Parenting Coordinator
For Parenting Disputes
Do you have a parenting arrangement in place but are continuing to deal with Parenting disputes and dont want to go back to court or engage lawyers?
Aneta Dimoska Di Marco is a family lawyer and a parenting coordinator able to help you and the other parent settle disputes as they arise
Aneta is a member of Parenting Coordination Australia
The Conflict Coperation Scale
Determine just how severe the conflict is with your ex by taking the quick 7-question scale
A Parenting Coordinator is a qualified professional (either a lawyer, psychologist or social scientist) who has completed specialised training in Parenting Coordination.
A Parenting Coordinator assists parents who are dealing with disputes about their parenting arrangement. Disputes can range from minor disagreements to complete break downs in communication.
Aneta is a Family Lawyer and Parenting Coordinator with qualifications in family law and a PhD in psychology. Aneta is a member of Parenting Coodination Australia, the Family Law Section – Law Council of Australia and NSW Law Society.
Aneta is available to conduct Parenting Coordination through the convenience of online video-conferencing.
A Parenting Coordinator works with both parents, usually together, and sometimes individually, to help parents arrive at a solution to their parenting dispute.
People may come to a Parenting Coordinator for all sorts of issues that they may be experiencing involved with their parenting arrangements.
The way a Parenting Coordinator will work with parents is to identify what are the key areas of difficulty and we work through each difficulty in a detailed manner. This can feel a bit like mediation. However, the process is different in that a Parenting Coordinator focuses on guiding parents on how to best implement a parenting arrangement, whilst a mediator is focused on helping parents arrive at an agreed framework.
This might mean that a Parenting Coordinator helps parents identify how to best co-parent, or if co-parenting doesn’t work, other models of parenting which will best suit a family.
We do this to avoid court intervention or expensive legal disputes.
Often parents walk away with an agreed parenting plan or court orders after an expensive legal battle but no follow up support. Parents also do not know the when a dispute requires legal advice or simply conflict resolution.
We see parents running into issues with their parenting arrangements and spending large sums of money seeking legal advice about issues that might not reach the threshhold for court action (e.g. Dad let daughter go to a party on the weekend that Mum didn’t agree with). Lawyers are not supposed to support parents with ongoing parenting conflicts, they are there for legal advice. A Parenting Coordinator fills the very large gap in services for parents who cannot resolve their ongoing or minor parenting disputes.
A Parenting Coordinator is usually engaged for 12 or 24 months to provide ongoing support to parents.
- Not a Mediator: Unlike a mediator, a parenting coordinator doesn’t facilitate a negotiation process where the parents reach their own agreement. The coordinator can propose solutions and make recommendations.
- Not a Therapist: They don’t provide therapeutic services to address underlying emotional or psychological issues contributing to parental conflict.
- Not a Guardian ad Litem: They don’t represent the child’s interests in court.
Parenting coordinators are particularly helpful in situations where parents struggle to communicate effectively or frequently disagree on parenting issues. Their role aims to support parents in making collaborative decisions that benefit their children while minimizing conflict and the need for ongoing court intervention.
Parenting Plans for Different Conflict Styles
How you and your former partner communicate post-separation is fundamental to how a parenting arrangement should be phrased and structured. So many parenting plans and court orders fail because the relationship dynamic is not given more then a cursory consideration when parenting arrangements are drafted.
We measure your post-separation conflict style objectively to guide the type of parenting arrangement that will work best for your family.
Take our post-separation conflict style quiz to find out what kind of style characterises your relationship with your ex, and then select the parenting plan template to suit your specific style.