Co-Parenting Matters
because kids thrive when parents partner

So we told you about the debut of Co-Parenting Matters, the live, weekly talk show we’re co-hosting on BlogTalk Radio with Talibah Mbonisi of WeParent.com

We told you that you can catch the debut show on Sunday, October 25, 2009 by visiting BlogTalkRadio or calling in to (646) 378-0580.

We told you that on our debut show, we’d be discussing myths that can undermine your co-parenting relationship.

We told you that we would feature expert guests talking about a variety of co-parenting topics.

But did we tell you that we need YOU to tell us what you’d like to talk about?  What’s going on in your co-parenting world?

Here are some of the topics we’re considering for future Co-Parenting Matters shows:

~A Holiday Survival Guide for Co-Parents

~”What is My Kid Thinking and Feeling?”: Helping Your Child Cope with Divorce, Break-Ups, and Parental Conflict

~Navigating the Legal Process: Child Support, Custody, and Divorce

~Camps, Calendars, and Co-Parenting

~Non-Custodial Parenting

~Drama Rx

~Step-Dating

~Remarriage and Step-Families

~Adult Child of Divorce Perspectives

~Single Parents and Online Dating

~Sex and the Single Parent

~Father Forum

~Spotlight on Single Moms

~Collaborative Divorce

~Parental Alienation

~Co-Parenting, Mental Illness, and Substance Abuse

So tell us: What would you add to this list?  Let us know in the comments section.

Do you have a co-parenting story that you would like featured on a future show?  Let us know: info AT coparenting101 DOT org

We hope you’ll tune in on Sunday!

~Deesha, Mike, & Talibah

Can’t join us on Sunday nights?  Listen to Co-Parenting Matters podcasts at BlogTalk Radio your leisure.

Disclaimer: In this post, and throughout this site, when we discuss parents who aren’t able to co-parent effectively, we are not talking about situations in which there is domestic violence, substance abuse/addiction, and or mental illness.

We are often asked, why is it that some parents can get along after a break up and others can’t–or won’t?  What enables some people to keep the conflict to a minimum…while others keep more drama going than Shakespeare?

We aren’t aware of any studies that have sought to answer this question, so we’ll take a shot at it, however unscientifically, based on our personal experiences, those of co-parents we know, and based on the experiences visitors to this site have shared with us.

First, here are three factors that we believe are not solid indicators of whether or not cooperative co-parenting can happen after a break up:

One: Infiidelity.  It’s impossible for people to co-parent and get along in the wake of this kind of betrayal and breach, right? Wrong. We know of co-parents who cooperate for the sake of their kids after an affair contributed to the break up of their marriage–and we know of ex-spouses who are mortal enemies–and whose children suffer for it–where there was no infidelity.

Two: Financial collapse and disagreements about child support, spousal support, or assets.  Certainly, money matters are a common battleground for divorced and otherwise separated couples.  And certainly, money worries and change in lifestyle add another layer of stress to and can exacerbate an already tense situation.  However, we know of co-parents who fought tooth and nail via the courts about money–but kept it civil and positive in the presence of the kids. On the flip side, there are people for whom money was not part of their post-divorce conflict, and yet they fight bitterly about pretty much everything else, allowing their children to become casualties in the process.

Three: The presence of a significant other, such as a new partner or spouse.  Again, no.  We’ve seen dating co-parents and stepfamilies that  are co-parenting exemplars.

So…if infidelity, new partners, and money aren’t reliable factors for determining if two people can successfully co-parent, then what factors are reliable predictors?

Well, in our experience, the two factors that pretty reliably distinguish those who can co-parent cooperatively from those who can’t/won’t–over the long run, allowing for time to heal and transition–are security/self-assurance and maturity.

Security/self-assurance
Among the many difficult things about divorce is that it can magnify whatever fears and insecurities we already have, heightening our emotional distress precisely at a time when our emotional resources and reserves are at their lowest.  In other words, if, pre-break-up, you were already insecure about your attractiveness, desirability, intellect, parenting skills, or overall competence, or fearful about the future or about finances–divorce can feel like the your worst nightmares come true when you are least able to confront them.

And yet…in the midst of this trauma, your child still needs you.  The divorce brings with it unique stress and trauma for her.   Let her grieve and get adjusted to the changes (two households; holidays without one parent, etc.) without the burden of, for example, your bad-mouthing the other parent out of your rightful anger, colossal disappointment, and personal insecurities.  Deal with your Stuff constructively, so that you can help your kid deal with hers.

