When you share children with your ex-spouse after a divorce, you need to come up with some strategies for how you’re going to continue to take care of them and how you should make decisions that will affect their welfare, such as where they go to school and what medical procedures they’ll receive. There are a few ways that you can implement parallel parenting strategies in ways that will be beneficial to your child. But you should know about them when you’re figuring out what to do when both parents are awarded custody by an Oklahoma judge.
Co-parenting versus parallel parenting
Ideally, the court wants parents who have divorced but still share a child to make decisions for the well-being of their child together. But there are some former couples who can no longer agree on anything. In cases like these, parallel parenting is often the better option. Co-parenting is when the divorced parents make decisions together, discussing what’s best for their child. In parallel parenting, each parent makes decisions on what will be best for their child when they have the child.
When parallel parenting doesn’t apply
There are times when both parents are given both legal and physical custody, but there are other times when both parents have physical custody but only one parent has legal custody. The parent who has legal custody is the one who is solely responsible for making major decisions about medical care and education.
If you’re ever in the situation where you need to be able to parent your child with your ex-spouse, you should be aware that there are plenty of options. Parallel parenting might be the best one if both of you have legal custody but are unable to make decisions about your child together.