Can we make agreements about the kids without going to court?

00:00So, can you come to an agreement with the other parent about the kids without going to court? Sure. You would just discuss the terms that you wanted, the time-sharing schedule and whatever else you wanted to include in it, and both of you would sign it, preferably in front of a notary, and then you would have it there for you to use if the two of you couldn't get along. The thing is, I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing that, although, I said, you're definitely able to, but the thing is that a parenting plan encompasses so much more than just time-sharing. There's parental responsibility, or who's going to make major decisions for the children. Things who's going to pay for extracurricular activities, who's going to have their address used for a school boundary. There's a lot of things in a parenting plan that you may miss just coming to an agreement. Plus, if you do it on your own, you just have, while it's a valid contract, you don't have the added benefit of having a judge having ratified it, and if, say, you tried to enforce the parenting plan that you entered into by yourself, the police most likely wouldn't get involved and they would just tell you to go to court. Now, even with an order from the judge, they may still tell you that because the police generally don't getting involved in civil matters, but you have a much better chance of that happening, that the police would assist, or if you needed to, you could go to court and things being held in contempt would be an option, where if you entered into your own agreements, that wouldn't be the case.