So that's wonderful. So thank you very much for being here. 

Alicia Doling  24:55  
Absolutely. It was wonderful to be here. 

Steve Altishin  24:58  
Oh, good, and everyone else, thank you for joining us. Today, if anyone has any further questions on today's topic, you can post it here. You can call in and we can get you connected with an attorney. And with that, stay safe, stay happy and be well.

Outro:
This has been Modern Family Matters, a legal podcast focusing on providing real answers and direction for individuals and families. Our podcast is sponsored by Pacific Cascade Legal, serving families in Oregon and Washington. If you are in need of legal counsel or have additional questions about a family law matter important to you, please visit our websites at pacificcascadelegal.com or pacificcascadefamilylaw.com. You can also call our headquarters at (503) 227-0200 to schedule a case evaluation with one of our seasoned attorneys. Modern Family Matters, advocating for your better tomorrow and offering legal solutions important to the modern family.