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Parenting Plans: The Foundation of Co-Parenting After Divorce
In this episode of How to Split a Toaster, Seth Nelson and Pete Wright dive deep into the crucial topic of parenting plans as part of their season-long series, Your Divorce Case. Seth shares his expertise on the essential components of a parenting plan and how they can help establish a solid foundation for co-parenting after divorce.
Navigating the Complexities of Parenting Plans
Seth and Pete discuss the key aspects of parenting plans, including parental responsibility, time-sharing, and addressing the unique needs of children at different ages. They explore how the court determines the best interests of the child using various factors and delve into the implications of relocation cases. The hosts also touch on the importance of flexibility and adaptability in parenting plans while maintaining clear and enforceable guidelines.
Seth and Pete discuss the key aspects of parenting plans, including parental responsibility, time-sharing, and addressing the unique needs of children at different ages. They explore how the court determines the best interests of the child using various factors and delve into the implications of relocation cases. The hosts also touch on the importance of flexibility and adaptability in parenting plans while maintaining clear and enforceable guidelines.
Questions we answer in this episode:
- What are the essential components of a parenting plan?
- How do courts determine the best interests of the child?
- What happens when one parent needs to relocate for work?
Key Takeaways:
- Parenting plans should be clear, unambiguous, and enforceable
- Flexibility and adaptability are crucial for successful co-parenting
- Substantial changes in circumstances can warrant modifications to the parenting plan
This episode offers invaluable insights for anyone navigating the complexities of divorce with children. Seth's expertise and Pete's thoughtful questions provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of parenting plans and how they can help establish a strong foundation for co-parenting after divorce. By tuning in, you'll gain the knowledge and tools needed to create a parenting plan that prioritizes your children's well-being and fosters a healthy co-parenting relationship.
Links & Notes
- Schedule a consult with Seth
- Got a question you want to ask on the show? Click here!
- (00:00) - Welcome to How to Split a Toaster
- (00:26) - PEACE: Parenting Plan
- (01:25) - Essential Components
- (04:14) - Legal Terms
- (06:06) - Determining What’s Best for the Child
- (09:43) - Weight for the Factors
- (11:08) - Geography
- (14:08) - How Detailed?
- (16:49) - Allowing for Flexibility
- (18:55) - Modifying It
- (21:36) - Enforceability
- (24:34) - Education, Healthcare, Extracurriculars, Etc.
- (27:30) - Changes in FL Law
- (29:18) - It’s About the Child, Not You
- (31:19) - Wrap Up
Creators & Guests
Host
Host
What is How to Split a Toaster: A Divorce Podcast About Saving Your Relationships?
Seth Nelson is a Tampa based family lawyer known for devising creative solutions to difficult problems. In How to Split a Toaster, Nelson and co-host Pete Wright take on the challenge of divorce with a central objective — saving your most important relationships with your family, your former spouse, and yourself.
Pete Wright:
Welcome to How to Split a Toaster: A Divorce Podcast about saving your relationships from TruStory FM. Today, your kids are going in the toaster.
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show everybody. I'm Seth Nelson. As always, I'm here with my good friend, Pete Wright. Today we're talking to you, parents. If you're divorcing with kids, the first thing your legal team is going to do is walk you through the importance of a parenting plan. It's the P in our P.E.A.C.E. Process in sorting through all the predictable conflicts around co-parenting can be a foundational experience. I mean foundational, Pete. Here's what I mean. It should be smooth in the divorce process, but it's usually not. And we're going to talk through some of those issues today.
Pete Wright:
Okay. We have talked about the peace process before and I wonder just not going into any of the detail, just tell us what does P.E.A.C.E. stand for you so we can give ourselves some context?
Seth Nelson:
Parenting plan, equitable distribution, that's division of assets and debts, alimony, child support and everything else. But we're starting with P, parenting today.
Pete Wright:
All right, so the parenting plan. Give us a lay of the land. What are the essential components of a Florida parenting plan?
Seth Nelson:
Thank you for that. Check your local-
Pete Wright:
Check your local jurisdictions. I get-
Seth Nelson:
Very good.
