Advice to New Non-Custodial Parents

When someone tells me they are getting a divorce and the other parent will be getting physical custody of the child(ren), there is one piece of advice I always give them. It is : Make your parenting plan EXACTLY what you want no matter how wonderful your relationship with the other parent is right now, no matter how idealistic your views of co-parenting may be… plan for the worst.

My ex and I split quite peacefully. There was some pain and hurt – but we were friends. We wanted our son to always have both parents. We wanted to cooperate and co-parent even though we were separated. We had a verbal agreement and even went so far as to take it to an attorney to make it official (we thought “WOW… that’s a stretch… make it legal?! We don’t need to do all that, do we?”).

Then his mother and then, girlfriend got involved. Oddly, the attorney disappeared along with the written agreement. Suddenly, he simply was not going to give me my son, as we had agreed. He filed for divorce again, this time claiming abandonment. That was, of course, overturned and we went through the legal process and got a parenting plan in place. I fought tooth and nail to get stuff into the parenting plan that we had previously agreed upon. Things he had ASSURED me he thought were in the best interest of our son only months before.

Later, once everything was… (More)