Back-to-School Challenges for Separated Parents: Custody, Communication and Putting Kids First

[00:00:00] Lindsay Parvis: Welcome to JGL Law for You. JGL Law for You is a podcast by lawyers, but not for lawyers. Only on JGL Law for You do we discuss a wide array of topics to help you navigate the many legal processes, developments in the law, other current events, and how they may affect you, your family, or your business.

Lindsay Parvis: Hi there. I’m Lindsay Parvis, and I’m here today for JGL Law for You with Chris Castellano from our family department. He has over a decade of experience representing clients in Maryland family legal matters in cases like custody, divorce, and modifications. He encourages his clients to approach their cases with a focus on understanding foreseeable risks, determining how to mitigate those risks, and then performing a risk-reward analysis to find the most beneficial outcome for their case.

[00:01:00] I’m really interested to hear from Chris on today’s topic about navigating back to school for separated parents and families, both for those who have custody orders and those who don’t. So welcome, Chris.

Chris Castellano: Thank you, Lindsay. I’m happy to be here talking today. It’s a very important issue, and one that certainly comes up every single year, like clockwork, back to school.

Lindsay Parvis: Sure, it is. So, what is important about back to school for separated families?

Chris Castellano: Well, yeah, I mean, back to school as a time period for non-separated families is difficult, right? You’ve got children who are back-to-school age who are going back and dealing with a new routine. They’re dealing with new classes, new friends, and new stressors, right?

When you add into the equation a separation or even a new custody order, you ramp it up to 11. You’re not only dealing with, alright, who’s making lunches, [00:02:00] who’s getting school supplies. We’re now talking about different approaches to both of these items because we’re in two different households.

And so, it’s really about this time of year, for those individuals dealing with separation or a custody order, how to start establishing new routines for the child or the children in question. How do I do that in conjunction with following a court order? And with all of that, how can I do that in a way that reduces stress on the child? Because that is what should be the ultimate focus for parents.

Lindsay Parvis: So, when navigating these changes back to school, what parts of a custody order come into play?

Chris Castellano: Generally speaking, you’re going to be talking about the full gamut of your custody order. You’ve got physical custody, we’ve got legal custody, right? And just for our [00:03:00] listeners, here is the very, very basic primer on those two concepts. Physical custody is your actual time-sharing.

Here in Maryland, we focus on where the child is sleeping at night, right? The overnight concept, that’s your physical custody. Where is the child at a given location physically?

Legal custody is how decisions are made for the child, and those decisions have significant consequences. It’s not decisions like, should the kid have turkey or ham for lunch at school? We’re talking about, should the kid be on an IEP? What school are they signing up for? And depending, quite frankly, on the situation, it may even include extracurricular activities.

What you’re balancing is the physical and legal custody aspects of your custody order at all times when thinking about this back-to-school period.

Lindsay Parvis: And what parts of [00:04:00] the custody order or parenting plan may not so obviously tie into legal or physical custody, but do come into play with back to school?

Chris Castellano: Well, I find one of the primary aspects of a custody order that people may not automatically think of, relative to back to school, but that ends up being one of the most consequential, is transition periods.

And I don’t mean that in the sense of our introductory paragraph, where we’re talking about transitioning from summertime back to school. I mean the actual physical transition of a child from one parent to another. So many of these cases, and Lindsay, you know, you and I have done them together, you’ve done them separately, involve transitions that are usually negotiated or ordered to occur at the school itself.

We do this for a lot of different reasons that we don’t really need to necessarily get into, but ultimately, what it’s there for is to [00:05:00] hopefully, and I say that with emphasis, reduce the stress on the child by having only one parent at pickup or drop-off at a time in a separation circumstance.

Unfortunately, if there is a misunderstanding, whether intentional or not, about how the transitions are to work, whether it is in a custody order or custody agreement, or for these newly separated parents that don’t have that custody order or an agreement in place, then the location, time, and logistics of that transition can be a very sticky issue.

Lindsay Parvis: So, let’s first focus on parents who have a custody order or a parenting plan. What is your top tip or recommendation for those parents for back to school? And then we’ll separately focus on practical suggestions for parents who [00:06:00] don’t have those types of documents.

Chris Castellano: Well, you know, it’s funny. We tell our students when they’re going back to school, pay attention, read your assignments thoroughly, understand what you’re looking at, right? That’s what I tell my clients. It’s no different. We always need to be studying, and if you have a custody order or you have a custody agreement, the biggest, most important tip to provide these individuals is, read what you have in front of you.

