If you are facing a divorce or breakup that involves shared children, the matter of child custody is paramount, and while your current goal could be to seriously limit the amount of parenting time your ex receives, you may want to rethink your perspective.
When it comes to the best interests of children, experts agree that having both parents in their lives and spending considerable time with each parent supports their emotional health and well-being.
The State of Texas shares this position and is – therefore – motivated to afford both parents ample parenting time whenever there is no significant hurdle standing in their way. Turn to an experienced Round Rock child custody lawyer to help you protect your parental rights and support your children’s best interest in the child custody case you are facing.
Divorce Does Not Make You a Failure as a Parent
Many divorcing parents spend a lot of time agonizing over the effects that their divorce will have on their children and tend to beat themselves up in the process. The fact is that divorce happens, and while it obviously was not part of the plan when you married, you will need to make the best of it if you do find yourself facing divorce.
Taking Stock of the Situation
If you have children, doing right by them is a primary concern, and you would likely do anything you can to make their lives easier and minimize the emotional fallout they experience as a result of your divorce.
The fact that you are divorcing does not make you a less loving, less attentive, or less caring parent, but it does mean that you need to address how you and your ex will divide your time with them.
As a parent, it is only natural to want to spend as much time with your children as you possibly can, but you also want what is best for them. This is the one area where you and your divorcing spouse are likely to be on the same page, but you may be coming at the issue from different directions, which likely means going after as much parenting time as each of you can acquire.
What’s Best for Your Children
You and your children’s other parent likely recognize that you each want what is best for your kids. Allowing this shared goal to guide you can make it less difficult to negotiate parenting time terms that work well for all of you.
Factoring in the well-established fact that children’s best interests are best served when both parents continue to play a primary role in their lives and continue to spend a good deal of time with them can make establishing a mutually acceptable parenting time schedule that affords you each a generous number of overnights with your shared children less challenging.
If you need help creating a custody arrangement that prioritizes your child's best interests while protecting your parental rights, reach out to a trusted Round Rock child custody attorney.
Be the Best Co-Parent You Can Be
Your children have two parents, and they need you both in their lives. If you and your ex are not on speaking terms and aren’t likely to be anytime soon, you may think that the odds of the two of you becoming a solid co-parenting team is slim at best, but that doesn’t have to be the case.
You do not have to be great pals with your ex to co-parent well together. Instead, what you’ll need to do is focus on what’s best for your children, which is a goal that you are both likely to already share.
Some helpful hints when it comes to upping your co-parenting game include all the following:
Find an effective means of communicating with your ex. If phone calls and face-to-face conversations are out of the question, turn to texting or another electronic means.
Keep your focus on what’s best for your kids – without allowing any personal animosity between you and their other parent to factor in.
Stick to the parenting time schedule you have, which includes putting effort into being on time when it’s your turn to pick the kids up and to drop them off.
Help each other out when scheduling conflicts inevitably arise. Ultimately, you’re being there for your children – even if you’re not particularly invested in helping out your ex.
Make it your policy not to bad mouth – or otherwise put down – your children’s other parent in front of them. While you and your ex may not agree on much, you are both invested in supporting your children to the fullest extent possible, and this should be reflected in everything you do.
Encourage your children to contact and communicate with their other parent as much as they’d like to when they are with you and to keep pictures and other reminders of them at your place.
The better you and your ex become at co-parenting, the better prepared you’ll be to share parenting time more evenly.
Benefits to Children
Children derive a range of benefits from spending a significant amount of time with each parent.
They Tend to Perform Better in School
Divorce can throw the entire family into chaos, and children are especially vulnerable to negative consequences. If your child isn’t coping well with the stress of your divorce, an early warning sign is changes in relation to their schoolwork.
Children crave structure and consistency, and having the amount of time they spend with one parent or the other seriously curtailed can sabotage their schoolwork.
While shared custody is a switch from your children’s pre-divorce experience, it – nonetheless – allows them to spend a good deal of time with each of you, which helps set the stage for predictability in the form of a new normal.
While your focus may be on obtaining as much parenting time as possible, your children’s best interests – including their ability to focus on their schoolwork – are likely better served by a more balanced schedule. Knowing this can help take some of the sting out of spending a little less time with them.
