Can A Parenting Plan Separate Siblings?

Parenting plans come in all shapes and sizes.  In some families, the parenting time is shared so close to equally that neither parent has 200 overnights with the children in a given year.  Some families are able to make infant-friendly time sharing schedules, such as 2-2-3-2-2-3 schedules or rotating parenting time on a weekly basis, work for many years, even after the children have entered school.  For some families, the parents live hundreds of miles apart and cannot afford airline tickets, so transporting the children from Mom’s house to Dad’s house for the summer requires a multi-stop road trip, with multiple extended family members driving various legs of the journey, more like a relay race.  What all of these parenting plans have in common is that they are the result of mutual decisions reached by the parents during mediation, rather than orders imposed by a judge.  You can choose any parenting plan that works for you, and when it no longer works for you, you can go back to court to modify it.  If you need to modify your parenting plan because circumstances have changed, contact a Birmingham child custody lawyer.

Parents Disagree About Time Sharing for Teen With Autism After Sibling Reaches Adulthood

When an Alabama couple divorced, they decided that each parent would have 100 percent parenting time with each of their two sons, and neither parent would pay child support; meanwhile, the father paid durational alimony to the mother.  The younger son, who lived with the mother, has autism and is nonverbal.  The parenting plan successfully prevented conflict between the parents until the older son reached adulthood, at which point the younger son was 16 years old.  After that, the parents disagreed about how best to adapt to this change in circumstances.

The mother argued that the son should remain with her full-time but that the father should pay child support, since he was no longer legally obligated to support the older son.  She believed that the disruption to the child’s routine by switching to joint physical custody would be detrimental to the child, although she acknowledged that it was more difficult for her to care for him full-time as a single parent than it had been when he was younger.  The father thought that the best solution was shared physical custody, with no child support payments.  He believed that the child’s health had worsened as his mother was overwhelmed with his care; he outlined a plan to enroll the child in adaptive behavioral analysis (ABA) therapy and physical therapy during his parenting time.  Upon remanding the case to the lower court, the appeals court judge noted that, not only did the lower court need to address the parenting plan and child support issues, but that the lower court should also instruct the parents on planning for their younger son’s continued care after he reached adulthood.

Contact Peeples Law About Modifying Parenting Plans

A Birmingham family law attorney can help you and your former spouse modify your parenting plan when only one child is still living at home.  Contact Peeples Law today to schedule a consultation.

Source:

scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17760998796659433523&q=divorce+Peter&hl=en&as_sdt=4,61,62,64&as_ylo=2014&as_yhi=2024