A custody order is not terribly long, usually, but it is your veritable script for how you’re supposed to act on a lot of different items under the circumstances, right? And you can apply that pretty efficiently, as long as you know what it says. Study that piece of paper. That’s my biggest tip for parents.

Lindsay Parvis: What are some of the practical challenges that come up for parents who may not have a court order or parenting plan, [00:07:00] or whose court order or parenting plan doesn’t go into a lot of detail?

Chris Castellano: Absolutely. And this happens. If your custody order or your agreement, let’s just say your custody order doesn’t go into great detail, don’t feel abandoned or out of the loop. That’s not uncommon. And similarly with agreements, you know, we can’t put in every single level of detail necessary.

And so, you need to understand some of these things that are going to pop up, right? So, what I like to think about when I’m analyzing or talking to clients about what challenges they will face at this new transition period of the year, the school year, is this: how is communication occurring? And that’s not just communication between you and the other parent, but it’s communication between you, the other parent, [00:08:00] the school, the teacher, the administrators, the school counselors, etc.

If the kid has a cough on the first day of school, a nosebleed, or gets hurt on the playground and is sent to the nurse, who’s the nurse calling? Right? And so that brings in one of the next practical challenges: did you go through all of the paperwork relative to the school sign-up process?

At least in Montgomery County, and depending on the school, certainly some schools and administrators require you to fill out the emergency contact information every single year, as if it were never filed before. And so, a practical challenge is making sure you know what paperwork needs to be submitted to the school administrator to understand these particulars, right? Emergency contacts, that’s a challenge.

On the same line, the school portal. We’re all well aware of these wonderful school portals and communication avenues that are being utilized right [00:09:00] now. Some are too good, some not so great, but we’re all stuck with them. Understanding how to access that information is important. If you are a parent without a separation agreement or a custody order, you’re still expected by administrators, and quite frankly, your co-parent, to understand how to access this information from your child’s school.

That doesn’t change just because you’re in a separation environment. So, accessing the portal, accessing information, you’re seeing a theme here. It’s all about being in the know. Accessing that information, and then from there you look at some additional challenges, just what we touched on earlier, logistics of child drop-off, exchanges, extracurriculars, and, to the extent that there’s aftercare. There’s the devil in the details with a lot of those different items.

Lindsay Parvis: Do you think that comes up because parenting roles change [00:10:00] when there’s a separation? Parents who may have been the main communicator or point of contact, they aren’t communicating the way they were when they were together.

Chris Castellano: Oh, absolutely. I mean, the different dynamics that arise in a separation, and let’s just even separate, no pun intended, the separation from the actual custody order. As you and I both know, once an order is in place or an agreement is in place, the dust settles for a bit, and communication can, most of the time, be a lot smoother.

So, in that new separation period, there’s a lot of dynamics at play. Personality dynamics, right? So, you have competition between the parents that always arises. You have minimization of the other parent sometimes, and that can go hand in hand with that competition. But you have the tendency [00:11:00] to say, well, I’m focused on the child, but you’re not actually thinking about the child and how your decisions are impacting that child.

So, there’s a lot of dynamics at play, and they can add another layer of challenge to these practical issues that we just discussed.

Lindsay Parvis: Maybe even more challenging for a parent who hasn’t been used to communicating with the school or figuring out school portals and accessing those. They may have relied on the other parent when they were together.

Chris Castellano: Not only would they have relied perhaps, on, hey, when is the parent-teacher conference? Maybe they will come to every single parent-teacher conference, and that’s great. Maybe they went to the back-to-school nights, but they weren’t the ones putting it on the family calendar, right? And now they’re expected, rightfully so, to put that on the calendar.

They’re expected to understand what they are, and if they miss it, then you have the emotions of [00:12:00] how could you let me miss this, or why didn’t you let me know? To a certain extent, you can understand that, especially with people who are just now entering this phase of their family life. But there’s an adjustment necessary for these newly separated parents, because it’s now time to do the work.

It’s now time to understand what’s going to be expected of you as a parent, because you used to be able to rely on your spouse or co-parent to carry the load. Now, both of these separated parents are 100% parents.

Lindsay Parvis: And when you say 100% parent, what do you mean?

