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Thanksgiving Timesharing Tips

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By The Law Offices of Ronald H. Kauffman of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Timesharing/Visitation on Monday, November 21, 2016.

E-Online is reporting about Brand & Angelina’s Thanksgiving timesharing/visitation issues. With the holiday a few days away, now is the time to resolve timesharing problems so you can enjoy your turkey with minimum stress for you and your children.

I’ve written about problems and solutions to holiday timesharing/visitation issues before. Here are some good suggestions to make your Thanksgiving visitation battles a little easier:

Alternate. Some families alternate Thanksgiving every other year. If you get the kids for Thanksgiving this year, next year will be the other parent’s turn. Having a regular plan to fall back on can eliminate the potential for what is fair.

Be flexible. An easy Thanksgiving schedule for everyone may require some changes from the normal visitation schedule.

Be respectful. You may not want to be friends anymore, but you need to figure out how to communicate with your ex without all the emotional baggage.

Don’t mix issues. Do not bring up unrelated issues which could make a problem free Thanksgiving dinner impossible. Set aside your differences until after the holiday season.

Pick your battles. Thanksgiving may be more important to you than Easter is to your ex spouse. Don’t fight just for the sake of fighting.

Protect the children. Your children’s memories of Thanksgiving should be about great food and family fun. They should not be forced to witness you and another parent arguing.

Plan. Start talking about the holiday visitation schedule sooner rather than later, the longer you wait the harder it can be.

Thanksgiving can be stressful. But the weather has cooled, kids are on vacation, and work may have slowed too. Try to make it the best time of year.

The E-Online article is here.

Denying Visitation: Is Jailing Kids the Answer?

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By The Law Offices of Ronald H. Kauffman of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Timesharing/Visitation on Sunday, November 15, 2015.

Three children, estranged from their father, refused a court order to timeshare with him. The judge sent them to juvenile detention for the summer. Did it work?

As the Detroit Free Press reports, the judge was abrupt:

You both are going to live in Children’s Village. Your mother is not allowed to visit, no one on your mom’s side is allowed to visit. Only your father and therapist . . .

When you are ready to have lunch with your dad, to have dinner with your dad, to be normal human beings, I will review this when your dad tells me you are ready. Otherwise, you are living in Children’s Village til you graduate from high school.

That’s the order of the court.

Good bye.

The children had refused to speak to their father, they did not show up for planned visitations, would bow their heads and refuse to look at him during supervised visits. Their mother failed to bring them for visitation.

Judge Gorcyca, who blamed the mother for poisoning the children’s attitude toward their father, ordered the children be sent to juvenile detention for defying her court orders – while in court – that they go to lunch with their father.

I’ve written before about parental alienation. Parental alienation involves one parent “programming” a child to denigrate the other parent to undermine and interfere with the child’s relationship with the targeted parent.

In the Detroit case, the children – ranging in age from 9 to 15 – were held in contempt of court for disobeying the judge’s order to “have a healthy relationship with your father.”

These are not unsophisticated parents. The father is an internationally prominent traffic safety researcher and GM engineer. The mother is a pediatric eye doctor, glaucoma researcher, and an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Michigan.

In sentencing the children to jail for refusing to follow her orders to have a relationship with their father, the court took severe action.

But did it work?

According to Detroit area newspapers, the three children went to juvenile detention, and a court-ordered, five day intensive therapy treatment designed to treat parental alienation. They are now residing with their father, his second wife, and their young half-brother.

The Father is asking the judge to prohibit the children’s mother from contacting them, or appearing at their schools, for the next 90 days, part of the protocol in reuniting children with an estranged parent.

The Detroit Free Press article is here.

Speaking about Equal Timesharing Presumptions this Friday

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On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Timesharing/Visitation on Monday, February 3, 2014.

I will be speaking Friday, February 7, 2014, at the Florida Chapter of the AFCC Miami Regional Training held at the Lawson E. Thomas Family Courthouse. The subject is: “Equal Time-sharing: Is It Presumptively Best?” The AFCC is an organization of judges, lawyers, mental health professionals, and other experts who are improving the lives of children and families. The training is open to anyone interested in this important, interesting and timely topic.

Child custody, now known in Florida as time-sharing, can be an extremely painful part of any divorce or separation. Fathers think courts always side with Mothers. Conversely, Mothers worry Fathers only want to increase timesharing to lower their child support obligations. When parents can’t agree, the court has to decide.

What are the presumptions judges must rely on in creating a parenting plan and time-sharing schedule? Have you ever wondered what judges, lawyers, parenting plan evaluators, guardians ad litem and other related professionals thought of equal timesharing? If so, then this is an event for you.

Florida used to have a judicially created presumption against rotating custody. Then last year, legislators working on the alimony bill added a last-minute provision requiring courts to order equal timesharing. The alimony bill was ultimately vetoed by Governor Scott at the last minute. However, there are rumors that it may surface during this upcoming legislative session.

I hope to see lawyers, judges, clients, anyone interested in this topic, and readers of this blog there.

A Presumption of Equal Timesharing?

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On behalf of Ronald H. Kauffman, P.A. posted in Timesharing/Visitation on Friday, September 14, 2012.

Increasingly, clients are demanding shared custody and 50-50 child custody, meaning they want to divide the time with their children and other parent equally and have equal decision making rights. I’m also hearing calls for legislation to make joint custody and equal time sharing mandatory. The British government recently announced it is seeking to amend Section 1 of the Children Act 1989 to introduce a legal presumption of ‘shared parenting’.

When parents get along reasonably well, and live close by, an equal timesharing schedule may be in the children’s best interests. It can: foster Florida’s policy of frequent contact with parents after divorce, reduce custody litigation, spare thousands of children from being dragged into a battle between their parents, and discourage custody cases which have more to do with how much child support gets paid than timesharing.

Equal timesharing can be done in different ways: Week on/week off, 5-5-2-2 (in which a parent has the child for two weeknights then the child goes to the other parent for two weeknights, then the child goes back to the first parent for the three day weekend and the first two assigned weeknights which equals five nights.) and more. I can’t list all of the schedules possible, but an equal timesharing schedule is only limited by the parties’ willingness to be creative.

The rub of course, is creating a timesharing schedule which maximizes parent/child time, and minimizes transition troubles. While a 50/50 timesharing schedule may be desired, geographic distance, school hours, extra-curricular activities, and work schedules make equal timesharing impractical. In those cases, a more traditional timesharing schedule may be desired, and any shortfall in a parent’s timesharing can be made up during long school breaks, like Christmas and summer.

In order for an equal timesharing schedule to succeed though, the parents have to be flexible, and put the interests of the children first. This is easier said than done. Inevitably, school and extra-curricular activities – or a parent’s work commitment – are going to require the timesharing schedule to be adjusted. If parents are inflexible and unwilling to cooperate with each other, 50% timesharing can have a 0% chance.