Parenting plans after separation

Contents 11 sections

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A parenting plan is a written record of the arrangements parents agree for their children after separation. Its value is not in sounding formal. Its value is that on an ordinary Tuesday evening, each parent can understand what is meant without starting the argument again.

It covers the ordinary week as well as the things that are easy to forget at the start – school holidays, birthdays, handovers, family occasions, and what happens when something has to change.

A parenting plan is not normally a court order and is not automatically legally binding – that is what a child arrangements order does, and what most families are trying to avoid needing. What it does is let both of you see clearly what you have agreed.

Start with your child’s ordinary week

Rather than beginning with percentages, or with whether time should be “50/50”, we usually start with the child’s actual week.

Where do they go to school? What time does it finish? Who normally collects them? What activities do they have? How far apart do the two homes sit? What does each parent’s working week look like?

The plan has to work around the child’s life, rather than the child’s life being rearranged to fit the plan. Cafcass encourages parents to think along the same lines: the child’s age, their activities and individual needs, each parent’s commitments, the accommodation and the distance between homes.

A good plan is specific enough to use

“Share the holidays fairly” sounds reasonable, but it leaves the difficult question for later. A useful plan goes further. It might say how holiday dates are proposed, by what date they are confirmed, where the handover takes place and how a change is raised if somebody cannot make it.

The test is simple. Could two people who disagree read the same sentence and reach the same conclusion?

What a parenting plan can cover

There is no requirement for every plan to look the same. Yours might include:

• The ordinary week – where the child stays on school nights, weekends and overnight arrangements, collection and return times, travel between the two homes, and childcare linked to work or school.
• School holidays and special occasions – half terms and longer holidays, birthdays, religious festivals, and the family occasions that matter to you.
• Staying in touch – telephone or video contact between visits, and how the two of you will communicate about the child.
• Decisions – education, health, clubs and activities, and how anything important will be discussed rather than sprung on the other parent.
• Change – how either of you raises a change, and when the plan will be looked at again.

The Family Procedure Rules recognise parenting plans as a useful way for separated parents to identify and record the practical arrangements for their children.

What if we cannot agree on everything?

You do not need to arrive with the whole plan worked out. Most parents already agree on a good deal of the child’s routine and are stuck on one or two questions.

We can separate what is already settled from what still needs discussion, which is often a relief in itself – the list of genuine disagreements is usually shorter than it feels.

Sometimes a single practical issue, such as handovers, the school holidays or how you communicate, is generating the conflict around everything else. Working on that one first can make the rest straightforward. Child arrangements mediation is where that work happens.

Should the child have a say?

Children’s needs, wishes and feelings matter. How they are taken into account depends on the child’s age, understanding and circumstances.

Adults remain responsible for making the decisions. In suitable cases, child-inclusive mediation may be discussed, but it needs the right process, specific training and everybody’s consent; where it is right for your family, ask us and we will explain whether it is suitable and how it can be arranged. It is not something every child goes through, and no child is put in the position of choosing between their parents.

Plans need to grow with the child

Children do not stay the same age, and circumstances do not stay fixed. A routine that suits a five-year-old may be wrong for a teenager. Work patterns change, schools change, a parent may move, activities become more demanding, and teenagers tend to develop firm views about how their time is organised.

A plan does not have to pretend that life will hold still for ten years. Cafcass recommends reviewing arrangements as children’s needs change, so it is worth recording when you will look at it again, and how either of you raises a change in the meantime.

What if there is already a court order?

A parenting plan is not a way of working around an existing Child Arrangements Order.

If an order is already in place, tell us before mediation begins. Parents can sometimes agree to do something different in practice, but if a change needs to stay legally enforceable, further legal steps or the court’s approval may be required.

The same applies to any order or condition affecting contact between the adults. Where there has been abuse, that is considered before anything joint is arranged – see domestic abuse and mediation.

What happens at the end

Where parents reach proposals in mediation, we record the arrangements clearly, in the parents’ own words rather than in legal language.

For most parents that written plan is the point: it removes the repeated argument about what was actually meant. It is not a court order. If you want advice on whether any part of it should be made legally binding, take independent legal advice.

Using mediation to make a parenting plan

Mediation helps when you agree on the principle but get stuck on the detail. The mediator takes the plan section by section, tests how each proposal would work in an ordinary week, and finds the gaps before the arrangements are written down rather than after.

The starting point is an individual MIAM for each parent. From there mediation can be arranged if it is suitable and each of you wants to continue. How family mediation works sets out the order everything happens in, and the Family Mediation Voucher may cover part of the cost where you are eligible.

More on mediation about children.

Sources and further reading

• Practice Direction 12B – the Child Arrangements Programme
• GOV.UK – make a child arrangements plan
• Cafcass – planning your child’s time with both parents after separation
• Cafcass – how a parenting plan can help

If the two of you find it hard to talk without it turning into an argument, a short course can help before or alongside mediation. Cafcass, OnePlusOne, Triple P and Coram Family Lives all run courses for parenting apart, and most of them are free.

Once a plan is agreed, keeping to it is largely a matter of sharing a calendar and splitting costs without an argument. There are apps built for exactly that.