Chris Castellano: Well, what I mean by that is, you can’t rely on your co-parent to get the job done relative to information, really, when it comes to your child’s schooling. Now I say that not out of a, you should do everything. I say that out of what I would like to see [00:13:00] from more people, which is that their mental approach, their paradigm looking at schooling, should be focused on, how can I be there 100% of the time for my child?

Now you’re always going to have, especially with shared legal custody, a co-parent that’s equally involved. You can’t excise that person out, nor should you. But it’s a paradigm shift that people need to undergo, one where they need to understand that there are expectations placed on you and that you should have for yourself.

Lindsay Parvis: Ah, so back to school for separated parents really calls for a change in perspective.

Chris Castellano: I think so. Yeah.

Lindsay Parvis: So why don’t we touch on consistency and why that’s important, and some resources for helping parents establish consistency?

Chris Castellano: So, consistency. Let’s talk about it first, relative to the child, right? And that is [00:14:00] going back to that theme of stability for the child, and de-stressing the circumstances around the child. The child is already in a newly separated situation, already shouldering quite a bit of stress, whether they say it to you or not, whether it’s obvious to you or not, it’s there. And recognizing that is a significant part of a parent’s job.

So, you need to make sure that there are the low-hanging fruit routine necessities, and that you can ensure consistency. And a lot of times that happens with simply writing an email to your co-parent to say, listen, my suggestion is that when the child comes home from school at four o’clock, they start homework right away.

Now, if there’s a disagreement between the two parents, maybe, well, no, they need a snack first, and then they can play for 25, 30 minutes, and then they do homework. And if you can come to an agreement, great, but that’s the level of consistency that we’re talking about relative to the child, [00:15:00] understanding what routines need to be in place, understanding how you can adapt your new situation to those routines, and then staying consistent between the two households and, frankly, for yourself within your own household from day to day.

Now, relative to yourself as a parent, and maybe with your co-parent and the school, when we talk about consistency, a lot of the time, this comes down to how you communicate. You’re going to communicate through email to your school administrator so that the co-parent is also in the know. You’re CCing that individual. You’re not just making phone calls, so then the other parent feels left out. Those are the types of consistency issues that arise.

Lindsay Parvis: Besides lawyers, who are some of the helping professionals who can guide parents who want to try to develop consistency between their homes?

Chris Castellano: Yeah. One of the people that I recommend the most, that class of people would be a parent [00:16:00] coordinator. These individuals are trained to help parents navigate these challenging times, and most family law lawyers that you interact with, and that these individuals interact with, have a number of different people that they can recommend to parents who will be effective for their specific situation.

Lindsay Parvis: So, what are some of the common points of disagreement that parents have over back to school, and what are your suggestions for avoiding them?

Chris Castellano: So, let’s assume that the child is there, there is some level of agreement about where the child’s going to school, because there certainly are disputes that arise for the actual school itself and where the child should be enrolled. But let’s assume that we’re at back-to-school day number one and we’re on the same page about where the child’s going to school.

I would go back to, I think, one of the biggest challenges that is faced by parents in a newly separated situation, which is, where’s the [00:17:00] child going to go after the school day, right? Who’s going to pick up that child? The amount of times, and it’s disappointing to see, situations where two parents are there and they’re essentially goading the child toward one car or the other, just to be the one that picks up the child and brings them home. Or maybe they go into the administration building 15 minutes before the end-of-day bell just to be able to pick up the child and bring them home.

Those are the biggest flashpoints. It is that transition of where the child’s going to go after the school day that presents the biggest challenge.

Lindsay Parvis: And what happens when parents can’t agree? What’s the path to figuring that out?

Chris Castellano: First and foremost, you should let the school know what’s going on. These school administrators are well aware of, and often trained in, how to deal with parents [00:18:00] that are undergoing a separation or have a custody order in place.

So, to break this down a little bit, if you have a custody order, it’s very important to provide that to the school administrator. Those individuals understand, okay, this is what the custody order says. The child’s going to go with dad on Monday and Tuesday, with mom on Wednesday and Thursday, and then with dad on Friday, and we alternate that, right?

So, giving the school itself the custody order is a very important step. But if disagreements continue and they’re not getting any better through proper communication, and you’re doing the proper protocols that are established in your, let’s say, your custody order, maybe your custody order calls for that parent coordinator. And so that would be the next level of assistance that you can ask for.

