What is Parenting Coordination?
Parenting Coordination is a child centered process intended for high conflict coparents whose children are at risk for for harm due to exposure to parental conflict, poor parental communication and chronic difficulty in making decisions regarding their children. Parenting Coordination (PC) is a relatively new form of alternative dispute resolution. The Parenting Coordinator is a court-appointed, child-centered professional tasked to assist conflicted coparents to resolve differences and clarify ambiguities within the scope of the parenting plan.
The PC will typically assist coparents through three steps toward resolution of any given child-centered issue:
- Education
- Mediation
- Arbitration (as necessary)
Parenting Coordination is an agenda-driven court-involved process. Read more about agendas in PC work here. The decisions reached in the PC process are binding on the participants unless and until the court rules otherwise. In this regard, the PC process can help coparents resolve issues more quickly and at less expense and with less stress than by returning to court.
Candidates for Parenting Coordination:
- Parents with unmanaged emotional responses to each other;
- Chronic Power struggles regarding decision-making;
- Legal disputes that have worsened over time;
- Resistance to shared parenting practices;
- Visitation resistance and refusal;
- Children who are caught in the middle and are suffering.
Parenting Coordination is recommended for coparents with moderate to severe conflict. This service can be utilized pre or post divorce. In most cases, parenting coordination will require an order from the court order (by consent or stipulation) to initiate services.