The Akiona Law Podcast: Parenting Plan Series with Meg Gluckman Part 2

In this episode of the Akiona Law Podcast, Ululani "Lani" Akiona continues part 2 of a 4 part series on parenting plans with Meg Gluckman, divorce and co-parenting coach and host of "Welcome to the Other Side" podcast. In this second episode, Lani and Meg break down decision making, they discuss the fundamental difference between joint decision-making and sole decision-making and how it applies to two of the most significant decision making area: education and health care.

Update 8/19/2025: Since the recording of that podcast, Washington courts have released a new parenting plan form.

Specifically, the section we referred to as "Section 14. Other" in the podcast is now designated as “Section 10. Other” in the court’s new parenting plan form.

Transcript

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Two and one. Hi, welcome to another episode of the Akiona Law podcast. I am Ululani Akiona, and in this podcast, we talk about anything and everything that intersects in the world of family law and divorce.

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And today we are continuing our multi-part series with divorce coaching, co-parenting coach extraordinaire, Meg Gluckman.

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Welcome, Meg, back to the show.

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Hi, Lani. Good to be here. Love chatting with you.

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Me too. And for those of you who didn't listen to our first episode of this multi-part recording about parenting plans Meg is a divorce and co-parenting coach. She's host of Welcome to the Other Side podcast.

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She specializes in supporting parents, whether they have toddlers, tweens. Or 30-somethings to navigate challenging life transitions with grace and resilience. And in the first podcast We talked about creating a residential schedule and a parenting plan and a holiday schedule so

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Go back and listen to that one. And today we're going to talk about decision making.

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Big stuff. Decision-making.

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Yeah, it is fixed up. Yeah, it is big stuff. It's one of the required areas in the parenting plan.

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The state, the court wants you to make a decision about at least two key decision-making areas, but you can include many more, whether it's going to be a joint decision or a sole decision. And so we want to talk about those required decisions, but then also what are a lot of optional

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Categories of decisions that you might include in your parenting plan.

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Right. And just to kind of define some things, joint decision making means that if something comes up in a parenting plan and the two major areas Meg is talking about for decision making has to do with school education decisions and healthcare, non-emergency health care. So for example.

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When we talk about joint or sole decision making when it comes to school, the parents have to make that decision jointly, if that's what the parenting plan says and sole decision making essentially means that One parent gets to make the decision about school.

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These are such big topics, though. Yeah.

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Yeah. And that's a that's a really good point is that the parenting plan doesn't lay out how you're going to make any decisions, right? The actual nuts and bolts of the decision. It's just saying.

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Right.

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Who is going to make those decisions, right? Most of the folks that I work with are going through an amicable divorce process. So they're either working out the divorce between themselves, you know, over coffee at the coffee shop. They're using a mediator to help them work through the divorce.

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Or they're using a collaborative divorce process, which we've talked about.

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In a previous episode as well. And so most of the folks that I work with will tend to just put down joint for both non-emergency medical decisions and education decisions.

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But I know, Lonnie, that you've worked with some folks and know the context where that's not always appropriate.

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Do you want to explain a little bit about that?

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Yeah. And what, and you know what that has to do is in a decision making section of a parenting plan restrictions can be imposed on one parent's decision making where so let's say, for example, dad has an alcohol or drug problem.

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And that's a basis why restrictions could be placed on dad's decision-making ability where maybe mom would have so decision making until dad gets some sort of treatment and help for any shows for an extended period of time that he is able to maintain his sobriety, his recovery.

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And that's real and that's that happens more as you were saying, maybe more in terms of the litigated contested cases unless I haven't come across this yet where parents are doing a collaborative divorce were alcohol, substance abuse is a problem.

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And so the parents work together to craft this parenting plan taking into consideration the other parents struggle with maybe alcohol abuse, which I frankly think is just a beautiful process to go through with collaborative divorce It shows a real type of caring

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And concern to kind of hold that struggling parent with addiction Because addiction is a disease.

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But I'm digressing.

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Well, but I love that. Thank you for pointing that out. Again, we're just speaking to the creativity that can come in.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Right.

