Family Law, Divorce, Custody and Child Support Attorneys in Denver, Colorado

Decision Making – a Fresh Look

Decision making gets down to the fundamentals of being a parent. Your kids are probably not in a position to make important decisions for themselves. As they get older, their life experiences grow and kids can manage more and more decisions. But while they’re young, the parents take care of it.

Every family is different when it comes to decision making. In most families, the lines of decision making get drawn almost without discussion. Parents sort of reach an unspoken detente, or a neutral zone.

Imagine picking a day care. It’s natural to imagine that one parent might be in charge of gathering the information, visiting the potential schools and then reporting back to the other parent with a recommendation. Sometimes, this is a function of “who has the time”. Same with doctors or dentists.

Most of the time, the other parent might trust the recommendation of the parent-in-charge – after all, the parent-in-charge is looking out for the best interest of their child. So, decisions get reached based on informed trust.

In this scenario, there’s no need for mediation, or a parenting coordinator. Heck, there’s probably not even much discussion. Not the case in a divorce.

That’s why decision making requires a fresh look in a divorce action. Suddenly, what used to happen almost naturally, now must happen by court order.

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Parenting Plans

If the parties don’t agree, the court will allocate decision making responsibilities between the parents based upon the best interests of the child. Occasionally, a court will award one parent sole decision making responsibility over all major decisions. This occurs rarely.

In other cases, a court may divide out areas of decision making and allow one parent sole decision making authority in one area, such as schooling, religion, health care, and award the other parent sole decision making in one of the other areas. This sometimes happens but isn’t very common.

Generally, a court is hoping to order “shared” decision making. This is probably as close to the way it was before the divorce as we can get. Essentially, it’s like an order that the parents work together on the major decisions and reach consensus. Sometimes, a court might order some form of “tie breaker” but it’s clear that the primary objective of a court is to get the parents to focus on what’s best for their kids.

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Factors for the Court

A court will consider various factors, including:

• The wishes of both parents
• The child’s adjustment to home, school, and community
• The mental and physical health of all parties involved
• The interaction of the child with his or her parents and siblings
• Physical proximity to the parents
• Whether either of the parents have engaged in child neglect or child or spousal abuse.

A court will also examine evidence on how the parties can cooperate with each other to make decisions jointly and how the allocation of decision making will affect the relationship between the parent and child. Once the court has weighed all of these factors, it will determine how to allocate decision making responsibilities.

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Making Decisions for Your Kids

Making major decisions for our kids helps us share our priorities and traditions. Selecting a school based on our values, or deciding which religion in which to raise the kids is a parent’s mechanism for doing what they feel is the right thing for their kids.

Once again, where parents want to – and can – work together on these decisions, a court moves toward “shared decision making”. This means, parents have to talk about these decisions and try to come to consensus. And with two people in the middle of a divorce, this can be asking a lot.

Where parents can’t work together, for example where communication is an unreasonable expectation, a court will tend toward assigning decision making to just one parent. It could be one parent decides education questions and the other decides religious questions, for example, or, one parent may end up being the sole decision maker for all major decisions.

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