Child Custody and Parenting Time

Child custody and parenting time are among the most anxiety-producing issues that people bring into the mediation process, but they also have a tremendous amount of flexibility that people might not expect.  With Matthew House's help, child custody and the parenting time schedule can be carefully customized to accommodate your family's needs and preferences.

It is important to remember that child custody and parenting time exist for the best interests of the child.  Matthew is especially well-suited to the task of helping clients with parenting time schedules and other aspects of the parenting plan because he is a former teacher and works primarily with families who have minor children.

The divorce mediation session(s) dedicated to child custody and parenting time will involve understanding, discussing, and making tentative decisions about the following concepts and questions:

• Whether you will have joint legal custody (as most people choose to do) or whether one parent will have sole legal custody.  Matthew will explain the difference between legal custody and physical custody.  People often conflate the two as if they were one and the same, but they are not.
  • In a nutshell, deciding between joint legal custody and sole legal custody refers to whether parents will collaborate to make major decisions of health, education, religion, and discipline, or whether that decision-making authority will belong only to one parent.  The two are not as absolute as they sound.  There is actually considerable flexibility in Oregon family law to craft a hybrid child custody model as well.
  • Physical custody refers to where the children spend time.  Even when parents have joint legal custody, they can have an unequal parenting time schedule without affecting the joint legal custody arrangement.  Sometimes, 50/50 parenting time is in the best interests of the children, and sometimes it creates a disruption.  Determining the most conducive parenting time schedule depends entirely on each family, the parents' flexibility, and their willingness to work together.
• What your parenting time schedule will be, which is more detailed than it may appear
• Childcare and daycare
• Details to agree on that will make the sharing of parenting time smoother, to whatever extent you feel it is helpful to decide certain things in advance, such as:
  • Bedtime
  • Nutrition
  • How to ensure that the kids are prepared for the transition between the parents’ homes when you exchange parenting time
  • How you prefer to communicate with each other
  • What you expect of each other in terms of sharing information about the kids to keep both of you up to date on anything that has developed
  • Behaviors or practices that you want to agree that both of you will do (or not do) when you are with the kids
  • What you expect of each other regarding the kids’ health and how you intend to handle minor or major health issues that may arise (parents sometimes have different attitudes about the use of medications and other health-related concerns)
  • Consistent standards of rules and discipline -- thinking about broader values, not micromanaging minute details
  • Whether you will practice a religion and what religious or spiritual activities or belief systems you endorse or prohibit
  • The role each of you will have in ensuring that your kids do their best in school (helping with homework, communicating with teachers, etc.) so that you can maintain consistency and stay vigilant