Pete Wright:
... very excited, I get to do that.
Seth Nelson:
Ring your bell.
Pete Wright:
And why are these components crucial to the great state of Florida?
Seth Nelson:
Okay, we're talking about Florida here, but please, please, like we're saying, check with your local jurisdiction because I believe the concepts we're talking about here are throughout the United States, but they might be termed a little differently. They might be dealt with it a little differently, so please do that. But the first one is parental responsibility. That means how are decisions made for the children or the child? The second one is time-sharing. That is where does that child spend their time? Where do they spend their day? Where do they put their sweet little heads on the pillow at night and wake up the next day during the school year, during holidays, on school breaks, summer breaks?
And then the third one is all the other thing that goes along with raising kids because, Pete, we're a couple old guys here now. We know that a 2-year-old is different than a 12-year-old, different than a 16-year-old. And so we got to build some of that in that you can't build in a parenting plan for every what if. So let me translate what I just said into what people usually say when they call me. Is this a custody dispute? So in Florida, we don't have custody disputes because under the law the word custody isn't there. It is a parenting plan, it's time-sharing, it is parental responsibility, and it's all the other stuff.
Pete Wright:
But Seth, everything I've learned about child custody disputes has the word custody in it because all I know is from movies. What is Florida doing?
Seth Nelson:
Sometimes we can be a little behind the curve, but think of this, when you say, "Custody," when you hear me say, "Time-sharing," I'm okay if you're thinking custody. Where is this child, under what parent is their current custody under? But the old terms used to be custody and visitation. So one parent had custody and the other one had visitation. You don't visit your kids, you raise your kids. It's just a matter of when you have them. People will say, "Well, can I have sole custody?" Well, when they say that, I get a little confused because decision-making there can be shared, ultimate or sole. That is different than can I have time-sharing 100% of the time, which would be sole time-sharing. So I work with my clients to use the legal terms because that way I know we're communicating.
Pete Wright:
Okay, so walk me through the differences between those things. What are the implications of somebody who comes to you and says, "I want 100% time-sharing," but I mean is there such a thing as 50% decision-making in those cases? That seems weird.
Seth Nelson:
So it's not a percentage, but I get the concept. So if someone comes to me and say, "Seth, I want sole custody," I'm going to say, "One, there's no custody in Florida. It's time-sharing. And are you telling me that you want your child 100% of the time never to see the other parent." And if they say, "Yes," my next question is, is the other parent in jail? Is the other parent been convicted of sexually assaulting the child? It's got to be something really, really bad. And even sometimes if things are bad, their court might order therapy or order supervised time-sharing. So very rarely, and I've only done this once that I can recall in all these years, over 17 years of working in this area of the law, and it was by agreement where a parent had 100% time-sharing with one kid, and the other parent had like 99% time-sharing with the other kid.
Pete Wright:
Wait a minute, wait a minute. So they split their kids?
Seth Nelson:
They did. They did.
Pete Wright:
Seth, there's got to be a Lifetime movie made out of that situation.
Seth Nelson:
There could be, and I'm not going to go into the details of it, but it was a very contentious divorce. There was a lot of reasons why these parents decided to do this, and I want to say, "That it was amicable," but it ultimately, as these things do work out for the best.
Pete Wright:
Well, that was my next question because we hear this all the time. What is in the best interests of the child or children, right? And a situation like that is a perfect segue into that question. How do you arrive? And by extension, how does the court determine what is in the best interests of the child?
Seth Nelson:
In Florida, the court has 20 different factors that they look at in determining a parenting plan. We've talked about them on the show before, but just to highlight some of them, is the child of sufficient age and maturity to state a preference to the court? So someone will say to me all the time, "At what age can my kid decide what they do?" I say, "18,", right, when they're no longer a kid. But I've had judges say, "This kid is 16 and a half years old. I am not talking to this kid. I don't care. We're not bringing this kid in the courtroom." I've had other judges say, "This kid is 16 and a half." Everybody says, "Straight A student, doing well, has a plan for after high school. Very mature. Yeah, I'll talk to him." Kid comes in, gives the preference, judge says, "Not doing it." Okay, so kids aren't decision makers.