For example: Are your “concerns” about your ex’s new boyfriend’s character truly valid…or are you just having a hard time seeing another guy around your kids?  Around your ex?  Be honest, with yourself at the very least, about what’s really bothering you.  It’s far easier to fight with your ex and make accusations about her “poor judgment” than to look in the mirror and find that you are perhaps jealous, or that her new relationship has poured salt into some still-healing wounds.  Own your Stuff.  Talk to a trusted friend or counselor about what’s really bothering you.  Don’t drag your ex and your kids into drama just because you’d rather not deal with your personal issues.

Maturity
In talking with some co-parents about their on-going conflict, sometimes there’s no nicer, clearer way to advise them than, simply, “Grow up.”

Move on.  Life is hard.  We get knocked down sometimes, but ultimately we have to dust ourselves off, pull up our big-girl panties or big-boy boxers, and keep going.  Especially if we have children.

Payback against the partner that wronged you would probably feel really good.  Making sure that your kids and everyone else knows how truly, madly, deeply you hate your ex has its appeal as well.  But that’s not what grown-ups do.

It’s actually easier, in some ways, to stay mired in conflict, blame, revenge-seeking, and self-pity.  But grown-ups realize that what’s easier is not always what’s best.  Grown-ups make sacrifices.  As responsible parents, we often sacrifice for our kids, in some cases since conception (anyone who ever gave up smoking or made other significant lifestyle changes during a pregnancy can relate).  Post-divorce/separation healing is another kind of sacrifice.  Responding to a break-up and the fallout from it with grace and maturity–eventually–is a sacrifice that successful and responsible co-parenting demands.

~~~

So…what’s a co-parent to do?  The best you can.  Heal. Help yourself so that you can help your child.  Don’t add to the upheaval you are both experiencing by letting immaturity or your fears and insecurities stop you from being the parent your kid needs you to be.

Related:

Co-Parenting and Healing: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce

You are Not Charles Barkley, or, Why You Must Cooperate with Your Ex

As you’ve observed professionally, cooperation can seem impossible among high-conflict co-parents. What legal and practical options are available to a parent whose co-parent insists upon being at odds, to the detriment of the kids?

I’ll start with legal options, because that is going to be the shorter answer. Divorce is a creature of statute, so the ability of courts to address issues is limited to what is set out in their statutory. It’s also important to remember that the nature of our court system is to be reactive rather than proactive. In plain English, that means that a court cannot resolve a problem that has not yet occurred and been solidly documented. For example, if a parent has a drinking problem but has never been caught at it and there is no documentation of the behavior impacting the children, the other parent will not be able to get restrictions on the other party’s drinking activity when in the presence of the children. The court will only be able to act after something has occurred – for example, there is documentation of the parent drinking heavily in the presence of the children or, heaven forbid, driving with the children in the car while he or she is under the influence of alcohol. A co-parent who insists on constantly being at odds is even more difficult to document. This leads to the practical options, which is where the “cooperative” co-parent should start.

First, Document, Document, Document. Keep a journal, calendar, binder, whatever record-keeping system works best for you, in order to be able to present to a court documentation of the adverse behavior over a reasonable period of time. Examples of things that can be documented in this way are notes on conversations, copies of nasty emails or text messages, recordings of voice mail messages, calendars showing late or missed visitation periods, failure to help the kids with homework, et cetera.

Second, think of your co-parent relationship as one of Coordination rather than Cooperation. Cooperation implies mutual emotional investment in a positive outcome which may be impossible with a conflict-oriented co-parent. Coordination is more impassive – the focus is on completion of logistical goals, regardless of emotional involvement. This subtle difference in approach may make it easier for the cooperative co-parent to successfully interact with a conflict-oriented co-parent.

Third, individual counseling is always a good idea. While co-parenting is a continuing joint relationship focused on the children, the fact of the matter is that each party still is going it alone as a parent on a daily basis, even without a conflict-oriented co-parent. Having another person to talk to and help think through issues is a good idea.

Lastly, stick to your terms and schedules in your custody and visitation order as closely as possible in order to maintain clear expectations between both parents. Review these documents periodically to ensure that you are meeting their terms. When dealing with a difficult co-parent, keeping the relationship as structured as possible, with clear expectations as set out in the documents, helps things run more smoothly and also makes it easier to enforce the terms if the other parent cannot keep to its terms.

What is a parent to do if the co-parenting relationship is failing? One issue that some co-parents face is that the courts tend to move slowly and don’t always offer immediate relief to urgent problems, so they feel trapped and at the mercy of the difficult parent. Is it worth it to engage the family court, even though the process can be lengthy, with no guarantee of a solution?