They Don’t Feel Pressured to Choose Sides
If you and your divorcing spouse can put your differences aside on the matter of your parenting time schedule, you let your kids know that neither of you is asking them to choose sides.
Children don’t have the emotional maturity to recognize that they are not responsible for their parents’ divorce, and many feel the need to express allegiance to one side or the other as a means of establishing stability.
When children, however, divide their time more evenly between both parents, it helps to level the playing field. Even the suggestion that children need to prioritize one parent over the other can be very painful and confusing for them. Going back and forth between the two of you on a regular schedule can help to alleviate your children’s concerns about choosing sides.
They Receive What They Need from Each of You
You and your children’s other parent are not interchangeable. Instead, you each fill a unique role in their lives. When one parent has the children the vast majority of the time while the other is with them on a less regular basis, it can interfere with the benefits the children derive from each parent.
For example, your kids may turn to one of you for emotional support while looking to the other when it comes to making important decisions in their lives. On the other hand, they may rely on each of your unique perspectives to help them come to their own conclusions.
In other words, parents are more than the sum of their parts, and spending a significant amount of time with each of you helps ensure that your children get what they need from both of you.
Being Truly Present for Your Children
Taking on all the challenges and responsibilities of raising your children on your own is an overwhelming task that can wear just about anyone down relatively quickly. When you split parenting time between you, however, you’re both afforded some downtime that can translate to renewed energy and clearer focus when you’re back in the parenting spotlight.
Assess Your Unique Situation
While sharing parenting time equally or nearly equally is generally considered ideal, it’s not always the answer. For example, if you and your ex are both committed to effective co-parenting but have a challenging work schedule – such as working overnight shifts – that makes having the kids half the time out of the question, this practicality will need to be addressed.
A better plan might be for you to become the primary custodial parent while your ex receives parenting time that accommodates their work hours.
The bottom line is that you’ll need to address the unique circumstances involved in your unique case – in the context of your children’s best interests. Another option is getting creative with your parenting time plan in an effort to support you, your ex, and your children’s schedules.
Factoring in Child Support
Splitting parenting time 50/50 does not eliminate the need for child support. In Texas, parents are required to support their children financially in accordance with their ability to do so.
This means that, while a range of factors can affect the child support calculation, the primary concern is each parent’s earnings. As such, the parent who earns more typically has the child support obligation even when parenting time is shared equally.
How Child Support Is Calculated in Texas
In Texas, the amount of child support ordered is calculated as a percentage of the paying parent’s net income and is based on the number of children involved in the case. Consider the following:
For 1 child, the higher earner generally pays 20 percent of their net income.
For 2 children, the higher earner generally pays 25 percent of their net income.
For 3 children, the higher earner generally pays 30 percent of their net income.
For 4 children, the higher earner generally pays 35 percent of their net income.
For 5 children, the higher earner generally pays 40 percent of their net income.
For 6 children, the higher earner generally pays at least 40 percent of their net income.
Child Support Can’t Be Used as Leverage for More Parenting Time – and Vice-Versa
Finally, it’s important to note that child support and parenting time are both based on the best interests of the involved children, which means they can’t be used as leverage against each another. If your ex, for example, isn’t paying you the child support that you’re owed, they are ignoring a legally binding court order.
However, if you choose to withhold parenting time in response, you will also be on the wrong side of a legally binding court order.
The court’s take on this is that both of you are harming your children in separate ways. To begin, your children are not receiving the financial support to which they’re entitled. They are also, however, being deprived of spending time with one parent, which doesn’t serve their best interests.
If your children’s other parent isn’t abiding by the child custody orders that are in place, the answer is consulting with a practiced child custody lawyer as soon as you recognize that you have a problem on your hands.
Reach Out for the Skilled Legal Guidance of an Experienced Round Rock Child Custody Attorney Today
Brett Pritchard at The Law Office of Brett H. Pritchard is a compassionate Round Rock child custody lawyer who will leave no stone unturned in his focused efforts to protect your parental rights and to obtain child custody terms that work well for you and your children in your unique situation.
Your case is important, so please don’t hesitate to contact us or call us at 254-781-4222 to schedule a free consultation and learn more about what we can do to help you today.