Now they can ultimately become "A decision maker" by their actions. By I'm not going to moms, I'm not going to dads, you can't get me into the car, right? And some judges are like, "They're 16 and a half, what do you want me to do, man?" I'm like, "Come on. Okay." So that's one of the factors. Another factor is the geographical viability of the plan. Now if we live 10, 20 minutes apart, that's not going to be an issue. If you live an hour and a half apart, that's now going to be a problem because now how early does a child have to get up to go to school?
Another one might be, has there been any domestic violence in the house? Has anybody lied about domestic violence? What is the parent? Another one is what if a parent, their traditional roles prior to litigation? I was a stay-at-home mom. I was raising him all the time. If I'm representing dad, due to no fault of his own, judge, they divide this stuff up. No, he didn't go to the doctor's appointment because he was working late to provide financial.
Pete Wright:
But he did coach little league on the weekends.
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Pete Wright:
They split. Okay.
Seth Nelson:
That's right. What are the parents going to do and, are they going to have to delegate any parental time to third parties after the litigation is over?
Pete Wright:
Give me an example.
Seth Nelson:
I'm an airline pilot, and I say, "I want 50/50, week on, week off." The reason that I want 50/50 for my two-year-old is because I can arrange my schedule where I can fly for a week and be home for a week. Well, is it best to have a two-year-old have a schedule week on week off, or am I just creating this schedule because it's best for me to be able to see my kid for a week and go work for a week? Because studies show that's best for two-year-olds to do more of a two days with mom, overnights with dad and then the weekends because it's frequency of contact. A week is a long time in a two-year-old's life.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right?
Seth Nelson:
Right? So there's that. There is what is the home, school and community kind of record of the child. This kid's been in this private school for seven years and now you're saying, "We're going to pull them out," because you move to a different school district and it's too far, but the other parents still lives close to the private school, and they have the finances thankfully to pay for it. So you kind of look at those issues. So there's a lot of things, but what the court doesn't do, Pete, is have any instructions from the appellate court telling them how much weight to give to each of these factors.
Pete Wright:
That's in the judge's discretion?
Seth Nelson:
100%, so take the scales of justice. And remember back in chemistry class and weights and measures like, oh, I'm the one that does all the homework with the child. Little weight on your side, scales of justice are in your favor, right? And you keep loading it up with all these different things I talk about. And then it's way down. It's as far as the scale can go, but then it's all in your favor. But then the court determines you committed domestic violence in front of the child and puts a massive weight on the other side. So out of 20 factors, you've lost or you won on 19 of them.
Pete Wright:
But that last one-
Seth Nelson:
But you lost on one, and the judge can decide what weight to put on that. Now the judge might say, "Yeah, it happened. It was a isolated incident. There was a push and a shove. There wasn't a choking or striking with a weapon. So it's not as severe, so I'm not going to wait it as much." Entirely up to the court.
Pete Wright:
Okay. I want to throw in just a little bit of a geographic curveball because you're talking about the third party element. Let's say the airline pilot says, "You know what, I just got word that I need to relocate to a new city, to my hub city. So I'm moving from Florida to Denver." Can you just talk through the sort of machinations in court of figuring out what a parenting plan looks like in that case?
Seth Nelson:
That's simple. It's a great question and the reason it's so simple is obviously it's never in the best interest of a child to move to Denver.
Pete Wright:
Right. I agreed way too fast as a guy-
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, you did.
Pete Wright:
... from Colorado. Yes, Colorado is an amazing place. Please-
Seth Nelson:
It is.
Pete Wright:
... move there because this is not sponsored by the tourism board.
Seth Nelson:
Okay, we're going to get hate mail from Denver now. Okay. And you said the magic word actually, Pete, is you said, "Has to relocate because of his job." And that is now a relocation case and it's in the statute, it's 61.13001. You can look that up, and it has about eight or 10 different factors that you look at. And one of them is by way of example, is what's the reason for the move? Do you have a job offer.
Pete Wright:
Mark.
