Individuals in Missouri may decide to divorce their spouses if these spouses were abusive toward them during the marriage, but if they share children, they cannot completely avoid interacting with them. This is where the idea of parallel parenting comes in. Unlike co-parenting, this type of approach is designed to minimize contact between parents to safeguard abused parents from abusing parents.
How parallel parenting works
Traditional co-parenting post-divorce may not be feasible if one parent has historically undermined the other parent’s ability to assume his or her parental abilities via withholding information. Likewise, if one person devalues the other parent to their children, this may make co-parenting impossible.
In this situation, it may behoove two divorcing parents to come up with a parallel parenting plan instead of a co-parenting one. With this type of plan, the two parents may agree to communicate in writing so that they always have a record of what has been decided. In this way, an abusive parent will be less likely to distort the other person’s words. In addition, the two parties may agree to use a digital scheduling tool so that both of them can have access to information about appointments and events pertaining to their children.
The value of having savvy legal support
Navigating divorce can no doubt be stressful, especially when abuse was a problem in the marriage. However, an experienced Missouri family law attorney can help a divorcing individual to create a parenting plan that reflects his or her client’s wishes and protects the client’s rights. Even more importantly, one’s attorney will also make sure that the best interests of the children are upheld during the divorce proceeding.
