When you have a child and decide to get divorced, one of the first things that you need to do is to sit down with your ex to come up with a parenting plan. It will essentially serve as the roadmap for how you and your ex agree to raise your kids. You should champion what’s in the best interest of your child, both now and in the future when drafting it. There are some common elements that your parenting plan should contain if you wish to have a Florida family law judge ultimately sign off on it.
One of the first decisions that the two of you will have to make is to decide what type of parental responsibility or custody arrangements that the two of you will share. It’s important for you to speak with a Fort Myers family law attorney about the different options that exist and the implications of requesting one type of arrangement versus another.
The decisions you make about parental responsibilities can likely affect who can make certain choices on behalf of your child. One parent may be understood to be the sole decision-maker regarding medical care, schooling, religion, extra-curricular activities and other matters unless the parenting plan describes a different arrangement.
It’s in the parenting plan that each of you can detail how you’d want parent-teacher conversations, school events, childcare arrangements and emergency health care to be handled. Who’s responsible for paying for any of these should be detailed in this document as well.
Parents should detail the visitation schedule that they intend to follow here. They should include details about how they plan to celebrity their child’s birthday, how they’ll handle school breaks and other holidays as well. Parents should also detail the protocol that they expect each other to follow is they need to deviate from pre-arranged schedules.
Finally, it should spell out what steps each intends to take if there’s an unresolved conflict between them.
When divorcing parents hear that they need to sit down and create a parenting plan, they often find it difficult envisioning doing so, especially when emotions are raw. A child custody attorney can help you in establishing and modifying the parenting plan and schedule in your Fort Myers divorce case.
