"Parallel parenting" is another way of dealing with parental responsibilities or decision-making responsibilities when the level of conflict between parents is extreme and they rarely agree on any decisions that have to be made about their children. The idea with parallel parenting is that each parent has complete and sole responsibility for making decisions about their children when the children are in their care, so that no discussions, consultations or negotiations between the parents are ever necessary. As you can imagine, there are lots of challenges involved in this model of managing decisions.
First, shared this approach can make it very difficult to schedule things during the other parent's parenting time. The timing of medical and dental appointments is usually based on the availability of the medical professional rather than parents' schedule of parenting time. Common activities, like sports, music lessons and art lessons, tend to be scheduled every week and it can be challenging to find activities that match the parents' parenting time. And parent-teacher meetings happen when the school calendar says they happen.
secondSecond, not all a lot of really important decisions can be confined aren't limited to a particular schedule of parenting time. Decisions about children's education, healthcare, diet and religious instruction affect the children no matter whose home they're living at. These handling these decisions requires either that one parent's timehave sole responsibility for the decision, that the parents must consult each other about the decision, or that the decision is given to a judge or an arbitrator to resolve.
A helpful 2004 decision of the Provincial Court, [http://canlii.ca/t/1jptk J.R. v S.H.C.], talks about parallel parenting at length. In this arrangement, the court said that:
*one parent assumes complete responsibility for the children when they are with them,
*each parent has no say over the actions and decisions of the other parent when the children are in that parent's care,
*there are no expectations of flexibility between the parents,
*each parent cannot plan activities for the children when they are with the other parent,
*communication between the parents is minimized and children are not asked to pass messages to the other parent, and
*when the parents must communicate, they do so by writing in a book that the children take with them from one home to the other.
'' is a way An example of distributing parental responsibilities between guardians that is best suited for situations where each of the guardians may parallel parenting being ordered be a good parent and the children would do well with either of them, but the parents are unable to cooperate on parenting decisions. A helpful 2004 decision of the Provincial Court, ''found in [http://canlii.ca/t/1jptk J.R. g8rp5 Sodhi v. S.H.C.Sodhi]'', 2004 BCPC 0421, discusses a 2014 decision of the concept of parallel parenting at length:Supreme Court.
*A guardian assumes complete responsibility for the children when they are with them.*A guardian has no say over the actions of the other guardian when the children are in that guardian's care.*There is no expectation of flexibility between the guardians.*A guardian does not plan activities for the children when they are with the other guardian.*Contact between the guardians is minimized and children are not asked to pass messages to the other guardian. When the guardians must communicate, they do so by writing in a book that the children take with them from one home to the other. An example of parallel parenting being ordered is ''[http://canlii.ca/t/g8rp5 Sodhi v. Sodhi]'', 2014 BCSC 1622. To further minimize disputes, guardians who are parallel parenting may be assigned specific parental responsibilities over which they will have sole authority. For example, one guardian might be responsible for educational and religious issues while the other is responsible for sports and music lessons. Parallel parenting is not a term you will find in either the ''Family Law Act'' or in the ''Divorce Act''.
=====Interim orders=====