Good communication is key to family success

Hiring a family law attorney to help you work out child custody and support issues is important. An attorney will be better equipped to deal with how state law affects your family-sharing plan and will strive to protect your interests.

What you shouldn’t do, however, is decide to only communicate through your attorney about all things to do with your child. Unless you have unlimited resources to pay an attorney to deal with the other parent, or the other parent’s legal counsel, it would behoove you to learn to work directly with that person when it comes to simple compromises.

For example, if you want to pick up Junior for ice cream on Wednesday, but it isn’t your formal time with your son, ask his mom if she would be amenable to you taking him to the neighborhood ice cream parlor. Or if you want to take your princess to the Nutcracker matinee on Sunday morning because that’s when tickets are cheapest, ask her dad if it would fine for you to switch days that week.

Whether you like it or not, the other parent is your partner for life, or at least until your child turns 18. It’s better to learn to work together than to run up costly attorney fees because you can’t either pick up a phone or write a simple email.