Montgomery County Divorce Law Blog

The addresses and contact information of you and your co-parent will no doubt change over the course of raising your child. As a single parent, it's important that you have the ability to contact the other parent at any time. As such, any changes to one parent's contact information need to be given to the other parent as soon as possible.

To ensure that this takes place, the parents may want to include the following provisions in their parenting plan:

• The parents agree that if their contact information should change, such as their cellphone numbers, their email addresses or their physical addresses, they will tell the other parent and provide the new contact information within at least seven days.
• The parents agree to keep the following contact information current between them at all times: residential addresses, work addresses, mailing addresses, home phone numbers, cellphone numbers and work phone numbers.
• Both parents agree that they will not harass one another with the contact information they have. In other words, they cannot invade the peace of the other parent, nor invade the other parent's privacy. Furthermore, they cannot use the contact information to harass, annoy or disturb the other parent.

When both parents are responsible and show up for their child custody exchanges on time, without making last-minute changes and adjustments, the co-parenting relationship will run a lot smoother and be less complicated. However, not all parents will be responsible enough to adhere to the preplanned details relating to child exchanges. For this reason, parents may want to include some specific guidelines within the parenting plan. These guidelines will ensure that the other parent acts responsibly when it comes to the way child exchanges are carried out.

1. Specify who can help carry out exchanges other than the parents. Do specific grandparents, family friends or other relatives have permission to help drop off and pick up the children?
2. Who will transport the child to the exchange location and who will transport the child from the exchange location?
3. Where will exchanges occur and on what days? Will it happen at one of the parent's residences on a specific day? Will it happen at a different parent's residence on another day? Will the parents meet in the middle somewhere convenient? Will the exchange happen when one of the parents pick the child up at school?
4. Include a plan for how the parents will communicate and come to an agreement if the exchange procedure needs to change.
5. Include language that explains what will happen if one of the parents is late. Perhaps, if the parent is ten minutes late to pick up his or her child, then the visitation or exchange is deemed to be canceled and the parenting time of the other parent will be voided for that week.

Do you want to create an appropriate parenting plan for your family? Study your legal rights and options under state family law to determine the parenting plan and child custody arrangements that fit you and your family's current circumstances.

Every marriage has its problems, but the challenges can be unique when one or both spouses are in the military. Unfortunately, as you may have experienced, domestic violence can also be an issue in military marriages. Members of the armed forces are under a great deal of stress, with deployments and frequent moves further straining a marriage. This does not mean you or other Tennessee residents should put up with abuse in your marriage, however.

Statistics show that domestic violence among military couples is increasing throughout the United States. How does military life complicate abuse, you may wonder? The following factors can clarify:

• Military spouses often have access to weapons in their homes or bases, including firearms.
• Members of the armed forces know how to handle a weapon, as well as how to utilize their combat training to cause harm to a victim and avoid harm to themselves.
• Combat situations can cause or exacerbate emotional and mental trauma, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, and may contribute to domestic violence in the home.

State family law courts are beginning to support the idea of joint 50/50 child custody more and more. In these arrangements, children divide their time living with each parent half of the time. Many children adapt well to these arrangements and enjoy spending as much time as they can with both parents, but other children may have difficulty with this kind of schedule.

From a purely logistical perspective, for example, a child with special needs may require one home base. For example, a child with a severe disability may need to have special equipment at home to ensure his or her health and well-being. Perhaps the parent needs to modify the home so it's accessible to the child. While two homes could be modified, health insurance is not likely to pay for such additional modifications.