Most families with children who we work with in mediation and in collaborative representation decide to co-parent after divorce. As I write this blog post, we are continuing to live in an unprecedented public health crisis posed by the social distancing requirements imposed by the spread of Covid-19. This has created logistical issues when families are spread between two households. Challenges imposed by distance learning and parents unexpectedly working from home are creating stress and difficulties. Is co-parenting still possible in this situation? It is possible, and it may be the best way to continue to nurture the emotional well-being of your children. I’ve been working with some parents in ODR (online dispute resolution), and they have articulated a few guidelines that have been helpful to them.

Transformative mediation was first described by Robert A. Baruch Bush and Joseph P. Folger in The Promise of Mediation.  They describe it that the transformative theory starts: “(…(F)rom the premise that inter-relational crisis is what conflict meant to people.  And help in overcoming that crisis is a major part of what parties want fro a mediator…In the transformative mediation process, parties can recapture their sense of competence and connection, reverse the negative conflict cycle, reestablish a constructive (or at least neutral) interaction, and move forward on a positive footing, with the mediator’s help. “ Transformative mediation is not therapy.  The mediator's goal is not to alter the relationship. Rather, the mediator strives to balance the parties' negotiation power while creating opportunities to address underlying issues, within the context of resolving the presenting dispute. 

When parents are sharing custody but live in different school districts, deciding the best school for the children to attend can be challenging. I’ve been involved in many situations when the parents disagree on where their child should attend school. Usually, we can’t find an easy answer, but with mediation or collaborative practices, we work together to evaluate the options and reach the best decision for the family. In reaching a decision, we often look at the following issues.

Should I call the police?

A few days I had a call from a father of a family that I’ve been working with in divorce mediation. He wanted to know if he should call the police when his wife did not permit the children to come with him for his custodial time. He wanted to document the problem.

Contempt of court occurs when a court issues an order requiring that a person (or company) do something, and that person disobeys the court order.  The injured or aggrieved party requests that the court find that person in contempt and take action to ensure compliance with the order. In other words, once the court issues a ruling, so long as that ruling is in effect, anyone who is ordered to do something in the order must do it, or the court may find them in contempt.

January is a popular month to file for divorce.  Why?  For many people, the new year is a time that they reevaluate their lives and decide to make changes.  Perhaps they have waited or tried to make a marriage work for some time and the new year seems like a good opportunity to go ahead and pursue divorce.  Others may want to wait until after Christmas to plan for their a divorce. Some people postpone divorce into the new year for economic or tax reasons.  Whatever the basis, if you have decided to divorce in 2017, should you file?

Over the past few months on this blog, I’ve covered many of the issues that we consider in mediation when a couple is planning to file for divorce.  My posts in this series have examined everything from how to divide marital property, how to calculate child support, and how to make schedules for holidays for the children.  Along with resources such as the free forms from the West Virginia Supreme Court, these posts may help you decide whether or not you want to retain a lawyer, reach an agreement before you select a lawyer or file for divorce, or if you want to consider collaborative law.

In today’s post, I’ll continue to share ideas on how to develop a custodial schedule in your parenting plan.  Once you have the decision-making portion of the parenting plan developed, have agreed on some of the objectives and conceptual details about custodial time, you might stumble when creating a calendar, due to unique problems in your family.  In this post, we’ll address some of the challenges I’ve seen parentings struggle with and how they’ve resolved them.

With your decision-making parenting plan in one hand and the answers to some important questions about jobs and schedules in the other, you are ready to start marking up a calendar to decide how to divide custodial time.  You might want to print out some calendars and mark them up with different schedules.  Printed calendars make it easier to evaluate the possible plans.

When you are working in mediation or collaborative law, you can create most any schedule you want to create to suit your families' needs.  

The schedules I’m describing in this post are examples of what has worked for some families. Of course, if you cannot develop a plan through mediation, negotiation, or collaborative processes, you will be stuck with a schedule that a judge creates that may or may not be as tailored to your families’ needs.  

Last week we looked at how to create a parenting plan to divide your decision making after divorce. Establishing details and processes for decision making is the foundation of a terrific parenting plan.   Create a plan with the help of an experienced mediator, family counselor, or collaborative attorney to draft a strong agreement-- built to withstand a lot of wear of tear!  Next, you’ll develop the second part of your parenting plan, a schedule outlining what nights your child is sleeping at each house—or “allocation of custodial responsibility.” 

Developing your parenting plan after a divorce requires planning both how to make important decisions about your child and scheduling how your child will be dividing his or her time between the parents' households.  In mediation, we are able to customize the plan to best meet the needs of each family. 

Welcome to the next post in this series on filing for divorce without a lawyer in West Virginia. Since I practice in West Virginia, Virginia and the District of Columbia, the instructions for each jurisdiction are described in separate blog posts.

If you have followed these posts, you may have taken the first steps and decided that you can file for divorce. You and your spouse went to mediation and now have a written parenting plan and property settlement agreement. What’s next? How do you get to court?

An important step in filing for divorce without a lawyer, is working to reach the agreement before you file.  An agreement can provide greater security and can expedite the process.  Agreements can be reached between the parties informally, through mediation and through collaborative divorce.

Among decisions, parents make when divorcing includes decisions on how to fund their children’s college tuition. Sometimes students qualify for an in-state discount based upon their parents’ residence. In this article, I describe how different states grant reductions based on the family’s residency.

When you are planning for a divorce and money is tight, there are a number of things you can do to save money. Both mediation and collaborative divorce are often a less expensive option. This blog post also provides some free materials that can help you file for divorce when you cannot afford an attorney in Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland.

"What do we do about Christmas?"  This is a question that comes up in most mediations involving child custody.  In mediation or collaborative law, you can tailor your holiday celebrations with your children consistent with your own family traditions and celebrations.  Whether I’m working in a collaborative law case or in mediation, we work to make all holidays, including Christmas, peaceful, unique and special for the children.  As a lawyer and mediator with offices located in West Virginia and Washington, D.C., we can design the perfect holiday for the children, together.

Congratulations!  You just finished your mediation session and reached an agreement.  You may feel relieved that the pressure is over or excited that you have found a way to move forward in your life without the stress over litigation.  You may feel regretful that you didn’t get exactly what you were looking for when you first met with your attorney or filed the petition.  You may be wondering “ What if….”

Another term that does not appear in West Virginia law is “50/50.”  In this post I will describe the problem that arises when parents focuses on a 50/50 split of time between households.  To many “50/50” sounds fair—100% of the time the child’s time is split equally between the parents.  However, slashing the child’s time precisely in half may be “fair” to the parents, but harmful to the child.  In developing a parenting plan, parents who are more interested in the well-being of the children may want to change the focus from the question, “What makes this look fair to me?” to the question, “What schedule can we develop to best meet the needs of our child?”    

You won’t find terms such as “full custody” or “50-50” or “Schedule A visitation” in West Virginia's child custody statutes.  Rather, you’ll find provisions that allow for parents to work hard to create decision making processes and schedules that are tailored to meet the best interests of their child.   Parents who are separating should consider the options provided by mediation and collaborative law in deciding what is best for their children.  Our office provides mediation services and accepts custody matters when the parents are committed to collaborative processes to develop the parenting plan that is best for their child.