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In a collaborative divorce process. It might be helpful just to elaborate for folks a little bit on what might fall under the categories of education and non-emergency medical decisions right so for education that might be choosing schools um you know uh getting getting on an IEP or some sort of support plan

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At schools. For non-medical decisions, we're talking about things like Not regular, like well child appointments, you know, per se But things like counseling You know, going through a diagnostic process to see someone has ADHD or something like that.

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And sometimes Allergies. Oh, that's a good one.

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Allergies, right? Allergy testing Yeah.

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Yeah, yeah, right? Never including here, of course, emergency medical decisions, right? So the idea being that whoever the child is with, if there is an emergency.

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We're just trusting that parent to do what's appropriate. We're not going to pause and wait for a decision-making process.

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You know, kid falls down on the playground, breaks his arm like you're going to take him to the emergency room and get a cast and that's appropriate.

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Is there anything you want to add there? Yeah.

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You know what's okay? Yeah, you know, I was going to add in, I was going to add in a really good example of a non-emergency medical decision making is vaccination.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. Right. So again, what it might say if it's called out specifically, and we'll get into Those are kind of can get into more optional decision making too is it might say that vaccinations are going to be decided jointly

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By the parents, right? Again, we're not going to specify necessarily in this section what will be decided.

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But just that both parents might have the responsibility of making the decisions.

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And here's something too that I want to mention about the educational decision. A lot of times private schools come up And that is something that has to be a joint decision because of the cost.

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Mm-hmm.

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Right.

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That incurs with private school. And the court is not about to force a child or what I'm trying to say is that A parent isn't going to necessarily The court isn't going to necessarily force a parent to pay for private school education

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Just because one parent thinks it's going to be in the child's best interest.

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Right.

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That is something that has to be a joint decision. And if a parent who wants a child to go to private school strongly feels strongly feels that this has to happen. You know, I've been in situations where that parent says, I will pay for it 100% then.

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Yeah. Mm-hmm.

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So that's another example. Is there anything you kind of want to expound about in terms of school education or do we want to

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Yeah.

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I think that kind of covers it, right? I want to talk a little bit about What are some of the other optional decision-making areas that you can include but don't have to?

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Include in the decision-making section.

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And that's where people come to you, right?

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Yeah, and I want to say that sometimes, and I all often I will always recommend that folks talk with their attorney about whether what they want to include is actually enforceable.

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Oh, good point.

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Right. It's court enforceable but There are things that we want to decide that can just be an agreement.

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Especially folks that are working amicably together, right? That can just be an agreement Between… both parents and and so sometimes what I have folks do is they They have things that they're going to include in their parenting plan.

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To just like make sure it's in the legal document and if it ever needed to be enforced, it could be enforced.

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But then they also make a co-parenting agreement That's more of like, these are our intentions These are things that are important to us.

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Okay.

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So we can kind of talk about what might go in In each one. But coming back to the kind of decisions that that might be in the parenting plan, right?

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And again, we're just going to talk about who makes the decision. So we're not going to specify in the parenting plan what the end decision is, but just who makes it, right? So for instance.

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Extracurricular activities. That's like a really big one right Who's going to decide?

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You know, how many sports the kids play each each season or whether, you know.

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Whatever those extracurriculars are, right? That's one that a lot of folks like to work out and make sure it's a joint decision.

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I see lots of folks want to put in something about driving.

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Driving. Mm-hmm.

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So, right, when will When will the kid take driver's ed?

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You know, what are the thoughts around you know getting a license and so forth Also around cell phones.

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I know. I was next to my head. Cell phones is huge.

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Lots of things about cell phones, right? Not only what kind, you know, is it a smartphone or is it just a flip flow phone Is there social media on it? You know, social media is now coming up more and more.

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Great.

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As we learn some of the negative impacts on social media on social media teens and tweens.

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Daycare comes up. So daycare is definitely something that is talked about or childcare can be talked about in the child support order which There's a whole nother document that we're not even getting into here today. But this might also be an area in the parenting plan where you're making decisions

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About how you'll decide on how childcare or daycare.