Seth Nelson:
Or it's required by my job to keep my job? What is the employability options for the non-relocating parent? So if the non-relocating parent by way of example, drives a truck for Amazon, they have that job in Tampa, and they have that job in Denver, right? So that's an example.
Pete Wright:
So this relocation case could explicitly resolve by encouraging the non-relocating partner to become a relocating partner?
Seth Nelson:
Well, if they decide to settle on that, the answer is yes. A court cannot require a parent to move. The court only has power over that child on where the child's going to spend their time. But ultimately what happens is you have a long distance parenting plan. If one is in one state, one is the other. What I mean by that is the kid is going to be with one parent more than the other because that's where they're going to school. And school is roughly 10 months out of the year, right? We have breaks in there. So maybe the pilot gets every spring break and the pilot gets the majority of summer. Does the pilot get almost all the summer? Maybe the non-relocating parent only has the last week of summer to kind of get the child ready for school again. What do we do about Christmas break and winter break and Thanksgiving and long weekends, right? And what do we do about the cost? I know we're talking about parenting plan, but the cost of travel.
Pete Wright:
Got to be rolled in there somehow.
Seth Nelson:
In Florida that can be rolled into the child support guidelines. So that's how that breaks out.
Pete Wright:
That gets to my next question, just how detailed should the parenting plan, and I'll say time-sharing, cost sharing schedules be?
Seth Nelson:
This is a problem. And that is an excellent question. The best thing that you can do with your parenting plan is get it down on paper, agree to it, sign it, and have the court approve it, and then put it away and never look at it again because there are millions of people raising children together that do not have written, signed parenting plans. They're called married couples.
Pete Wright:
Right? I've never done a parenting plan with my wife.
Seth Nelson:
Right, right. Now, the reason why I say, "You put it away," I'm not saying, "That you don't abide by it," but you have to be flexible. You have to adapt. You have to be like, "You know what? By way of example, a hurricane is coming," that we've just had a series of them in Florida and it's the day that the schools just closed. The schools usually close a day or two before hurricanes. And the reason for that is because one for safety and two, some of the schools become hurricane shelters, so they need 24 hours to prep before. And then 24 hours to get people in there before the hurricane comes. So school is closed and governmental agencies are starting to close down. This is not the time to argue that it's my overnight, I want to take the child, right? It's, hey, what are you doing for the hurricane? It's my time. The first thing is everybody's safety. I'm okay if you're going to the shelter or if you're going to evacuate, what's your plan? I just won't make up time after the storm has passed and let's make sure everybody's safe, right?
So don't be such a stickler, right? But the same thing can be, I no longer, by way of example, a client calls me and says, "I hate my former in-laws and they're coming into town. I think they're bad for my kid, but my former spouse is asking me for the kids because grandpa and grandma are in town." I'm like, look, you don't have to say, "Yes," but you're going to want to favor in the future. Say, "Yes," it's two overnights. Ask for your make-up time and if you get to the point where you can just do this back and forth without make-up time, it's great, but be careful. And the reason you got to be careful on this is because you don't want to start giving up time, giving up time, giving up time, and then come back and say, "You never use your time and I want to change the plan." They can use it against you.
Pete Wright:
Okay, how do you end up protecting your time and address potential future conflicts in this way? How do you write that into the plan?
Seth Nelson:
Well, what you do is you say, "Parents will be flexible, and that they appreciate this is a 50/50 time-sharing." And then you can draft something to the point that they appreciate that from one month to the next, or one year to the next one parent may have more or less time because they've decided to be flexible and that shall not be used against them as a reason to change the plan.
Pete Wright:
Oh, well that sounds fairly easy.
Seth Nelson:
It does. However, I'm going to go way back to your question, how long should this be? That gets drafted because a lawyer has had that issue before, and now it's like I had this issue in a case five years ago. I put it in every one of my plans, and I advise my clients that I need this because we need to protect them and keep this flexible. And they're just-
Pete Wright:
You're saying that in I'm mocking a stereotypical attorney voice.
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Pete Wright:
But what I'm hearing is actually it sounds like kind of a good idea.
