Equal parenting 101: What’s the best way to divorce with children?
Your divorce or child custody case will be as difficult as one or both of you allow it to be.
A quick internet search yields unlimited stories of adversarial child custody cases. The family court system facilitates cases that go on for years, even decades. Some end in tragedy.
Parents who are not or can not be together, owe it to their children to keep their lives as peaceful, and as normal as possible during any household changes, legal proceedings and co-parenting.
As a couple you can co-write and file your own parenting plan with the courts. That idea intimidates many parents, even though it could save a lot of money. It also helps parents feel they are in control of the process at a time when emotions can run high.
Collaborative law practitioners in the San Francisco Bay area:
- Collaborative Family Law Professionals of Marin
- Collaborative Lawyers of Alameda and Contra Costa
- Collaborative Practice of San Mateo County
- Collaborative Practice East Bay
- Collaborative Practice Group of Contra Costa
- Collaborative Practice Silicon Valley
- Mediation & Collaborative Practice of Ariel B. Winger, Berkeley
- Resolving Conflict through Understanding, Larry Rosen JD
- Ruben Law Firm, San Francisco
- San Francisco Bay Area Collaborative Practice Group
- Unmani Sarasvati, JD, Mediator and Collaborative Attorney, Oakland
- Weiler & Borst, LLP, Certified Family Law Specialist, San Ramon
Self-help resources:
- Alameda County Law Library
- CA Court Child Custody Information
- CA Courts Online Self-Help Center
- Child Custody parenting plans, free ebook
- Contra Costa County Law Library
- DadsDivorce.com, California
- Family Law Help California
- CA Find a Court
- CA Judicial Forms
- Proud to Parent, for never-married parents
- San Francisco Law Library
- Shared Parenting Works, free parenting plans
I'm a sun and nature loving, 50-something, laid back, forward thinking, liberal anti-feminist egalitarian, san francisco bay area native, single mom of 4 and yia yia to 2. I've been active in the equal parenting movement since 2002. Known as the purple Queen of Equality, I once blogged as the Feminist4Fathers. Find me now on sharedparentingworks.org and jugsforjustice.org. | More from Teri Stoddard
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July 19th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
The only way “equal parenting” can work is for the current “imbalanced” family court system to be reformed. We have to take away all the priviledges we have given women and then restore the rights , unlawfully taken away from men.
Once a women understands that she is no longer the “queen of the hill” and the man is no longer the “dog in the dog house” is might work, but even then it will take figuring out the pitfalls and there are many. The first step will be to teach men the law and then use that to take away the money ,power and control the system hungers for and kick them out. WE will still use the courts, but the states involvement will have to be removed. Even then it will take years of making women abide by the new “fairer arrangement” and it will take “rehabilitation” of men to be able to be parents, it’s not something you know instinctively. It can be done and it should be done.