If you and your child’s parent can reach an agreement, then you can sign a parenting plan together. This parenting plan is called a “joint parenting plan.” The judge will review the plan to make sure it is fair, workable and in the best interest of the children.
The Parenting Plan should explain where the children are going to be at all times. The whole schedule should include holidays, school, and summer vacation. The judge will attach your Parenting Plan to your final order. The judge can change the Parenting Plan if he or she believes another plan will be better for your children.
If you and the other parent cannot agree on how to share time with the children, the judge has to make a decision. Each parent should make their own proposed Parenting Plan. The judge might approve one parent’s plan and reject the other parent’s plan. The judge might decide on a different plan from what either parent submitted.
The judge looks at how you and your spouse handled childcare when you were living together. The judge looks at what amount of time each parent has spent with the children. The judge usually looks at the pattern of parenting in the year or two before the separation.
The judge will consider things like baths, meals, homework, babysitting, and shopping. Whoever has been doing those things should keep doing them. If the children’s dad took them to soccer practice before the separation, the judge would probably want dad to continue to take the children to practice after the separation. The court wants to keep the children’s lives as much the same as possible. The judge also tries to be fair.
After your final hearing, the parents will usually share the “decision-making responsibility.” This means that big decisions like education, medical care, and after school activities for the children should be shared. Sometimes the parents cannot agree on how to make these decisions together. In that case, the judge will decide which parent makes which types of decisions.