Seth Nelson:
Except here's the problem. Then the other attorney goes, "All right, Seth, well I had this other issue in this case."
Pete Wright:
Oh, so you're stacking.
Seth Nelson:
And then you're stacking and now a parenting plan that maybe could be five pages is 25 pages because we're dealing with all the what ifs.
Pete Wright:
That both attorneys have experienced over their careers of dealing with parenting plans.
Seth Nelson:
That's right. Oh, now we're up to 50 pages.
Pete Wright:
Okay, sounds great. So the older attorneys have the 100 page parenting plans.
Seth Nelson:
That's right. But part of that is because they're not double-spaced. They're actually single spaced and they're written with-
Pete Wright:
Quill pens.
Seth Nelson:
... Ink and quill pen. I couldn't think of a word. I was like, "Feather," and feather was the wrong word. So you want to have one that is enforceable, clear, unambiguous. It doesn't have to have flower language that just is not enforceable. You want it to be this is what you're supposed to do.
Pete Wright:
Okay, following question, you said, "We're going to create a parenting plan that includes flexible language, that we can both be adaptable and flexible, and we're not going to use it against each other. And then because we're so flexible and adaptable, we're going to put it away because we're great and we're flexible and adaptable." And yet there is a method for modifying the parenting plan, right? What's going to trigger an official modification to two flexible and adaptable co-parents?
Seth Nelson:
If they're flexible and adaptable, you shouldn't be back in court because they're working together. But if there's a problem, you can always go back to court and tell the judge, "Judge, there's been a substantial change in circumstances." That's a term of art, not of science. "And therefore we need to reopen the parenting plan and figure out what's best for the kids now." There is a host of things that under the law are not substantial. Change in parenting plans. The child getting older. You don't get to say, "Judge, it's a substantial change." He was two, now he's 12. That is obviously a substantial change. In the other part to this term of art is that is material, right? And originally it said in the case law in the statute, that was unanticipated. So that unanticipated language is now gone, but you still don't get to do just because they got older. Parents bickering, we can't get along. They never agree, everything's a problem. Nope. Figure it out.
Someone moves out of state. That's a substantial change in circumstances. New partner comes into the scene and now there's problems. I'm being prevented from communicating with my kids directly. I'm being prevented from talking to my co-parent because the new partner is trying to control everything, right? All the sudden the kid is missing school or being late and tardy numerous, numerous times with the other co-parent. What's going on over there? Like, hey, at the time of the divorce, my co-parent suffered from addiction issues but was got them clean during the divorce process and was clean for four years and now is back on the addiction and-
Pete Wright:
Substantial.
Seth Nelson:
Right. So there's ways to do this, but it's a higher burden. It's a higher bar to get over to reopen the plan.
Pete Wright:
Okay. You have dropped the word enforceable a number of times in our conversation so far. How do Florida courts handle situations where one parent isn't following the parenting plan?
Seth Nelson:
So let's start with nothing happens fast. If someone's not abided by the parenting plan, you can reopen the case by filing a motion and saying, "I'm supposed to have them every Sunday night at 7:00 and dad continually does not give me the children. And he keeps them an overnight and drops them off at school on Monday." And you can go to court and say, "Judge, this has happened three"... I mean you can do it for one time, but it happens three times, four times, five times. "I'm asking for a motion for contempt," which some legalese here and I'll cut it short but, "They knew there was an order. They could comply with the order. They willfully did not comply with the order. They're in contempt of court and therefore I want you to fine them. I want you to have them pay my attorney's fees and kept them four overnights. I want my make-up time-sharing."
Pete Wright:
Okay, you've now asked the question, can I have all this? It's a motion. We've covered motions twice in our year divorce series. We are wanting the judge to motion the signature on our order. Six months?
Seth Nelson:
I would hope that motion could be done within three.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
Hopeful.
Pete Wright:
All right.
Seth Nelson:
But it's hard to get trial time. And remember we talked about temporary relief, and we said, "Well, why would you go to a temporary relief hearing when you have it a week before the trial?" And I said, "Well, you never know if the trial will get continued." And I jokingly said, "Because there's a hurricane that could come through." I literally have a case that was supposed to go to trial when the hurricane came through, got continued, certainly the right thing to do. No fault of anyone's, we cannot get another trial date for probably six months. And we were ready to go. The other side was ready to go, the judge was ready to go. But the court system is overburdened, understaffed, not enough judges.