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Yeah, and summer camps falls under that too Big one. Such a big one.

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Yeah.

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Summer camps. Woo! So big. Or just like that summer childcare in general, right? Like, how are we going to decide that I've seen ones about passports. I've seen ones about international travel.

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Oh, wow. Yeah.

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Oh, wow. Yeah.

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Good one.

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How are we going to make decisions around that? Firearms classes you know hunter hunter safety kind of classes, those kind of things So again, it's really just kind of putting out there In the parenting plan, how are we going to make these? Who's going to make these decisions? In the work that I do with folks, we actually dive deeper into

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Okay, so what is the decision? What is the process that you want to go through? Let's take summer camps.

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Okay.

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For instance, right? What is the process that we're actually going to decide on summer camps you know Who's going to decide who's, you know, when in the year do we decide working through all of those like nitty gritty details

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Of figuring it out. Those nitty gritty details are not going to show up in the parenting plan.

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Right. That's going to show up in the co-parenting agreement.

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Especially. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And especially too, if you're dealing with, you know.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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A six-year-old and you're and you're thinking about how we're going to decide about summer camp versus Knowing in five years and they're 11 and they want to do something totally different or, you know, what, so you're going to need a dynamic process.

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That allows you to adjust to the changes in your family as your kids age go through different stages.

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Yes.

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You know what I like about, I like this. I like about this in the sense of the discussion that we're having is that in terms of the parenting plan right it's almost like broad strokes Because you can't get into the nitty gritty with a parenting plan because the court doesn't want you to be entering like a 40 page parenting plan.

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No. Right.

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It's just too much. So you do the broad strokes And then the parties are working with you to hammer out those nitty gritty finer details to put in a co-parenting agreement.

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Yeah, the court doesn't want you to come back in and say.

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What's a good one to… to do.

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Oh, yeah.

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Oh, people want to put in screen time. Right. And I'm like, no, we're not putting screen time into the parenting plan because they, you know, if you say, oh, I don't want my five-year-old to have more than 20 minutes of screen time a day and time

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You know, my ex is giving them an hour of screen time a day. A court doesn't want you to come in and say.

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Of course that.

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You know in force They're like, no, no, right? So that's where like, okay.

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Let's come out. Mm-hmm.

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All right, let me jump in really quickly. And that's because the court doesn't want to be micromanaging parents.

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Hmm.

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That's why they don't do it. Same thing as like That's almost like putting your parenting plan, right? My child has to eat two servings of broccoli every single day.

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Yeah. Yeah.

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Now I want to go into court and enforce that part of the parenting plan because that other parent just feeds my kid pizza.

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Yes. Right.

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And chips and cookies.

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Yes. Yeah. And so the court looks at those things as as their day-to-day as their day-to-day kind of minor trivial decisions, right? These are little decisions that each parent gets to make.

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Right. They really do. They really do.

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Gets to make in their household.

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The kind of boundary for it is those decisions don't necessarily have a long-term impact on the kid.

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They don't have a long-term impact on the other parent's relationship with the kid.

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All right.

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Right. And they're not incurring any cost to the other parent.

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Oh.

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So when you brought up like extracurriculars or summer camps or Or sorry, you brought up private school as the example, right? That a court doesn't want to say.

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Yeah.

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Okay, parent A wants private school, parent B doesn't, but we're going to make parent b pay for it.

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Similarly, like. You can make all these minor day-to-day decisions as your own parent, as long as there's no cost you know that you're incurring For the other parent without their parent agreement to it.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Or in terms of the, like, I have, in terms of like the um extracurricular activities.

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Yeah.

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There also has to be that consideration where you can't have a child so busy in extracurricular activities that is interfering with the other parent's time And two, that it's interfering with the child's ability to do homework.

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So that consideration.

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Yeah, yeah. Extracurriculars are a really big conversation topic with me and my clients.

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Oh, okay. Yeah.

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Yeah, yeah, because we have to work it out, especially if there's different values, right? Parents have different values about what's important.

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Uh-huh.

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And being able to get to a place where you can come to an agreement.

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Okay.

