When two people have children together it is not often that they agree on every decision to be made for those children, even in intact relationships. When the parties are not together anymore, these differences often intensify. What are your rights and options in such cases?
Who gets to decide?
Your child custody order will play a key role in how decisions are made regarding your child’s medical, educational and extra-curricular activities. There are two categories of child custody that the court will assign – physical and legal. Each type of custody may be assigned to one or both parents.
Physical custody refers to where the child lives – with one or both parents. Legal custody refers to the decision-making power that each parent has in terms of important child-rearing decisions.
If you have sole legal custody of your child, you’ll be allowed to make these types of major decisions on your own. If you have joint legal custody with your co-parent, then you’ll have to work out the matter together. Even if your child stays with you most of the time, joint legal custody means you and your ex have equal decision-making power.
How to resolve disagreements
It is possible that your court order may have laid out stipulations for what will happen if you and your co-parent cannot agree on certain parenting decisions. For instance, it may require you and your co-parent to resolve the dispute through arbitration.
It’s also possible – though less likely – that your court order may have assigned certain types of decision-making power to one parent over the other. This could give sole power to one parent on healthcare decisions, educational decisions, etc.
If your court order does not give clear authority to one parent over the other regarding decisions, then you and your co-parent will want to communicate with each other and try to come to an agreement. If this is not possible to do on your own, then a judge, a parenting coordinator or third-party arbitrator could intervene to help resolve the issue for you. In such cases, it’s worth reaching out to an experienced family law attorney to understand your best options.