Pete Wright:
And the court system doesn't just move everybody out. The court system just reschedules yours, but the first one they can do that was already scheduled the Monday after the hurricane, that's the case that gets hurt.
Seth Nelson:
That's right. We have to get a new date. You're right. They don't sit there because they can't just shift everybody back a week because you've cleared dates, and if they shift back a week, you got to get the other judges to shift back a week and oh, well judge, I can't do it that week because it's my son's graduation.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it wasn't the week before.
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Pete Wright:
Got it.
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
Pete, you're asking really good questions.
Pete Wright:
I'm very thoughtful about this stuff.
Seth Nelson:
I know that. I know.
Pete Wright:
I don't know what you want from me, man. I'm very curious. Okay, so we're getting toward the end here, right? And I feel like there are some, I don't know, it's in the P.E.A.C.E. plan, it's everything else. It's the E, but I feel like there's some parenting everything else. So I'm curious how you handle things like education. We've talked a little bit about schooling so far, but what about healthcare and extracurricular activities? Let's wrap that up in a nice bow to make it easy for folks, right?
Seth Nelson:
Okay, so I'm going to break these out a little bit. This is really great. We're going to do education and healthcare and then we're going to do extracurriculars. So education and healthcare are major decisions. So those would fall back into when we talked about parental responsibility and decision-making. Generally speaking, in Florida if the parent, the overarching theme in all of Florida is what is in the best interest of the child. But when it comes to decision-making, you really can't say, "Well, this parent makes better decisions than that parent on education because I think this school is better than that school," but they were both really good schools. To get the sole decision-making or the ultimate decision-making, you have to show that the other parent's decision is detrimental to the child.
Pete Wright:
That seems hard. That seems hard to do.
Seth Nelson:
In education, but not necessarily. Parent keeps moving and changing school districts. That's detrimental.
Pete Wright:
Detrimental, okay, I get it.
Seth Nelson:
Prescription from the doctor, doesn't give the medicine.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
Right. So there's certainly things that can happen here, okay. But if you have shared parental responsibility and you're having a debate about what to do, it's hard to come to that decision, and you can go to court. And then ultimately the judge will either say to you, "Okay, am I allowed to make this one decision," or do I just try to say, "This parent can make this decision." But look, if this is time sensitive, it's hard getting into court. That's different than extracurriculars. Extracurriculars aren't deemed to be a major decision. And a lot of plans will say, "Seth, you can sign your kid up for any extracurricular that you want during your time-sharing, but you can't make the other parent pay for it. And you can't make the other parent take the child on their time-sharing.
Pete Wright:
This is why we end up with kids who are potentially on two different soccer leagues.
Seth Nelson:
Right. And then they get sat on the bench for the games because they didn't show up to practice. No fault of their own, but their parents couldn't agree, right? So think about the kid, and I get it. Sometimes going to practice is hard, and you're an Uber driver and how long does it take to get there? But be creative in these solutions so your kids can get the experience of extracurriculars, no matter what they may be.
Pete Wright:
We have in the past done special episodes when something changes in Florida law. We did the alimony change late last year. Is there anything happening right now in parenting law in Florida that you have your eye on? It's pretty stable?
Seth Nelson:
The big change that just came is now there was a presumption of 50/50 time-sharing. Now when I say it's a big change, I think people view it as a big change. In my view, I don't think it's much of a change. And what I mean by that is the starting point now is there's a presumption of equal time-sharing, 50/50. And you can overcome that presumption by going through those factors and having the judge find by a preponderance of the evidence that it's in the best interest of the child not to have 50/50. Preponderance of the evidence, is the lowest evidentiary weight that we have in the law. The next one-
Pete Wright:
It sounds bigger than that. It sounds like a big deal. Again, movie law.
Seth Nelson:
Right, movie law. But it's not as big as beyond a reasonable doubt.
