Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey everybody, today we're going to talk about parenting coordination.

Speaker 1: 0:07

As a family law attorney, I've seen firsthand how intense ongoing conflicts can affect families, and one way that you can try to handle these disputes and keep things moving as smoothly as possible for your kids is working with a parenting coordinator, or a PC using the initials. So we're going to talk about what a Parenting Coordinator is and how they can help a family. In addition to representing parents in litigation, I'm also a guardian ad litem and a Parenting Coordinator and a mediator, so I have parenting coordination cases myself as well. Parenting coordinator can be a mental health professional or an attorney typically, who will step in to help parents reduce conflict and make decisions that best serve the needs of the kids. This process can be really helpful for parents who struggle to communicate or work together but still have shared responsibilities for the kids. The goal of the PC is to try to bring some stability to the co-parenting process and to minimize conflict, if you can. The job of a PC is to focus on the child's well-being by reducing negative impacts of parental conflict. We work with parents to support them in implementing parenting plans, managing disputes and trying to handle issues before they escalate to something that might require actual litigation. Now, because the folks listening to this podcast are from all over the place, I'm not just going to talk about Oklahoma, but because I'm a parenting coordinator in Oklahoma, I know more about that than I do about parenting coordination in other places. I'll add in some tidbits that are just specific to Oklahoma as well. So if you're trying to break down what the role of a PC is, generally speaking, it would cover these basic areas. First is education, next conflict management, case management, coordination and decision-making recommendations.

Speaker 1: 2:03

In a specific case, the function of a parenting coordinator is going to be determined by the court in the order that appoints the parenting coordinator. Typically, a court is going to authorize a PC to make decisions and recommendations. In Oklahoma, for example, if a PC makes a decision, then that decision is binding on the parents. They have to follow that decision until a court says otherwise. A recommendation is something that is not binding on the parents until a court says that it is. In Oklahoma, for example, the parents have up to 10 days to object to a PC report. If they make an objection, then that objection gets set for hearing. At that hearing, the court hears reasons why the parenting coordinator's recommendation should be followed or why they shouldn't, or why decisions should be undone or why it shouldn't. The parenting coordinator is not permitted to take from the court's authority in any way. The parenting coordinator's authority is a subset of the court's authority that is delegated to the parenting coordinator to try to ease the burden on the court system, to try to lessen the conflict within the family. In no way can a parenting coordinator ever actually change and order. The court in terms of custody and visitation Can't take that core role away from the court ever and the court retains sole decision-making authority. Even if a topic has been delegated to the PC for decision or recommendation, ultimately the court always maintains the final say.

Speaker 1: 3:56

So let's talk about education. So PCs work to educate parents on children's developmental needs, the impact on kids of the parental conflict and how to try to build a positive environment for the children. We try to provide guidance on better communication and decision making skills, which can be really helpful. That can pay some dividends because if the communication can increase, that will have downstream effects of reducing conflict. Now one of the main reasons to appoint a parenting coordinator is to reduce the level of conflict between parents and in most cases finding that it is a high-conflict parenting situation is a prerequisite for getting a parenting coordinator a prerequisite for getting a parenting coordinator To try to reduce the conflict.

Speaker 1: 4:44

The PC will first try to help the parents identify more clearly what the issue is. It's not a problem to have disagreements as co-parents. It becomes a problem when those disagreements are discussed in a way that is unhelpful, that increases conflict and doesn't resolve the problem. So one of the key jobs of a PC is to help both sides understand more clearly what the actual conflict is and what their respective positions regarding the conflict are. Sometimes just having that increased clarity from an objective third party can help minimize some of the conflict in the first place, because very often it's the case that someone just doesn't feel heard. Now it may be the case that the person feels heard but then is disagreed with and that can lead to additional litigation. But at least you've done something to try to bridge the gap between the two sides. Once the issue and dispute has been properly identified and both sides have been clearly expressed, then the PC will try to essentially mediate that disagreement to see if there can't be some sort of win-win for both parties. Now sometimes things are just objectively not going to work out. One party may have a position which, while it makes sense to them, doesn't make sense to the court, and so sometimes there's not the ability to reach a compromised position that everybody's okay with, and if so then there's a litigation process for that.

