Mediation Agenda:
Parenting Responsibities, Scheduling & Support

Whether you're in person or online, when you arrive, I'll meet with you each individually in separate rooms. This gives us an opportunity to meet together individually and talk about any updates or concerns you may have before we get going.

When we sit together, I'll make sure everyone has a coffee or tea and feels ready to begin. I'll talk a bit about confidentiality and some of the "rules of the game". I'll review the overall session and the structure of the discussions.

To be honest, I do this mainly to let you catch your breath and get situated. Most people feel anxious at the beginning of the meeting, so I take center stage first and once you're settled in I'll turn the discussion to you.

Now the conversation becomes yours. I'm there to facilitate, but you and your spouse will start to flesh out the important aspects of the discussion.

I'll ask you each: What you want to discuss in mediation?

This is to establish a shared agenda. As you're reading the Mediation Agenda right now, you can see that there is an overall method to discuss the topics we generally need to cover, but this is your opportunity to confirm the pieces that relate to you and your family and you may add on some matters that might be pressing or unique to your family.

Common Topics are:

• parenting responsibilities

  • communication

  • decision making

  • managing conflict

• parenting time

  • schedule

  • holidays

  • travel

  • how to handle new romantic partners

• Child Support

  • Monthly payments

  • Special Expenses, such as child care, school tuition, medical expenses, and extracurriculars

The next question I'll ask you is:

What was the reason you agreed to be here today? To work together as opposed to agains one another?

This is an opportunity to set the tone for the conversation and share how you'd like to approach the conversation. This is when you can share what is important to you about how you handle co-parenting, how you want to honor your relationship, or maybe it's simply about cost and efficiency. What ever is driving you through the discussion, you want to share that.

Some common reasons may be:

• I want to have an amicable relationship moving forward

• I didn't want to involve lawyers and ramp up conflict

• I believe we have the capacity to figure these things out

• I want what is best for both of us and I want to collaborate to find a solution

• I wanted to keep costs down and not spend unnecessarily on court or fighting about things

• I wanted to get this done relatively quickly so that we can both begin to move forward

We want to create a joint vision about what is in the best interests of the Children. Under the law, the best interests of the Children is the only consideration. This is your opportunity to define what you believe is in the best interests of your children.

I'll start by asking you: Imagine your Children when they're in their mid-twenties and they're sitting in a coffeeshop with a new friend and they're talking about their childhoods. Imagine the friend says, "I didn't realize that your parents separated when you were a kid, what was that like for you?" What would you want your child to say?

I ask this from the perspective of the Children, because it forces you to take a child-centered approach to the conversation, but you can also approach these topics from your own point of view.

What would you want them to say about their observations of you and your spouse as co-parents?

• What was the overall approach to co-parenting

• How did you communicate?

• How did you keep each other informed about parenting matters?

• How did you make decisions?

• How did you approach and manage conflict?

What would you want them to say about their experience of time with each of you?

• What was the quality of time?

• What were the principles that were important in creating a schedule?

• How did they experience holidays, special days, celebrations and travel with each parent?

• How did you create stability for them?

We'll take this vision to form the intentions for our conversations around Parenting Responsibilities and Parenting Time.

Parenting Responsibilities

We will sort out parenting responsibilties which includes decision making. It's always wise to have a conversation about how you will approach decisions and possibly create a process that you can each follow to communicate smoothly and efficiently.

Parenting Time

We're going to discuss a general parenting time approach, which may include a schedule, but doesn't have to. There are a few popular schedules that you may wish to review: Primary Parenting Schedules

Shared Parenting Schedules

With regard to Holidays and Special Days, you can look at this spreadsheet to familiarize yourself with how we'll approach the discussion. Enter your names on the first page and then navigate to the Holiday Schedule Tab at the bottom. This one can feel a bit overwhelming, but ultimately for any day, you have three options:

1. Keep your current schedule

2. Change the current schedule, in a flexible way that allows you agree each year on how you'll approach it

3. Change your parenting schedule in a specific way.

If you choose specific, then look to some of the other options in the table.

Other Parenting Matters

There are other topics that we'll cover such as travel, telephone calls and facetime, and introducing new people to the Children. You are always encouraged to bring up any other matters that you feel are important to discuss.

In mediation, we’ll talk through practical and balanced ways to share time with your children, including common parenting schedules, holidays, school breaks, and travel plans. Together, we’ll explore options that fit your family’s routines and your children’s needs, making sure each of you has meaningful time and connection with them. The goal is to create an arrangement that truly reflects what’s in the best interests of your children.

We'll run a calculation for Child Support. For thes calculations, we focus on your incomes to figure out support. It's important to upload your last three years of Income Tax Returns and Notices of Assessment. If you own a business or run a corporation, we'll also need your financial statements. We're trying to figure out:

What is your income likely to be for the next 12 months?

What is available to pay support?

This is a prospective question, so most of us will not have a perfect answer, but we'll all be able to make an educated and informed guess based on past earnings and information about how we'll earn income into the upcoming year.

Things can and may change. Don't worry. You're not locking in forever. Child Support may be adjusted upon a material change of circumstances and you should consider adjusting each year, as specified by the law, to ensure that you stay up to date.

Once you've settled on the structuring of your Parenting Plan, I'll tell you about the next steps. I've outlined a lot of this in the After Mediation section of the Client Area of the website (you'll have to log in to access these steps).

And that's it. You'll have negotiated all the terms of your Separation Agreement and the actual document will follow.

I always recommend looking your agreement over with a lawyer before you sign.