You have a parenting plan in place because you have a custody agreement establishing how you and the other parent are going to exercise custody and time-sharing and you don't want to violate it. My name is attorney Anthony Spratley I'm the owner and founder of Genus Law Group here in Albuquerque New Mexico where we practice divorce, family, and custody law throughout the state of New Mexico. Now let’s say you have an agreement with the other parent on how you're going to parent your children. Let’s say you have two children and you have a 50/50 time-sharing agreement with the other parent. Everything is great and all of a sudden something happens and things fall off the rails, “what's going on” you might ask yourself. How do I prevent my parenting plan to fall off the rails? There are some key things that you need to remember when it comes to custody agreements to make sure they don't fall apart.

  1. Be an effective co-parent- Take a co-parenting class if you feel like you need to learn effective communication with the other parent on raising your child. If you decide to do this, make sure you and the other parent are going to the same class so the information stays consistent and you will be on a united front. 

  2. Be reasonable- the parenting plan doesn’t have to be so rigid, it can be temporarily modified if something comes up like a wedding, a vacation, etc. If the other parent asks to have the child on some days that are actually your days, listen to the reasoning, and be able to adjust. If you are able to adjust the relationship between the two co-parents can become easier. Leave room for flexibility outside of the agreement. 

  3. Too flexible parenting plan- This can be negative to being too reasonable. If you let the other parent take advantage of your adjustability, you may not get the time you want with your child, or you will get too much time. If you were granted 50/50 time sharing but have modified your plan so that you only have the child 1 day and the other parent has them for 6, then stuff like child support calculation obligation and needs to be adjusted to reflect the new agreement. 

This video covers the modification of a parenting plan,  the communication successfully between parents when establishing a parenting plan, and not being too flexible that it changes your status quo and causes problems with your support obligations. If you need more information about your custody plan and whether or not it needs to be changed or modified, you can find out more information in the library section of our website or listen to our Protect Your Success podcast on Apple podcast. You can also call us today for a consultation at 505.317.4455. 

 
Anthony Spratley
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Experienced Divorce, Child Custody, and Guardianship Lawyer Serving Albuquerque and Beyond