If you’re still not getting a solution to the dispute, then it’s time to call an experienced family law [00:19:00] attorney. You explain that situation, and maybe that attorney can guide you, navigate you through this scenario, because it’s stressful. And a lot of the time, when you have stressors, you build up mental boundaries or obstacles that make it harder to get you to where you need to go. And talking through them oftentimes can help you break through those boundaries.

And so that’s the step I would take: school administrator, parent coordinator, then talking with an attorney.

Lindsay Parvis: What advice or suggestions do you have for parents newly separated?

Chris Castellano: Newly separated, I would recommend speaking with an experienced family law attorney right off the bat. I say that because, as I mentioned, there’s a lot of opportunity for flashpoints, what I call flashpoints, that are disagreements between parties that could escalate, and escalate in a really bad way.

You don’t want your child exposed to these levels of [00:20:00] escalation, right? And so talking with that attorney can help put you in touch with professionals, whether it is in a therapeutic setting or in that parent-coordination setting, and hopefully provide those tools that could either ratchet things down or help the one parent and the co-parent navigate these difficulties, particularly in this transition time of back to school, and prevent those flashpoints from ever occurring.

It can also set up those basic premises for how these people are supposed to approach things such as the transition period.

Lindsay Parvis: And so, for parents who are looking for legal help, you’ve already mentioned talking with a lawyer for advice. What are the other legal paths for parents when it comes to back-to-school disagreements?

Chris Castellano: Yeah. Once the issue is known between the parents and you’ve sought out that legal advice, that [00:21:00] attorney will usually talk through, for newly separated parents, how can we establish an agreement that will outline how to approach a lot of these different items, right? The transitions, extracurriculars, and the communication with the schools.

If you have an agreement in place already, or even a custody order, your path is a bit more apparent, right? It is, if the issue has risen to the point where I need to make a change, then you’re filing in court for what’s called a custody modification. You’d have to talk to an experienced family law attorney about your particular case and understand if, A, you’re even eligible, if you will, for a custody modification and what your chances of success are, and if it’s in the best interest of the child.

But generally speaking, that’s what you’re looking at. What happens if you have something that, like we talked about, these flashpoints, right? If that flashpoint does escalate, then what are the options? Well, [00:22:00] you need to make a quick fix real fast if it’s something that’s impacting the child in a bad way, and that’s when we have the option to file emergency motions with the court.

That’s certainly a situation where you involve an experienced family law attorney that understands the court system, that can get you in front of a judge in short order, and that can explain your situation to hopefully get some judicial intervention on something that is really going to have a lasting negative impact on the child.

Lindsay Parvis: So, Chris, as we wind down, what are the top takeaways that you want listeners to have about back to school for separated families?

Chris Castellano: Yeah, absolutely. This is a challenging time and remembering that it is a challenging time for several reasons, not just because of the separation, which is the obvious one, but it’s challenging for a child because they’re starting a new year.

[00:23:00] January 1st is not a new year for a child, right? It is day one of the new school year, that’s their new year. That’s when they start mentally a new year for themselves. And so, understanding that is critically important. And you can help yourself, help your child, and help your co-parent by doing things such as, if you have that custody order, understand the custody order. Read it. Read it and study it.

If you have an agreement, do the same thing. And if you don’t have an agreement or a custody order, take inventory of what your communication style is and what the other parent’s communication style is and try to reach out, reach across, for the best interest of the child, and establish some of these basic communication protocols, if you will, at the very least to avoid flashpoints.

And so that brings you right into the next key theme, key reminder for newly separated parents [00:24:00] or people with a custody order. It’s to communicate clearly with your co-parent, right? Communicate clearly with your school administrator and all professionals involved, whether it’s a parent coordinator or even your lawyer.

Communication is key. The next would be, and arguably the most important, prioritizing your child’s needs, their best interests. The concept of best interest has come up multiple times during this conversation, and for good reason. It’s that the child is the most important factor in this entire conversation. If you start to set the child’s needs or best interests aside, you’re losing this battle.

Lindsay Parvis: So, Chris, for our listeners who encounter back-to-school challenges or have questions about how best to approach back to school, how can they contact you?

Chris Castellano: Yeah, absolutely. I’m in Rockville at the Joseph [00:25:00] Greenwald & Laake office. You can contact me directly at 240-399-7881. My profile is on our website, and I would be happy to have a conversation about how to help you best navigate this time of the year.

Lindsay Parvis: Thanks so much, Chris.

Chris Castellano: Thank you.