What should your Joint Stipulation of Custody consider and include?

When getting divorced with children, parents need to come up with a parenting plan. In some cases, aspects of this plan are given to them by a judge. In other cases, they can work together to define the plan. While every instance is different, it is important to know the general areas that the plan should address so that you can consider each one carefully.

With that in mind, here are six major things the plan should do:

1. Detail the location where the child will live, whether that is one home or splitting time between both parents’ homes.
2. Specify what the visitation schedule is going to look like if the child will only live in one home and have visitation with their other parent.
3. State who gets to make the major choices and decisions for the child, like where they will go to school.
4. Address what the parents will do for major events like vacations, birthdays, holidays and other times when it’s common for both parents to want time with their child.
5. Describe what type of contact the child will have with extended family members and friends.
6. Note how, should there be disputes the in the future, the parents will work to solve those disputes.

Now, there are clearly a lot of details to be addressed within these major categories, so this is not all that parents need to include. However, this is a good place to start, and many of the details will begin to fall into place with this as a starting ground.

If you are a parent who is going through a divorce, make sure you know exactly what steps to take.