Exercising a Wide Range of Responsibility
Parent Coordinators can become involved in decision-making regarding every aspect of a child’s life post-divorce, consistent with the framework for legal and physical custody provided in a divorce decree or separation agreement, and with each parent’s custodial rights within that framework. Parent coordination can address issues of:
- child safety;
- school selection;
- academic interventions;
- extracurricular activities;
- school trips;
- summer activities;
- medical care;
- psychotherapy;
- special needs assessments;
- a child’s access to technology;
- holiday plans;
- birthday parties; and
- interactions with relatives.
Collaboration Under Fire: A Difficult Mandate
Because of the adversarial processes inherent in high-conflict divorce, parent coordinators need a high level of professional skill and personal maturity to handle:
- continuous, unresolved conflict between the parties;
- toxic, hostile and dysfunctional communication patterns between the parents;
- inevitable displeasure by both parents with the coordinator’s decisions;
- the likely perception of both parents that the parent coordinator favors the other parent, or is in “collusion” with the child against that parent;
- displacement onto the coordinator of each party’s resentment of the other parent, and of the trauma experienced in the divorce itself;
- the parents’ frequent attempts to “split” the coordinator from the other parent, or from the child;
- attempts by either parent (or both) to mask parental psychopathology, or to exploit its presence (or the perception of it) in the other parent;
- manipulations by either parent over payment of the coordinator’s fee;
- legal posturing, and the constant risk of further litigation;
- the evolving interests of the child, and divergent interests of several children;
- alliances formed by either parent with one or more of the children, or with third parties, against the other parent; and
- involvement by lawyers for either parent to influence, manipulate or threaten the parent coordinator.