If it is necessary to engage the services of the court, clarify what relief you want, document the issues causing you to need it, and consult with a lawyer, specifically asking what your burden of proof will be. If you feel you can meet it, it may be worth moving ahead.

We”ll give an example shared with us by a recently divorced co-parent with 50-50 custody. Her ex-husband consistently drops the kids off late to school during his weeks and doesn’t check their homework. As a result, the children’s grades began to fall. Previously, attempts at communicating with the father about various other concerns, major and minor, ended in his angry, defensive response, dragging the kids in the middle, his badgering the kids, and refusal to budge on any issue. Any meaningful communication between the parents has broken down. What are the concerned parent’s options in a case like this? Restricted visitation? An order requiring Dad to ensure that homework is completed? Periodic review of the children’s status by the court?

A frequent goal when a client starts on this path is some sort of restricted or supervised visitation. Supervised visitation is tantamount to an injunctive relief, so you are really going to need to show that the kids have suffered some damage that amounts to irreparable harm to get any relief.

First, document and assess your level of proof. If the kids are starting to do poorly in school, can anyone from school testify to this? Is there any record of the kids talking to a guidance counselor about their problems? Is a therapist involved who could testify? Is there documentation which was set down concurrently with each event of which you complain? Then determine what relief is needed and make sure it is within the court’s power to give it. In this particular case, the client determined that supervised or other restricted visitation was not a reachable goal given the level of proof and damages necessary to get it. She has gone back to the steps outlined above – limiting interaction with her ex-husband to emails and text messages as much as possible and documenting what is going on with the children. She has also stepped up her involvement with the children’s teachers and counselors at school so that she is immediately aware when homework or projects are not completed or there are signs of stress on the children. For now, it’s the best she can do, and it has been helpful for the children, as well.

Can you talk a bit about “parenting coordinators” and how they are currently used by some jurisdictions to help high-conflict co-parents?

There is much excitement amongst divorce professionals about the growing parenting coordinator movement. Anyone whose profession touches and concerns divorce and custody matters has run into high conflict divorces on a repeated basis, and is well familiar with the havoc such cases wreak on the adults and children involved, as well as the financial devastation which comes with repeated trips to court over time. In the jurisdictions in which I practice, the courts cannot order parties to obtain the services of a parenting coordinator; it must be done voluntarily. That arrangement, combined with the fact that a parenting coordination agreement is not necessarily a simple document and also must be negotiated between the parties, means that the people who most need these services are least likely to successfully secure them. There is little outside pressure. But the professionals who come into contact with this family dynamic repeatedly is desperate for a solution, and the parenting coordinator really can work if the parties can be brought together in that environment. The message about parenting coordinators really needs to get out, and it needs to become as much a part of our usual alternative dispute resolution process as mediation as become.

Incorporating such a program into the court approved, state sanctioned processes would also help with the additional barrier to parenting coordinating: finances. Parties who are unable to afford sharing this cost frequently are unable to employ a parenting coordinator, and that is a real shame for all involved. All in all, in my jurisdictions parenting coordinators are underutilized.

Parties who have been most successful in a parenting coordinator relationship have engaged the services of the coordinator early in the process and included them in their settlement framework. They have carefully negotiated the terms of the parenting coordinator agreement so that all parties are clear on what the role of the coordinator is; how the parties will approach the coordinator when issues arise; and the limits of the coordinator’s authority. Because parties working with a parenting coordinator are solving problems in a therapeutic environment rather than in an adversarial legal arena, there is more room for personal growth in problem solving and communications. Parenting coordinators I know have said that frequently families are able to learn enough from their time with the coordinator that they can move on to independent problem solving and engage the coordinator less and less frequently over time, ultimately weaning themselves off the process entirely.

In terms of a specific response to your query about how parenting coordinators are used by some jurisdictions to help the process, the direct answer is that Virginia jurisdictions are without authority to use parenting coordinators in the divorce and custody legal process. However, as word about parenting coordinators spreads, courts and legal professionals are increasingly open to parenting coordination as a tool to resolve differences between parties in these cases. Although the judges cannot order parties to use a coordinator, they are more than pleased when parties come to the solution on their own, and will endorse an agreed order or incorporate a settlement agreement which contains parenting coordination requirements.

