When parents get divorced, child custody is one of the most contentious issues. Parenting plans may be established only after many hours of negotiation and several painful compromises. Still, these parenting plans can be quite successful, until something unprecedented occurs. This is the situation that divorced parents across Champaign County are dealing with this year. With cases of COVID-19 on …
As you can imagine, this issue has been arising in child custody cases around the country. I have received this question from several clients, like yourself, who are concerned about court ordered parenting time agreements. While there is no clear law on it since this is an unprecedented global health crisis, I will inform you of the relevant laws in …
This is always a hot topic in divorce, but in particular with farm and ranch families. I worked on Fact Sheets for family law issues affecting agriculture for the National Agriculture Law Center. You can read my Fact Sheet on children issues including “custody and visitation” here.
In this electronic age, parents can craft an agreement allowing the parent to have meaningful communication with the child(ren) using electronic methods (i.e., Parenting 2.0!) including: • Telephone (e.g., to the other parent’s phone or the child’s phone) • Video-conferencing (e.g., FaceTime, Skype) • Text messaging (e.g., WhatsApp, Viber) • Social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat) • Electronic mail …
School Breaks Schools in New York typically have four (4) school breaks: Thanksgiving/Fall Break, Christmas/Winter Break, President’s Day/Mid-Winter Break, and Easter/Spring Break. When drafting a parenting plan, parents should be cognizant on what was agreed to with the holiday schedule. Here is an example schedule (for illustrative purposes): School Break Time Even Years Odd Years Mid-Winter Recess (President’s Day Week) …
Information Sharing Most parenting plans include a provision requiring the parents to share information about the child(ren) with such information as: medical records psychological records law enforcement records school report cards school progress reports school event calendar (e.g., school play, parent-teacher conferences) extra-curricular activities calendar (e.g., baseball game schedule or dance recitals). Some parents decide to keep a shared calendar …
As my readers know, not only am I a food and agriculture lawyer but I also have a family and matrimonial law practice. I wanted to point out a helpful organization here in New York City for you folks who may be going through a separation or divorce: FamilyKind. It offers separate classes for adults, children and teens to better …
This weekend I completed New York child custody and visitation mediation training in Queens at Community Mediation Services, Inc. It was a complementary training to my divorce mediation training this winter with the New York Peace Institute. I am continually impressed by the quality of the education at our Community Dispute Resolution Centers (“CDRC”) in the state of New York. …