What is Shared Parental Responsibility Anyway?

Florida law requires that divorced parents share parental responsibility for their child after divorce, unless shared responsibility is detrimental to the child. The goal is to keep both parents involved in the child’s life. However, the child will most likely live primarily with one parent and that parent will make the day-to-day decisions. Then what does shared parental responsibility mean anyway?

Shared parental responsibility means that both parents discuss and decide major decisions affecting the child. These are the decisions that have long-term consequences in your child's life. Some examples involve the choice of:

• schools
• child care facility
• camps
• doctors
• religious affiliation and training
• psychotherapy
• surgery
• other long-term medical treatment
• sports and other out-of-school activities
• trips

For an older child it means making decisions about issues like part-time employment, driving, buying a car, dropping out of school, college education and trips. As your child gets older, consider having a joint discussion on these issues with your child. The area that is absolutely off-limits for discussion with your child is asking where he or she wants to live. Of course, the child should never be responsible for any final decision.

There are no set rules for shared decision making. Parents may want to divide up the areas, each taking responsibility for certain ones. Some parents prefer to meet and discuss these issues together and reach a joint decision. Others may allow one parent to make the decisions and inform the other parent. And, as noted above, older children will want to have input into decisions that affect them.

The post-divorce decision making process is often the same type of process the parents had during the marriage. When developing a parenting plan, consider how the decisions have been made in the past and what changes may be needed to that process now that the parents will live apart. Making joint decisions on issues that have long-term consequences for your child is what shared parental responsibility means in Florida.