Traditionally in divorce cases one parent would obtain custody and the other parent would have visitation with regard to the children. Today, visitation is no longer the modern term referred to when discussing time a parent sends with his or her child. The modern term is called parenting time. In a divorce, each parent gets to have parenting time with their children. In divorce cases where both parents seek to spend quality time with their children, and play a significant role in the lives of their children, the best way to accomplish this goal is to the parents to amicably enter into a parenting plan.
Parents are Not a Visiting Relative
The concept of visitation is an old concept. Parenting involves much more than seeing your children. It involves helping raise the children, teaching them morals, social values, promoting their education and helping them grow into reasonable healthy well adjusted adults. Children could benefit from the wonderful experience of having two loving parents help raise them. The children should benefit from this experience even though their parents have gotten divorced. It should be pointed out that parents divorce each other, they don’t divorce their children!
In situations where one parent seeks to prevent the other parent from maintaining their relationship with the children or alienates the children from the other parent, he or she is damaging the children. This is inappropriate and only hurts the children. The children should be entitled to a life experience which involves learning and developing a relationship with both of their parents.
Working Out Parenting Plans
Parents in divorces should do everything in their power to cooperate with each other to help the children have healthy loving relationships with both parents. The best way to accomplish this is to have each parent work with their respective attorneys to work out a parenting plan that fits into the children’s schedules and maximizes the time each parent can have with the children.
