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Parenting coordinators

strugglingSM's picture

Submitted by strugglingSM on Thu, 09/28/2017 - 5:26pm

Forums: 
General Discussion

I saw someone mention a parenting coordinator on another forum post and I'm curious - how many people have parenting coordinators?

If you have one, were they court ordered?

How much do they cost?

I feel like BM in our case would never go for one, but I feel like a parenting coordinator would hold everyone accountable and remove some of the personal attacks from the process, so I'm interested in learning more about them.

motherof_2plus1's picture

Submitted by motherof_2plus1 on Thu, 09/28/2017 - 5:54pm

What exactly would a parenting coordinator do?

Does this eliminate any communication between parents? any and all info is to go through to coordinator?

If so i need this in my life !!

ldvilen's picture

Submitted by ldvilen on Fri, 09/29/2017 - 6:33am

Here is a definition and links to info. on the topic. Hopefully, this will help, although I have to admit, this is a new term for me too. Sounds like it may be state=specific. "Parenting coordinator (PC) is a relatively new practice used in some US states to manage ongoing issues in high-conflict child custody and visitation cases by professional psychologist or a lawyer assigned by the Court."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting_coordinator
http://www.afccnet.org/Portals/0/AFCCGuidelinesforParentingcoordinationn...
http://pcanh.org/PCANH_FAQs_1-20-09.pdf
https://www.rosen.com/childcustody/carticles/parenting-coordinators/
https://ujs.sd.gov/Second_Circuit/Service_Providers/parentcoordinators.aspx
http://dormanmediation.com/co-parenting-services/parenting-time-expeditor
http://www.womansdivorce.com/parenting-coordinator.html

Hope this helps! Seems like you'd want to check with your state first to see if they offer it and if so, how to get in or how much, or if may have to be court-mandated? Not sure.

WalkOnBy's picture

Submitted by WalkOnBy on Fri, 09/29/2017 - 7:55am

Asshat and I used a parenting coordinator for about four years when we first got divorced. He was court ordered and he was great!

When we couldn't agree on something, we would each submit our proposal and supporting statements/evidence/arguments to him and he would look them over. We would then meet with him and he would see if he could facilitate an agreement between us.

If he couldn't, then he would make a decision that would be binding. If it resulted in the need to amend the parenting time order (the only thing he was authorized to work on was issues that arose related to parenting time/parenting issues) then he would draft it, we would sign it and submit it to the judge for her to sign.

I loved having a neutral third party to help us work out issues that we simply couldn't handle ourselves for whatever reason.

He was a licensed therapist, and we paid his usual fee, which I think was about $150 an hour. Usually we split the cost, but if one of us was being an ass just to be an ass, and lost the debate, we had to pay the entire fee.