Pete Wright:
Oh, you're right. You're right. That is bigger. Oh, this is illuminating.
Seth Nelson:
Right, exactly. Okay.
Pete Wright:
There's another one in between there. But the point is I don't think it's that big of a change in the law, and I'm going to unfortunately probably have to have some cases that go in my client's favor or against my client and then get appealed and go to the appellate court and say, "Judges tell the trial judges this was not that big of a change," and explain why. But that's going to take years to kind of flesh out. But other than that, no, there's no big changes coming.
Pete Wright:
Okay, so it's November. It's a whole month in my head of just giving thanks, right? I want you to be sitting at a table with me right now and all of your clients, new clients to the firm, and you're going to raise a glass and offer them a toast based on your wisdom of having been doing this for a long time. What do you tell them, these new parents who are new to divorce, and they're struggling to agree on a parenting plan, what do you tell them to get started on the right foot?
Seth Nelson:
This whole plan is about your kid, not about you. It's about what you can do to make your child have the best opportunity to become their best self. And the litigation process is going to tear down the co-parent relationship. So you got to weigh the risk of that versus just getting the plan that you can implement. And what I found after all these years, it doesn't matter what the plan is and here's why. You can have the perfectly written plan and if the parents can't implement it's worthless.
You can have no plan at all or a horrible written plan, and if they put in the drawer and they raise their kid and they're doing a great job, perfect. It's not about the plan, it's about the implementation of the plan. Because I read plans all the time and there's all these ambiguities, but they just can't figure it out because they're trying to go by this plan that's just horribly drafted. I'm like, "You guys are just hitting your head against the wall here." Or here's one that's very well drafted, very clear on what's supposed to happen, but you can't get out of each other's way. And you're making it harder, or someone's trying to be flexible and then you use it against them. So it's about the implementation.
Pete Wright:
It's about the people.
Seth Nelson:
Yep.
Pete Wright:
There you go. That's great, Seth, thank you.
Seth Nelson:
I basically just said what I do for a living doesn't matter.
Pete Wright:
Put me in a drawer, I'm worthless.
Seth Nelson:
And I'm thankful for that during this November holiday season.
Pete Wright:
That's the spirit of gratitude that I look for in every conversation that I have with you, Seth. I'm glad we took the time to go into this level of detail on the parenting plan. Is there anything you feel like we've missed as we've tackled this one? It's okay if you say, "No," you don't have to fish for-
Seth Nelson:
No, no, I wasn't, it was kind of like we did the parental responsibility. We really talked about the time-sharing. You asked really great questions, and how that all gets translated. Everything else, I would just say, "Let's talk about how are we going to pay for extracurriculars? Let's talk about we're going to do," and these are sometimes what ifs, but what are we going to do on, do we have a right of first refusal if I'm gone for the weekend because I'm working all weekend because I'm prepping for a trial. I'm supposed to have my kid. Okay, go to moms, right? So there's intricacies like how are we going to communicate? Is it going to be by phone, by text, by OurFamilyWizard. Is it going to be through talking parents potentially. Or what we're going to do is how are we going to communicate with kids? Is it every night? What's the routine? So you just work those things out. So, yeah, I wasn't fishing.
Pete Wright:
That was good. That was really good. Thank you everybody for hanging out and hanging in with this our Walk through Your Divorce Case. This is Your Divorce Case series. We're having a lot of fun doing it. Hope it's illuminating to you. Don't forget, you can send questions over to howtosplitatoaster.com. You can send yourself over to howtosplitatoaster.com. Click the button that says, "Ask a question," and then you can type your question in. That's how questions work, and we'll get them answered on an upcoming show.
In the meantime, thank you everybody for downloading and listening. We appreciate your time and your attention. On behalf of Seth Nelson, America's favorite divorce attorney, and I am Pete Wright, and we'll see you next time right back here on How to Split a Toaster: a Divorce Podcast About Saving Your Relationships.
Outro:
How to Split A Toaster is part of the TruStory FM podcast Network, produced by Andy Nelson. Music by T. Bless and the Professionals and DB Studios. Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce and Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce and Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.