How is a Parenting Agreement or Parenting Arrangment documented?
You will be taking a risk if you do not document your parenting agreement.
Things change, people remember arrangements made differently sometimes, things come up, together with a multitute of other reasons, mean that perhaps your parenting agreement should be documented. The level of risk you wish to take and whether you want your agreement to be binding and enforceable, affect which way you should choose to document you parenting agreement.
If you choose to document the parenting arrangements you have made in a parenting agreement, then you would normally choose to document your agreement in one of 3 ways:
- Consent Order; or
- Parenting Plan; or
- informally (not legally) in some other way.
If there is not already a Court Order regarding parenting arrangements, then the only way you can document your Parenting Agreement so that it is legally binding and enforceable is through Consent Orders.
You can enter into a Parenting Plan but it will only be enforceable if the Parenting Plan is made after 1 July 2006 and it changes some terms of a Court Order previously made.
If it does not, then that Parenting Plan will only be evidence of what arrangements the parents agreed on.
It will not be legally binding or enforceable.
It is strongly recommended that you document your parenting agreement in a way that will be legally binding and enforceable.
Documenting a Parenting Agreement: More Information
We also have the following Fact Sheets providing more legal information about documenting your Parenting Agreement:
- How is a Parenting Agreement Documented
- Documening a Parenting Agreement or Not Doing So
- What are the risks of not documenting our Parenting Agreement
- What is a Parenting Plan & what should go in a Parenting Plan
- What is a Parenting Consent Order and do I need one
- Should I use a Parenting Plan or a Consent Order to document our Parenting Agreement
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All Topics in the Child Issues Section
- Types of Parental Responsibility Orders
- Child’s Time with Parents: Shared Care or not
- Grandparents: Rights to see Grandchildren
- Documenting a Parenting Agreement
- Best Interests of the Children
- Relocation of a Parent with a Child
- Change of a Child’s Surname
- Child Passports & Overseas Travel after Separation or Divorce
- How to change a Final Parenting Order previously made by the Court
- International Child Abduction
