If you and your minor child’s other parent are no longer attached romantically – due to a decision to divorce or a non-marital split – you can work together to keep child custody challenges low-stress.
You may be thinking that actively working with your child’s other parent to keep child custody challenges low-stress is a fantasy. If there is truly no way that your child’s other parent will engage with you to keep your situation low-stress, the best course of action is to speak with an experienced attorney about how to resolve your child custody situation efficiently and effectively. This resolution, in and of itself, may be the only way to achieve greater peace.
If, however, your child’s other parent is willing to make some compromises and to work with you to keep your situation from escalating, there are ways that you can proactively help to ensure that your situation doesn’t become an all-out hot mess.
Keeping the Best Interests of Your Child in Mind
As an experienced family lawyer – can confirm, every family law judge in the country is required to resolve all child custody disputes according to the “best interests of the child” standard. Essentially, this means that if you and your child’s other parent can’t work out your custody-related differences on your own, a judge is not going to be interested in a case resolution scenario that works well for you or your child’s other parent. They are going to be primarily concerned about what scenario will best meet your child’s best interests.
As a result, if you and your child’s other parent can work with this standard – your child’s best interests – in mind when negotiating a resolution to your differences, your discussions will begin on firm ground. You’ll be less likely to fight about past injustices and to be motivated by hurt feelings. When you look forward to what will serve your child’s best interests from now on, it will be easier to remain focused and to get on the same page. This isn’t to say that you will both agree on what your child’s best interests are at all times. But, keeping this standard at the forefront of your communications will help you to remain grounded.
Remembering Your Secondary End-Goal
If your primary goal is serving your child’s best interests, your secondary main goal may be to keep your child custody challenges low-stress. If so, ask yourself whether any influences that are contributing to tension in your co-parenting relationship are serving this goal. Does it feel good to criticize your other child’s parent for the ways in which they have fallen short? Maybe, yeah. But will that criticism serve your primary and secondary goals? If not, you may advance your own priorities more effectively by biting your tongue in a specific scenario. Remembering that you want to keep your situation low-stress can help you to act in ways that will accomplish this goal.