Speaker 1: 6:13

Pcs also work to manage information from professionals involved with the family, so, for example, therapists, doctors, teachers and then coordinate with everyone. You can sort of think as a PC, as sort of this hub in the wheel, with some of these spokes coming out, and it can be a more efficient way to gather this information from these professionals and filter it into language that the court will be able to work with and the parents maybe can understand. In the context of the co-parenting issues, it's important to make sure that everybody's on the same page. If there's therapy involved and the therapists need to talk with the teachers, and you know, putting all of those different people together can be really helpful. A great parenting coordinator meeting is one in which the parties are able to come to agreements on their own and the PC is essentially reporting and recommending that the agreements reached by the parties be made into an order of the court. That's a successful, really successful PC meeting.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Sometimes you have a mix. You know there'll be some things that the parties were able to agree on and some things that they weren't, so that can still be a successful meeting. You just have a combination of the PC using some of the authority delegated to the PC to make a decision or recommendation, as opposed to just being able to report an agreement of the parties. And then ultimately there may be some circumstances in which there are no agreements that are possible. At that point the PC is just using that delegated authority to make decisions or recommendations without any agreement, which can still be a positive result because it can give the party some feedback on what the court may say about the situation and then they can make further decisions about whether the remaining issues are worth litigating. Sometimes folks may not like the result that they get, but they understand that they've been heard. They understand that a third-party professional has indicated this is likely what the court would do, and so that can tamp down some of the conflict because at least there's some certainty about what the position might be.

Speaker 1: 8:16

So typically, parenting coordination comes into play when parents are dealing with a really high level of conflict, and high conflict situations are a challenge, not just because of the disagreements, but because they can lead to all sorts of trips to the courthouse, increase stress for the parents, emotional distress for the kids by being part of ongoing conflict. Ongoing conflict In cases where the parents just can't seem to work together and that may be because of ineffective communication or just constant disagreements over scheduling, or real disputes over decisions like school or medical care, for example, a parent coordinator is supposed to step in to try to keep things working. It's not the goal necessarily to resolve every conflict, but to try to manage the conflict in a way that minimizes harm to the kids and helps the parent's co-parent better. You can triage some of the worst situations and hopefully reduce the conflict, and there's often a situation that it takes time to get into the court. So by reducing that time to get into the court you can maybe cut some of these problems off before they grow even larger, and also the cost is often better. So you have one parenting coordinator, one professional who is being paid by both parents typically, and if they can resolve the conflict without the involvement of attorneys on both sides and stepping up litigation, it just saves everybody money as well, and the cost of litigation is itself a major stressor. So if you can have a third-party professional who understands what the court would do, who is able to resolve some of these conflicts much more quickly and much more cost-effectively than having two attorneys gearing up for litigation, then it's just better all around.

Speaker 1: 10:04

The way a parenting coordinator gets into the case is that an order is entered by the court. Now this may be a situation where the parties have agreed to having a specific parenting coordinator being appointed. It may be the case that the parties can't agree on who the parenting coordinator is, but they agree they need one. It may be the case that the parties can't agree on who the parenting coordinator is, but they agree they need one. It may be the case that only one of the parties thinks a parenting coordinator is necessary, and it may be the case that neither party wants a parenting coordinator and the court on its own appoints one. However, the parties went down that path to get to the order. It all funnels into there being an order put in place that identifies how the parenting coordinator is going to work with the family, what is authorized for decision, what is authorized for recommendation, how payment is done, how reports are done, how objections are done, all of those things and more are put into the parenting coordinator order and more are put into the parenting coordinator order.

Speaker 1: 11:04

Now two important things about a PC's work are impartiality and confidentiality. Now that doesn't mean that over time it won't become clear perhaps to the PC that one of the co-parents is actually the problem and the other one isn't. You do have those circumstances in which all of the conflict is coming from one side. Now often, once the PC has kind of figured that out, the co-parent who was actually the problem then feels like the PC is not being neutral anymore. Because they've essentially determined locus of the problem and how that problem maybe needs to be fixed will be burdensome for the parent who is causing the conflict. Oftentimes parents equate that with a loss of impartiality. But it's not no more than it's a loss of impartiality if a PC determines that parent A is correct on this issue and parent B is correct on that one. But certainly a PC must be vigilant in not violating that need for impartiality. You have to avoid conflicts of interest. You have to try to avoid dual roles being hired to do something in addition to the PC work. In that particular case PCs should not accept gifts from either parent or get involved in business activities that could create an appearance of bias.

Speaker 1: 12:38

And for confidentiality, the PC has to make clear to the parties what is private and what is not. There are some circumstances in which some communications may be properly kept private, but those are going to be exceptions. Better practice is to make sure that, as much as humanly possible, everything is transparent. Lack of transparency between the parties is going to lead to increased conflict because someone's going to feel like it's unfair. But it's important that the PC keep the family's business within the family and not go telling third parties what's happening in the situation. But ultimately the PC report is going to be filed of record in court and, depending on which state you're in and what the privacy rules are you know, in Oklahoma, for example, the PC reports are public. You can go on our OSCN, our state court's website and you can download the PC report. So that itself is going to be a limitation on confidentiality and privacy. But even in those PC reports it's going to be important to keep as much private as you can, for example medical concerns or diagnoses that someone may have. Those are the kinds of things that, even though you're filing a report, the parenting coordinator is going to keep as much of that private as humanly possible.