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Right. And sometimes What's necessary too is necessary to Coming to an agreement for now.

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For the age and the stage that our kids are at, what is our agreement?

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Hmm.

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Right.

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Oh, right.

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Yeah. Right.

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Versus trying to come to an agreement for forever. Right. And so… Sometimes folks use this this description of having a co-parenting business meeting They'll have a have a regular, maybe it's a quarterly, maybe it's just an annual co-parenting business meeting where they come together and they make

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These kind of decisions like, okay, what are we thinking for the next year of extracurricular activities? What are we thinking?

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Right.

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Right.

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For summer camp. Going forward, right? What's coming up for you? What are your, you know, oh, like you're thinking.

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Mm-hmm.

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You want to do this big adventure during the summer and how is that going to impact signing up for summer camps when they open and so forth so That can be a really useful.

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Tool is to actually build in the structure of like Okay, we're going to decide a year at a time.

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On these on these issues. Yeah.

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Yeah. You know, I like that too, especially too with extracurricular activities. I mean, it's such a big issue. I mean, like, I have have two boys and One of them, you know, soccer was a thing. The other one, he didn't

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You know, I was with younger kids, right? You put them into so many different sports until hopefully they find one that they like. And with my youngest, it was baseball.

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Yeah. Mm-hmm.

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Yeah.

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Then it was soccer. Then it was tennis. So I can definitely see the importance and the value of having annual co-parent business-like meetings to be, okay, well, Johnny did so awkward last year. I think Johnny wants to continue playing soccer or

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Mm-hmm.

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Johnny wants to play soccer in the offseason, Johnny wants to do flag football or something.

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Swimming, maybe. Yeah.

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Right.

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Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. And their their interests like you're saying, they ebb and flow And what's going on for the parents ebbs and flows too. You know, there might have been a time when it was really easy for you to juggle carpooling and taking kids to multiple practices a week and

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Right.

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And you have a job change and that makes it harder and so forth and so having a check-in around it.

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Do it. Yeah.

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You know, can be really really useful

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Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a full time.

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Yeah, it's stressful. These dang kids and their activities, man. So taking them to and from practices and games

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Job or a part-time additional part-time job Right. And part of what comes along with this too is the cost.

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As additional part-time job.

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The cost.

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So you're doing all of these, right? So there is decision making around who's going to pay for what, right? And part of that is going to be, again, included in the child support order of what that covers.

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And how some costs are divided. But a lot of times folks will include how things are going to be how we're going to share extra costs beyond what child support covers.

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Sometimes in the parenting plan as well.

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Mm-hmm.

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You know, you know, this co-parenting agreement arrangement arrangement? Like I've seen it come up before but is that that's That's just between the parents themselves, right? Or would the parents maybe slap on a cover sheet on it and file it with court.

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Yeah, the cover sheet of that.

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Right.

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I'm sure folks have filed it. As well, you know, as addendum or as an attachment. I don't know what the right legal term is, right? And I think we were also going to take some time And maybe a future podcast talking about section

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Section 14, other. Yeah.

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Oh my gosh, I'm blanking now. Yeah, section 14. It just went out. The number went out of my head.

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Section 14. So some of that stuff might fall into section 14 as well.

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Yeah.

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And, but really it's about You know, so much as we… kind of navigate from parenting synchronously, right? We're like parenting together to parenting kind of asynchronously And doing more of this co-parent piece where we, you know, there's there's just a lot more communication, especially at first, that's necessary to kind of

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Yeah. That's good now.

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Keep things flowing smoothly we can make a lot of assumptions around what the other person might think about regarding decisions or, you know, say the extracurriculars doing something like the co-parenting agreement is helpful because it's just like, let's just get it down on paper. Let's have it documented that we both agree

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You know, like, I'll give an example from my co-parenting. You know, we decided upfront that one sport a season.

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Right. Like it was like one one thing at a time.

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One sport a season? Wait, wait, wait. But what if your child wants to do two sports?

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Okay.

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Okay. Okay.

