How to Avoid Letting Your Co-Parent Get Under Your Skin
Some couples divorce after years of a high-conflict relationship. Ever since their oldest child was born, they could not stand to keep it to themselves when the other spouse didn’t dress the baby warmly enough for the weather or waited too long before taking a trash bag full of stinky diapers to the trash chute. Others bottled up their anger and hurt until it reached a boiling point; perhaps one spouse did not realize until he or she saw the divorce papers how the other spouse was feeling. Once you are divorced, there is no longer a marriage to preserve, so it is easy to feel all the anger that built up over the years and even easier to unleash it on your ex. If you have children together, you must not behave in ways that cause unnecessary stress for your children or harm your children’s relationship with your ex-spouse; the family law courts will notice if you do. Having the wisdom to know which problems to resolve, either one-on-one with your ex or through the courts, and which annoyances to let go takes practice. A Mississauga child custody lawyer can help you draft a parenting plan that will help you prevent and resolve conflicts with your ex-spouse.
How to Tell Whether a Disagreement With Your Spouse Is Worth Arguing About
If you and your spouse disagreed during your marriage about whether Chipotle counts as a healthy dinner, you probably are not going to agree about it after your divorce. Likewise, if your ex was five minutes late for everything during your marriage, expect that your ex will always pick up or drop off the children five minutes later than the time indicated in the parenting plan. It is in your children’s best interest if you let these minor issues go instead of fighting with your ex every time one parent’s parenting time ends and the other one’s begins. In fact, you can tell that you are justified in voicing your objection if your ex’s behavior violates a provision of the parenting plan.
Parenting Plans Can Be an Excellent Conflict Management Tool
Parenting plans don’t specify what time children must go to bed or the age at which they may begin using the word “heck,” but they do indicate which days the children must be with which parent as well as how the children will get to that parent’s house. It isn’t worth going to court if your ex is consistently five minutes late picking up your children on Friday afternoons. It is worth going to court if the parenting plan says that it is your ex’s responsibility to pick up your children from your house in Mississauga at 6:00 p.m. on Fridays, but for four weeks in row, your ex has called you at 5:30 on Friday and said that he is too tired or busy to pick them up, so you can either drive them to his house in Markham or just keep them for the weekend.
Contact Zagazeta Garcia LLP About Resolving Co-Parenting Conflict
A family law attorney can help you formulate a conflict-proof parenting plan. Contact Zagazeta Garcia LLP in Mississauga, Ontario to discuss your case.
Source:
alisajaffeholleron.com/blog-post/disrespectful-co-parent/