Speaker 1: 14:12

Now here's how the PC works with the families. Typically there's going to be some sort of intake session. There's going to be some first meeting between the parties and the PC and PCs work in different ways. Some PCs like to be copied on every single email that goes back and forth between the parties. Some PCs prefer to sort of stay back and let the parents do the work and only to step in when there's an acute problem that needs to be addressed. I personally, as a PC, don't do an initial intake session. We get receive an order. We get everybody's information when we contact with everybody. We give everybody the information about how we operate in terms of setting meetings and payment and things like that, and then we let them know that we're there and if there is a need, if there is an acute problem that has arisen, then a meeting can be set.

Speaker 1: 15:09

Now other PCs do it differently. If it's clear that there's an ongoing problem, then the PC can hold regular meetings with parents, either together or separately, and assess what needs to be done and then try to carry the parents towards a more harmonious co-parenting relationship through various interventions. It could be a parenting class, it could be co-parenting counseling, it could be individual therapy for one or both parents, it could be getting the children into therapy, for example. So each case is specific to that family, specific to that family. So the PC is going to come up with a plan to try to address the problems that PC is seeing within that particular family.

Speaker 1: 15:54

As the PC works with the family, that person is going to be going back continually to what the orders are. So what are the custody and visitation orders? What does the PC order say in terms of what the authority is and what the limitations on authority are? The PC and working with the family is really never going to be doing anything just sort of off the cuff or just because they think it's right. It always has to be grounded in some specific authority specifically granted to that PC, based on the order that enters them and the surrounding statutes. All right. So what's the benefit? Why have a parenting coordinator? Just to summarize them again, because we've kind of talked about it a bit as we went through it gives you a less expensive, structured process to get issues that are causing disharmony in the co-parenting relationship addressed sooner than would be possible otherwise if it had to go to litigation.

Speaker 1: 17:00

Ultimately, the best benefit is for your children. If you have a high conflict co-parenting situation, the kids are the ones who tend to feel it the most. It affects them the most. If it's possible to keep the parents out of just constant disputes, then a PC can help create a more stable environment for the kids. It can help minimize the stress that they're feeling, can help minimize some of the emotional overflow that they're going to be subjected to when the parents are having difficulty regulating themselves and are having difficulty tamping down the conflict before it spills over to affect the kids. The goal is for the PC to essentially work themselves out of a job Over time.

Speaker 1: 17:47

The hope is that the parents are going to have enough iterations of seeing what happens when they bring something to the PC and what the kinds of results are, have access to co-parenting, education or counseling if necessary. So eventually the parents just aren't going to need to interact with the PC as much anymore. There may still be some things that pop up here and there, but the PC's job is to try to help the parents learn sufficiently so that they don't need the PC anymore. Bottom line when it's done well, a parenting coordinator can just be a really big help to families. That can help reduce conflict, reduce expenses and increase some of the peace that can exist in the co-parenting relationship. Sometimes it's about setting boundaries that are helpful for everybody. Sometimes it's about making sure that the orders of the court are being followed. Sometimes it's about providing access to resources that the parents maybe didn't know existed. It's providing education to the parents to help them understand better how to work together with a co-parent and maybe to understand why they're reacting in the way that they are.

Speaker 1: 19:04

Ultimately, it may be the case that a PC just won't work. If a parenting coordinator has been working with a family and the family just can't get it together, no matter what the PC recommends or does or offers, the conflict just remains. Then it may be time to go back to court, and once you go back to court you will then have some extra information. The parenting coordinator reports are part of the court file. The parenting coordinator will be a witness, will be called to testify, perhaps as an expert witness Once you go to court. The history of work with the PC is something that will inform the court about what's been happening. It can actually help to decrease some of the preparation for the litigation, because more things are documented than they would have been if a PC weren't in the case. So that also can ultimately make litigation less costly and more efficient because the issues have been identified, discussed, submitted to the court in previous filings and the court will have an easier time of understanding what's going on.

Speaker 1: 20:17

In some of these situations a PC is in place in cases in which there's a history of domestic violence.

Speaker 1: 20:24

If that's the case, then it's important for the PC to be informed that there's that history of domestic violence so that it can take the appropriate steps keeping the parties physically separated. Maybe having meetings by telephone or by Zoom, for example, with parties in separate breakout rooms and a Zoom meeting can be very helpful. So that is something that should always be brought to the PC's attention, because sometimes it may turn out that the PC is not going to be able to really work effectively because of ongoing issues of coercive control that make co-parenting just untenable in some situations. But in cases where it is appropriate, where there isn't ongoing domestic violence, where the parties are able to do something to try to come together and work better, a PC can be a very helpful tool to making the co-parenting experience better for the parents and just the experience of growing up in two homes better for the kids. Thank you very much. I hope you have a great week. Talk to you next time.