» Custody & Parenting Time

Child custody and parenting time can be among the most contentious issues when parents divorce or decide to live separately. It may take a great deal of negotiating, and sometimes litigating, to establish a parenting time schedule. If you have been a… Read More

When a couple is married, and one spouse gives birth, Minnesota law states the other spouse is legally presumed to be the baby’s parent. (While that law was written with heterosexual couples in mind, it also applies to same-sex married couples.) Th… Read More

As a parent, you are probably used to seeing your child every day, in the most ordinary of ways: when they wake you up in the morning, when you have meals, when you read them a story and tuck them in at night. You don’t think of it as “parenting… Read More

As adults, we tend to take it for granted that we have control over our life decisions, both minor (like what to make for dinner) and major (where we will live, and with whom). As parents, we make these decisions for our children. But what happens wh… Read More

Parenting time is essential to keeping a child’s relationship with both parents strong when parents live in different households. What is now called “parenting time” was once commonly referred to as “visitation.” The term was changed becaus… Read More

Parental alienation involves sustained efforts by one parent (the alienating parent) to turn a child against the other parent (the targeted parent). In effect, the alienating parent engineers the child’s rejection of the other parent. This is gener… Read More

In Minnesota, as in most states, courts prefer divorced parents to share joint legal custody of their children, which means making major decisions for the child as a team. Those major decisions include things like education and health care decisions,… Read More

In Minnesota, as in other states, child custody is decided based on what would be “in the best interests of the child.” The list of “best interest” factors considered by the Minnesota legislature in 2015 to reflect developments in the underst… Read More

Even the best parents have insecurities about how they are performing in that role. It’s easy to wonder if you are being too strict, or too lenient, a helicopter parent or a neglectful one, putting too much pressure on your kids, or not encouraging… Read More

In decades past, it was common for mothers to be granted custody of the children in a divorce, with fathers being given “visitation,” having the children on alternate weekends and perhaps one evening a week. Those arrangements reflected the preva… Read More

Transitions can be difficult for children, especially young children or kids with anxiety issues. One of the most difficult transitions for children can be moving back and forth between parents’ homes and dealing with joint custody schedules. One o… Read More

We’ve been known to tell people in the past that getting a divorce is kind of like cutting your hair: sure, you CAN do it without the help of a professional—but you might not like the results. And with a divorce, you’ll have to live with the re… Read More

The key to successful co-parenting after a divorce or breakup is effective communication. Unfortunately, miscommunication is all too easy, and a failure of communication can devolve into a spiral of blame and finger-pointing. Messages passed from one… Read More