How to Build a Co-Parenting Plan

Co-parenting — sharing your child with an ex — is a difficult endeavor. It requires more trust than you are likely to have in your ex. But it’s a vital part of any divorce that involves children, because no matter what you might think of your ex, to your children they will always be “my parent,” and children want both parents in their lives.

The Most Important Factor

The single most overriding element of any co-parenting plan is that it must create consistency between both households. This can be difficult if you and your ex disagree on matters that you consider vital to the child’s well-being, but if you do not give some ground, your ex will simply give the agreement lip service and fail to follow through, which defies the entire point of creating consistency in the first place.

The Thousand Issues of Parenting

Parenting is one of the most intricate and detailed part of any person’s life — though you probably wouldn’t realize it if you didn’t have to write out an actual list of points and convince your ex to agree with you on 100% of it. Here are just some of the most common things you will have to agree on:

• Daily Routine: Shower in the morning or evening? Dessert right after dinner, or right before bed? When is bedtime? Homework time? Snack time?
• Discipline: What behaviors will be rewarded? Punished? What kinds of rewards are appropriate? Punishments? How will extended punishments (like being grounded) be transferred from one household to the other?
• New Relationships: How will each parent’s new partners be introduced? What titles will they go by? What roles will they be (dis)allowed to play in the children’s lives?
• New Activities: How will you and your ex communicate about any new activities the children want to engage in? What will happen if an event is scheduled during the other parent’s agreed-upon time?
• Friends: If your child has a friend that lives near the other parent, are they going to be allowed to visit or stay over during your parenting time (and vice versa, naturally)? If the other parent has a problem with one of your child’s friends (and you don’t), how will that be handled?
• Religion: What faith(s) will the child be brought up in? What happens if a religious event happens during your ex’s parenting time? Are there any values that one parent’s religion endorses that the other parent is unwilling to support? How will that be resolved so that there is consistency between the households?
• Holidays: Which parent gets which holidays? Will you trade off, which each successive Christmas going to a different parent? How will birthday parties be arranged?

Again, this is a very limited list — a good co-parenting agreement is a very long, complex document.

How to Create the Agreement

The best way to create a co-parenting agreement is with the help of a professional mediator and with at least one attorney present — possibly one for each parent if there’s a lot of strife. It can take several successive meetings to get through all of the details — but be patient. It’s for the children, and it’s worth the effort.