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So. Yeah. So the agreement is that the agreement is We will both support one sport a season Automatically. So if the kid decides it's baseball this season, great. If it's soccer this season, great. So we don't have to like go back and forth about that one.

00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:13.000

If there's a second thing that comes on. Then either one of us can say no.

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Like it's not a good fit. Like I can't handle that much more.

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And then it's a no, right? But we might both say yes and Great, we can do it. So just like having creating that base agreement was super helpful for us.

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:32.000

Okay, that's a good example.

00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:53.000

Yeah. What, from your experience, Lonnie where do Where do the decisions about paying for extra things like the extra, you know, the special soccer seasons or, you know, the special trip that You know, the French club is doing something like that.

00:23:53.000 --> 00:24:07.000

Where does that come in? Where do you see people put that decision-making process or how we're going to split those costs.

00:24:07.000 --> 00:24:08.000

Yeah.

00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:20.000

You know, that's a really good question. And of course, we're talking about club soccer, premier soccer, which My oldest was involved in and Yeah, you know, when you're talking about the trips too, like there's a tournament in vegas every year.

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:40.000

And so in terms of that, I've put it in the child support order But I've also seen it done as how you're talking about when we're doing collaborative divorce or degree divorces where It's in the other section or this co-parenting agreement and it's spelled out there

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:46.000

Maybe just because it's just easier to have it spelled out there.

00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:47.000

That's a…

00:24:47.000 --> 00:24:51.000

Yeah, yeah. I think oftentimes folks will refer back to their parenting plan more than pulling up the child support order to look at it.

00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:53.000

The child support order.

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But wherever it is, I think it's just like so helpful to like really work through. And I talked through this with some of my clients.

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Especially after I had a couple different clients who had such a laborious process for reconciling the costs.

00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:13.000

Yeah.

00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:19.000

Right. So I think it's really important that we know exactly how costs will be divided.

00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:20.000

Mm-hmm.

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:26.000

And how we will reconcile, how we will settle that, right? So like, for instance.

00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:40.000

It might just be probably one parent who pays for select soccer, right? They put it on their card and register the kid.

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:41.000

The reimbursement.

00:25:41.000 --> 00:25:50.000

What is the process for making sure the other parent pays back that component you know that that their portion yeah Yeah. Getting really clear on that.

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:51.000

Is super, super helpful. Yeah.

00:25:51.000 --> 00:26:01.000

In the parenting agreement. Yeah, that makes sense. And usually when parties are not in agreement, that's when I put it in the child support order.

00:26:01.000 --> 00:26:09.000

Yeah.

00:26:09.000 --> 00:26:10.000

Right.

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:21.000

But in the child support order, in a way, you're kind of limited because you can't really get into the nitty gritty, especially when it comes into select sports because the bottom line is If one parent wants their kid to participate in

00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:22.000

Yeah.

00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:33.000

Select soccer and the other parent doesn't and there's a disagreement and your fallback is mediation and that doesn't work And then you go to court and then you then have to litigate sometimes and it just comes down to this cost benefit analysis, if the costs that you're spending

00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:36.000

Yes.

00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:43.000

To get the other parent to pay Would you have just saved money if you just paid it yourself?

00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:44.000

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

00:26:44.000 --> 00:26:52.000

There's that. But I do, but that's why I love it when people are able to work this out via agreement and actually spell out these nitty gritties.

00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:53.000

Mm-hmm.

00:26:53.000 --> 00:26:57.000

Utilizing a person, you know, parenting coach such as you. Makes my job easier.

00:26:57.000 --> 00:27:08.000

Yeah, yeah. And I… I think it's just… Again, it comes back to let's just make a clear process for this.

00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:13.000

So that you're not having to make a lot of game time decisions.

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Yeah.

00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:28.000

Right. About how do we decide if we're paying for something? No, we're going to know clearly what percentage is going to be mine, what percentage is going to be the other parents, and then How does somebody get reimbursed? What's the timeline? What's the mechanism for doing that?

00:27:28.000 --> 00:27:30.000

Yeah, super helpful to get clear on it.

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:36.000

Can I ask you, I want to ask you a question about other things that you have seen in terms of major decision making.

