Missouri Family Law Blog

On my forum, at www.divorcenet.com, the Missouri Community Forum, a recent discussion centered on being involved in your child’s life after divorce. This prompts today’s blog entry.

In crafting your parenting plan, be sure to include these provisions:

1. Each parent may contact the child while the child is in the other parent’s home. This should include phone and e-mail contact where possible. If either parent fears the other parent will claim harassment, the provision should recite the minimum frequency and duration of telephone contact. Hence, the provision could say, “Each parent may contact the child by telephone while the child is in the other parent’s home. Such contact may, at a minimum, and at the contacting parent’s discretion, be one call per each day on which the child spends an overnight in the other parent’s home, between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., and may last, at a minimum, 15 minutes per call. If the contacting parent reaches voice mail or answering machine, the parent at whose home a message is left shall facilitate a return call within the same day as the message is left.”

2. Each parent shall have the right to attend all doctors, dentists, eye examiner, mental health, and other health care appointments. Each parent shall provide advance notice to the other parent of at least seven days of any scheduled appointment so that the other parent may attend. Each parent shall provide immediate telephone notice of emergency appointments or appointments to address illnesses, not susceptible of advance notice.

3. Either parent may attend school functions, or functions for an extra-curricular activity at which family members are welcome. The parent receiving notice of such functions or schedules for such functions shall provide the other parent with copies of such notices or schedules as soon as practicable after receipt of them. However, if the school or extra-curricular activity allows for each parent to make arrangements for direct receipt of such notices or schedules, then each parent shall make individual arrangements to directly receive such notices of schedules. If either parent experiences difficulties or delays in the direct receipt of such notices or schedules after making arrangements for such receipt, the parents shall work together to insure that such difficulties or delays are resolved. The goal is to insure that both parents are fully informed of the events in the child’s life so as to foster the parent/child relationship between the child and each parent.

4. The parents acknowledge that this parenting plan provides that the child principally resides in one of their households. The public policy of the state of Missouri is to promote frequent, continuing and meaningful contact between the child and each parent; and to encourage each parent to foster the parent/child relationship between the child and each parent. Neither parent’s household shall be referred to as a home that the child “visits”, to or in front of the child. Each parent’s household shall be referenced as the child’s home to or in front of the child. Each parent shall encourage the child to think of each parent’s home as a “home” of the child, rather than one parent’s home as the child’s “home” and the other parent’s home as somewhere the child “visits”. Time that the child spends with each parent is “parenting time”, and the word “visitation” or “visits” or any derivation of those words, discourages the child from thinking of the other parent and time spent with the parent as being a critical and important part of the child’s life, so the use of “visits” or “visitation” shall be discouraged. The child shall be encouraged to think of time with his/her parents as “my time with Mom” or “my time with Dad”.

Before, after and during divorce or the break-up of your household with your child’s other parent, be sure that you:

* Attend all doctor’s appointments.
* Meet and familiarize yourself with your child’s teachers or daycare providers.
* Find out the names of your child’s preferred playmates, the playmates’ parents, and the playmates addresses and telephone numbers.
* Arrange for the child to have play-time with those playmates while on your time or at your home, to encourage continuity in the child’s life.
* Visit the child’s school.
* Email the child’s teachers and/or principals on a regular basis.
* Schedule your social calendar so that your time spent with your child is maximized and quality. Do not leave the child with a babysitter any more often than absolutely necessary at the initial stages of the breakup. This is important for two reasons: First, the child needs to know you are still his/her parent and are not surrendering or abandoning your role. Second, the other parent needs to get the same message.
* Send your child birthday cards and celebrate birthday, Christmas, and other holidays in a regular and routine way. This establishes your household as a place where the child will still have routines for holidays with which the child can feel comfortable and about which the child can be excited.
* Involve your extended family in the child’s life.
* Honor the child’s other parent and treat the child’s other parent with respect.
* If the relationship between you and the child’s other parent is poor, get the two of you into counseling. Ask for it at the litigation phase. Insist on it if you must. Use it.
* Let go of your hostility toward the other parent.
* If you are the principal residence of the child, foster a situation in which both parents can be active in the child’s life. Your child will be a better person if you do.

If your lawyer will not work towards a parenting plan that honors you as a parent, get a new lawyer.

Good luck!!!! Remember: Children need PARENTS, not VISITORS.

It could have been ugly.

We were all poised for trial. His father, his wife, her father and neighbor, milling in the hall with the teenage daughters. Her lawyer and me, the judge and the clerk. A bunch of exhibits, a sheaf of just-filed motions. A microphone, a table, a scattering of chairs.

But an hour later, after the girls talked to the judge, we were putting an agreement on the record. A change of custody, a relocation out of state, a temporary order. No trial, not yet at least.

Reasonable minds will differ as to whether the parties reached an agreement because they both believed that it was in the girls’ best interest to move with their Dad, or because the mother just “gave up” or thought the cards were stacked against her. I prefer to take the high road and be thankful that one mother acknowledged that her children should have a chance to live with their father, and one judge decided to let the kids give it the try they requested, and one opposing counsel took the high road instead of holding out for a run at the finish line.

Chalk this up in the “W” column for a father wanting a chance to parent his children full-time, and wish them all well. The times they are a-changin’, and just once in a while, Dad gets a chance to prove he can do as well as Mom.