It is highly recommended that parents seek therapy for their children to help them cope with divorce. What happens if one parent wants to seek therapy for the children, but the other parent doesn’t?

What happens in these situations depends first upon what sort of custody the parties share. In Virginia, for example, sole custody means that one party has the right to make all decisions concerning the children without consulting the other parent. Joint legal custody requires the parties to confer with one another, as does shared custody. However, with joint or shared custody, if one party wants the children in therapy, takes them to therapy while they are in his or her custody, and the therapy is not causing the children any harm, it’s difficult for the other parent to put a halt to the therapy so long as the parties conferred about it in advance. These issues are determined on a case by case basis according to the individual facts faced by each family, so the parties and their attorneys would be researching existing case law to see if they could find any prior cases with factual similarities to support their respective arguments for or against therapy. A common argument by the parent who is against the therapy is that the children are becoming alienated from him or her as a result of the therapy and that it should be stopped. Parental alienation cases are their own breed of practice, however, and are both tough and expensive to prove. In my experience, therapists generally welcome the participation of both children and parents in the therapeutic process regardless of the parents’ respective personal issues because doing so is in the best interests of the children.

More and more courts are leaning towards shared custody arrangements, and certainly,having both parents actively involved in all facets of their children’s lives is ideal. But is this desirable for high-conflict parents? Do the courts generally limit sole custody arrangements to situations of abuse or severe neglect, or can parental conflict be a contributing factor as well?

In Virginia, parental conflict can be a contributing factor to the decision to give sole custody to one of the parents. A court examining the question of custody in Virginia is required to review a series of factors, including each parent’s propensity to foster the child’s relationship with the other parent and family members, and specifically the “ability of each parent to cooperate in and resolve disputes regarding matters affecting the child”. If it is clear from the record that the parties are unable to agree on matters concerning the children, a Virginia court may choose to award sole custody to one party rather than joint custody between two otherwise fit parents. There is a caveat, though – the quantification of what constitutes parties being unable to agree on matters concerning the children is a pretty high bar and requires documentation of fairly egregious conduct by the parents. So, the short answer to your question is that sole custody is more likely to be awarded at the outset in cases of documented abuse or neglect, but parental conflict touching, concerning and affecting the children and documented over time can also lead to a sole custody award.

Part 2 of our interview with Julie Hottle Day will be posted later this week.

Julie Hottle Day’s divorce practice confines itself to Virginia, so her comments should be taken with that in mind. However, many issues facing co-parents really involve common sense as applied in a legal framework, and a common sense solution can be applied in any number of settings so long as it does not run afoul of local law and procedure. Her comments in this article are general in nature, and should not take the place of the advice of competent counsel in the reader’s home jurisdiction.

BIOGRAPHY

Julie Hottle Day, a longtime Virginia practitioner, represents parties in family law litigation and small business transactions and litigation. Julie brings a business sensibility to her divorce practice which benefits her clients in the short and long term. She prides herself in her reputation as an honest, hardworking attorney who keeps her clients well informed, and believes that a client who is well informed is a client well served.

Ms. Day, an active member of the Virginia State Bar since 1991, is also admitted to the Maryland State Bar and to practice before the United States Supreme Court. She has conducted litigation in the Virginia counties of Fairfax, Arlington, Prince William, Loudoun, Fauquier, Culpeper and Orange. Noted for her diplomacy and skill in drafting prenuptial agreements by Washingtonian Magazine in 2005, she was named by that publication as one of the top 88 divorce lawyers in the Washington, D.C. area in 2009.

Ms. Day is a member of the Business and Divorce Sections of the Virginia State Bar; the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association; the National Association of Woman Lawyers; and is an associate member of the Fauquier Bar Association. She is also a frequent public speaker, addressing business and divorce issues as well as work-life balance for attorneys.

Ms. Day is a 1991 graduate of the Washington & Lee University School of law, where she was a member of the Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity. She is a 1988 cum laude graduate of Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

A native Virginian, Ms. Day now resides in the Washington, D.C. area with her husband and their two children.

Related:

An Interview with Julie Hottle Day, Part 2

A Family Law Attorney on Co-Parenting: Interview with Jacqueline Omotalade

When Co-Parents Collide: An Interview with Parenting Coordinator, Brooke Randolph

“How Do I Tell My Kids I’m Going for Sole Custody?”