Family law: Dissolution of marriages: Parenting Coordinator

Parenting coordinator (PC) is a relatively new practice used in some US states to manage ongoing issues in high-conflict child custody and visitation cases by professional psychologist or a lawyer assigned by the Court. There are 10 states as of May 2011 that have passed legislation regarding parenting coordinators: Colorado (since 2005), Idaho (2002), Louisiana (2007), New Hampshire (2009), North Carolina (2005), Oklahoma (2001), Oregon (2002), Texas (2005), and Florida (2009). Legislation has been pending in Massachusetts for many years without significant progress.

In September 2014, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court addressed the issue of whether the trial judge had the power to appoint a parenting coordinator without consent of both parties and to give the parenting coordinator binding authority to decide all matters brought before her. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the trial judge lacked the power to appoint the parenting coordinator without consent of both parties, and that the broad authority given to the parenting coordinator by the trial judge constituted "an unlawful delegation of judicial authority." Consequently, the Supreme Judicial Court vacated the appointment order.

Concepts.

The Parenting Coordinators are usually of two types: licensed professionals in a mental health or pastoral field of counseling, or attorneys who are in good standing with their state's Bar Association. The parenting coordinator usually meets with both parties regularly, receives day-to-day questions and complaints about any aspect of a party's conduct, and makes recommendations to the parties. These recommendations effectively become obligatory for parents to follow because the Parental Coordinator can later testify in court about the non-compliance. PC have extremely wide range of issues they can decide on parents' relations with their children, including but not limited to:

In most of the states, there is a law required that court-ordered parenting plans must set forth the minimum amount of parenting time and access (i.e. supervised/unsupervised) a non-custodial parent is entitled to have. According to laws of many states and AFCC guidelines, the Parenting Coordinator cannot change the court order, only the minor changes or clarification of parenting time/access schedules or conditions including vacation, holidays, and temporary variation from the existing parenting plan is allowed.

A PC can limit where parents can and cannot go during his/her daily routine with the child, and what activities are allowed.

PCs can prevent parents from discussing certain topics with their children in their conversations.

PCs can take complaints from either party about almost any subject of the other party's conduct during the past visit and make decisions the parties must abide by. For example, PCs can decide what sports kids will attend, what friends they can visit, what religious services to attend, what food parents can feed them and more.

A PC can make decisions in cases when the parties do not agree on child non-urgent medical care.

A PCs can decide when, where, and how the non-custodial parent's family and friends are allowed to see the children.

A PC can report suspected child abuse to Child Protective Services;

and many other issues that can be considered in the children's best interests.

If either party does not agree with the PC recommendations, then he/she can file a motion with the court to make a decision on the disputed issue. Either party can also ask the court to appoint a new PC to the case but has to provide sufficient evidence to convince the court that valid reasons exist.