What If We Want to Change Our Parenting Plan Later?
Aging is inevitable, and with aging comes changes in each person’s life. The plan that worked when the children were eight no longer fits into their teenage lifestyle and activities. When one parent remarries, their responsibilities increase and their time diminishes. Changes in jobs and careers impact available time for the children and impact location and time for exchanges.
These things will happen in your life as you get older, and a good Parenting Plan will provide a method and necessary flexibility to make changes to your agreement. Some Parenting Plans will even forecast specific changes and provide the exact way for you to handle them.
If you can agree upon changes to your Parenting Plan, you should definitely let your attorney know. In order to avoid confusion about what was agreed upon and to enforce those terms down the road, you should create a new written agreement that states the changes you have made. Both parents should sign the agreement, along with their attorneys, if any), and file the agreement with the court. This prevents either parent from later claiming there was no agreement or claiming the other parent is interfering with parenting time.
If you and your co-parent can’t agree to changing your Parenting Plan between yourselves, you can consider scheduling a mediation session for that purpose. If successful, you would create and file the written agreement in the same manner explained above.
If you are unsuccessful with mediation, your next step is filing a Petition to modify the Parenting Plan. You are now seeking an order from the Judge. This is a more burdensome method to change your Parenting Plan because the Petition requires you to prove a “substantial change of circumstances” that was unanticipated at the time of the Final Judgment.
“Substantial” means it must be of a permanent or near-permanent nature; “unanticipated” means the situation was not or could not have been anticipated by the parties or the court at the time the original Parenting Plan was ordered.
In determining whether to modify your Parenting Plan, the Judge also has to decide what is in “the best interest of the child.”
The Judge will not modify your Parenting Plan without holding a hearing and allowing both of you the opportunity to present your evidence and arguments supporting your requests. These standards of “substantial change”, “unanticipated”, and “best interest of the child” can be ambiguous; therefore, it provides the Judge a lot of discretion when deciding an appropriate Parenting Plan.
If you are the parent seeking to modify a Parenting Plan, you will need to convince the Judge the modified Parenting Plan you are proposing is in the best interest of your child and the previous Parenting Plan no longer serves the child’s best interest.
An attorney can help you evaluate your situation and advise you about your likelihood of success. If your attorney believes you have a strong argument with your Petition, your attorney can help you locate evidence and witnesses to support your request and present your case to the Judge.
These things will happen in your life as you get older, and a good Parenting Plan will provide a method and necessary flexibility to make changes to your agreement. Some Parenting Plans will even forecast specific changes and provide the exact way for you to handle them.
If you can agree upon changes to your Parenting Plan, you should definitely let your attorney know. In order to avoid confusion about what was agreed upon and to enforce those terms down the road, you should create a new written agreement that states the changes you have made. Both parents should sign the agreement, along with their attorneys, if any), and file the agreement with the court. This prevents either parent from later claiming there was no agreement or claiming the other parent is interfering with parenting time.
If you and your co-parent can’t agree to changing your Parenting Plan between yourselves, you can consider scheduling a mediation session for that purpose. If successful, you would create and file the written agreement in the same manner explained above.
If you are unsuccessful with mediation, your next step is filing a Petition to modify the Parenting Plan. You are now seeking an order from the Judge. This is a more burdensome method to change your Parenting Plan because the Petition requires you to prove a “substantial change of circumstances” that was unanticipated at the time of the Final Judgment.
“Substantial” means it must be of a permanent or near-permanent nature; “unanticipated” means the situation was not or could not have been anticipated by the parties or the court at the time the original Parenting Plan was ordered.
In determining whether to modify your Parenting Plan, the Judge also has to decide what is in “the best interest of the child.”
The Judge will not modify your Parenting Plan without holding a hearing and allowing both of you the opportunity to present your evidence and arguments supporting your requests. These standards of “substantial change”, “unanticipated”, and “best interest of the child” can be ambiguous; therefore, it provides the Judge a lot of discretion when deciding an appropriate Parenting Plan.
If you are the parent seeking to modify a Parenting Plan, you will need to convince the Judge the modified Parenting Plan you are proposing is in the best interest of your child and the previous Parenting Plan no longer serves the child’s best interest.
An attorney can help you evaluate your situation and advise you about your likelihood of success. If your attorney believes you have a strong argument with your Petition, your attorney can help you locate evidence and witnesses to support your request and present your case to the Judge.