The current trend in parenting time is moving heavily towards 50/50 shared parenting but does this really benefit the children?
We actually did the decisions about our daughter’s schedule and who should make decisions meeting with a psychologist. It didn’t start out cooperative – we went in and he said, “I want 50/50.” I didn’t think that would work but instead of butting heads about that, somehow we were able to say, “Let’s start with our daughter. What’s our schedule now? Let’s build on that.” ~ Kathleen Christensen
Kathleen and her husband were married for about nine years and their daughter was seven years old when they separated. At the time, communication between Kathleen and her husband had completely broken down. Kathleen credits their now very workable, co-operative co-parenting relationship to the collaborative divorce process they followed and regular meetings with a psychologist to work through parenting issues.
Building or updating a parenting plan around your child’s needs requires much more time and energy than using some boilerplate language but I can assured you that when you do this, your child will benefit. And if your child support is calculated factoring the number of overnights, try negotiating a different agreement with your STBX.