The COVID-19 public health emergency has ground many activities to a halt, including the vast majority of matters at Probate and Family Courts across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the impact of court closures has been felt most strongly in the paucity of...
Parenting Plan
Removal Cases Before Determining Custody Arrangements
Removal matters - where one parent seeks to move with a child or children either to another state or to a place within the Commonwealth that is far enough away to cause a significant impact on the parenting plan - are amongst the most fraught cases that attorneys and...
50/50 Parenting: Quantity versus Quality
I recently came across Edward Kruk, PhD's article in Psychology Today entitled "Equal Parenting and the Quality of Parent-Child Attachments." The article summarizes research on parenting plans that I have found useful in support of some clients' requests for equal...
Supreme Judicial Court Authorizes Parent Coordinators But Limits their Authority
During a contested divorce or paternity action involving minor children, and often long after the case is formally resolved, some parents face ongoing disputes over "day to day" matters such as whether should participate in two...
Proposed Parenting Coordinator Bill Seeks To Codify an Increasingly Common Practice
Although a "final judgment of divorce" terminates a legal marriage between spouses, all too often, the parties will remain embroiled in litigation for years to come, particularly with respect to issues surrounding the care and custody of their minor children. Even the...
Parallel Parenting Plans
Studies indicate that parents who make disparaging comments about each other, engage in verbal altercations in the presence of their children, place the children in the middle of parental disputes, encourage protective behavior by the children in favor of one parent...
The ABCs of PC: What is a Parenting Coordinator (“PC”), and how can Parenting Coordination help you and your family?
According to the Guidelines for Parenting Coordination developed by the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts Task Force on Parenting Coordination, "[P]arenting coordination is a child-focused alternative dispute resolution process in which a mental health or...
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