00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:37.000

Mm-hmm.

00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:48.000

Okay. Back in the day, and we were talking, you know, before the advent of people putting in cell phones and And social media accounts into parenting plans.

00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:57.000

Back in the day, let's just say maybe in the early 2000s, maybe mid 2000s, we had joint decision making for things like Ear piercing.

00:27:57.000 --> 00:27:58.000

Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm.

00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:02.000

For haircuts, military before you know military Marriage.

00:28:02.000 --> 00:28:06.000

Yep. Yes. Yeah.

00:28:06.000 --> 00:28:09.000

Do you still see people putting that kind of stuff in?

00:28:09.000 --> 00:28:20.000

Yeah, I think just on a couple of those, the military and the marriage are still like I see them in a lot of literature, like in a lot of divorce books.

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:26.000

Yeah.

00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:27.000

Hmm.

00:28:27.000 --> 00:28:39.000

Right. As like, and it's covered it's kind of a… But when we say CYA, like cover your ass thing where it's like we don't We don't know, especially when you have like toddlers and you're putting in this thing about

00:28:39.000 --> 00:28:40.000

Yeah.

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:46.000

Marriage before 18 or military before 18. We're just like, we don't know, but let's just throw it out there so there's I think those are I'm still seeing folks put those in.

00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:47.000

Okay.

00:28:47.000 --> 00:28:57.000

Right now, just like as a cover cover our basis thing um The ear piercings and the haircuts, I think are good. I still see tattoos too.

00:28:57.000 --> 00:29:03.000

All the tattoos.

00:29:03.000 --> 00:29:04.000

A permanent.

00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:15.000

You know, but tattoos, I mean, that being such a permanent decision right makes sense that there might be a joint decision Haircuts and piercings um And some could argue the piercing could be kind of a permanent, but haircuts.

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.000

Permanent.

00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:25.000

I… I just coach my clients a lot.

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:26.000

Yeah.

00:29:26.000 --> 00:29:40.000

On that kind of stuff. I mean, and even Even stepping back and saying more of like physical appearance, right? Like all your thoughts about what your child should look like Right. How they should dress.

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:47.000

You know, dad sends them to school and they have wrong socks on or their shirts inside out, right?

00:29:47.000 --> 00:29:56.000

Because a lot of times what I get to with my clients is how it reflects on them.

00:29:56.000 --> 00:30:06.000

So how their child looks and then how it reflects on them. So it's interesting to just like see if that's under the surface there for them.

00:30:06.000 --> 00:30:07.000

Interesting.

00:30:07.000 --> 00:30:18.000

But really just getting curious about like so your daughter you know has had long hair and she decides You know, she wants to shave it off.

00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:19.000

Yeah.

00:30:19.000 --> 00:30:23.000

Right. Assuming that there's no coercion there, right? Like dad's not pushing her to do it, but she wants to do it.

00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:28.000

Okay. Yeah.

00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:39.000

What's really under that? What's the problem? So I love talking to folks about that, like just getting to What's underneath there for you?

00:30:39.000 --> 00:30:51.000

You know what this is always my, I mean, just my thought was almost like, okay, I may not like the fact, whatever, that my, you know, like the moppy, floppy hairstyle is back in.

00:30:51.000 --> 00:30:57.000

I may not like it but you know, I may think my kid, my son looks better when his hair is a little bit more trimmed.

00:30:57.000 --> 00:30:58.000

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:05.000

But at the same time, that's his expression. It's his individuality. It's his freedom. And children need to be able to express themselves in the way that they look.

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.000

Yeah.

00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:12.000

Especially if they're not hurting anyone. And, you know, that was a source of conflict between my spouse and I.

00:31:12.000 --> 00:31:16.000

Mm-hmm.

00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:33.000

At the time at the time my spouse wanted our boys to have like short hair And our youngest and our boys have beautiful curls, beautiful curly hair And in a way it would just, and when you keep it short, you can't really see their beautiful corals as much.

00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:41.000

And it would just drive me bananas. Like, why are you ragging him on his hair? Why are you telling him get a haircut? Your hair looks messy. You look like And it almost kind of, I almost went back into time

00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:45.000

Yeah.

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:53.000

Where in the 70s Where people have this long hair and I almost kind of felt like Hey.

00:31:53.000 --> 00:31:54.000

Was Ben. Hey, Wesman, you know what, are we living in the 70s? I'm like, what the hell?

00:31:54.000 --> 00:31:59.000

Yeah.

00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:02.000

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think in the reality around the haircuts, right?

00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:12.000

Ah.

00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:13.000

It isn't. It's apparent. Yeah.

00:32:13.000 --> 00:32:21.000

We think it's a co-parenting issue, but it isn't. It's a parenting issue. It's a your relationship with your child issue, right? Yeah.

00:32:21.000 --> 00:32:26.000

But it says, what did you say again? What's the question underneath? What is it? So for example, for my husband.

00:32:26.000 --> 00:32:27.000

Yeah. Yeah.

00:32:27.000 --> 00:32:32.000

What is it about our son having long mopy hair that bothers you.

00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:35.000

Yeah. That's the question.

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:37.000

What's the root of that? Be curious.

00:32:37.000 --> 00:32:42.000

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it takes somebody who's willing to be reflective to go there.

00:32:42.000 --> 00:32:47.000

Oh, okay, well.

00:32:47.000 --> 00:32:48.000

Oh, boy, oh boy.

00:32:48.000 --> 00:33:03.000

Bye. Yeah. So I think in summary, like I would just say there are some decisions that you're going to lay out in the parenting plan around who makes them, whether it's a joint decision or a sole decision.

00:33:03.000 --> 00:33:17.000

But there are a whole lot more decisions. That you can craft a co-parenting agreement or perhaps put it in section 14 that we'll talk about later.

00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:28.000

That you want to address because it'll just make kind of co-parenting a lot smoother and easier to have thought through some of this stuff ahead of time.

00:33:28.000 --> 00:33:36.000

Right. To kind of have that conscious thought structure into the business of co-parenting.

00:33:36.000 --> 00:33:42.000

And that was a great summary, Meg, of decision making in the parenting plan.

00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:49.000

And we're going to talk about, not in this episode, but in our next episode, we're going to talk about dispute resolution.

00:33:49.000 --> 00:33:56.000

Which essentially means we have this joint decision that we're supposed to make jointly, but we don't agree.

00:33:56.000 --> 00:34:12.000

How to resolve it. And that's what your parenting plan dispute resolution section is for And our next exciting multi-part series about parenting plan and crafting, creating parenting plans, we're going to dive into creating that dispute resolution section.

00:34:12.000 --> 00:34:15.000

And I can't wait, Meg, to get into this with you some more.

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:18.000

Going to be good. Going to be good.

00:34:18.000 --> 00:34:26.000

So Meg, if people need some help. Some guidance you know creating a co-parenting agreement for decision making. How can people get a hold of you?

00:34:26.000 --> 00:34:34.000

Yeah, you can visit my website. It's megluckman.com. My last name is G-L-U-C-K-M-A-N.

00:34:34.000 --> 00:34:47.000

And I have right now on my website too a PDF of five key questions to ask yourself before any co-parenting meeting or divorce meeting.

00:34:47.000 --> 00:34:56.000

And I have all of my clients use these five questions to kind of help them get grounded and settled and get clear on what their goals are for each meeting.

00:34:56.000 --> 00:35:05.000

If anybody is struggling with co-parenting or in the process, beginning process of their divorce, I highly recommend you go grab those questions.

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:29.000

Oh my gosh, I'm going to have to look at those questions myself Well, thank you, Meg. It's been a pleasure as always. And I can't wait to get into the next topic with you and um to all of my listeners out there, thank you again for joining me on another episode of the Akeona Law podcast, wherein we talk about anything and everything that intersects in the areas of family law and divorce.

00:35:29.000 --> 00:35:43.000

Until then, I am Ululani Aquiona. Collaborative divorce lawyer, family law mediator and Stay tuned and be well, folks.

00:35:29.000 --> 00:35:43.000

Thank you