While unmarried parents have the same parenting rights that married parents have (which includes the right to custody, visitation, and decision-making authority), unmarried parents don’t automatically receive these rights. Parentage or paternity must first be established, and then visitation and custody must be petitioned through the court through a request for a parenting plan.
Unmarried parents who break up may not need to formally file for divorce but may face a range of legal questions related to their children. For example, parentage or paternity may need to be formally established through court order or by mutual agreement before you or your partner will be able to establish a parenting plan through the courts.
Both parents are required by law to financially support their children, and one parent may need to petition the court for a child support order to ensure that their children receive the support they need. If you are breaking up or separating and have children with your unmarried partner, you may want to speak to a family lawyer about the legal steps you may need to take to protect your parentage rights, visitation rights, decision-making authority, and right to child support.
It’s important to note that once paternity has been established, unmarried parents have the same parental rights as married parents. Unmarried parents who share paternity have the right to share custody, visitation, and decision-making authority, and both parents have a responsibility to financially support their children.
Unmarried parents who break up without court involvement may not be legally required to have a parenting plan, but often seek clarity about child custody, visitation, and child support through a child support order and parenting plan. When unmarried parents live in separate homes, they often find themselves negotiating visitation schedules, child support, and more. A parenting plan can offer clarity about where the children will live, visitation schedules, how holidays will be spent, and how major decisions for the children’s health, education, and religious upbringing will be made.
What is a parenting plan?
A parenting plan is a legal document that specifies in writing how parents will share decision-making authority and custody of their children.
- Parenting plans outline which parent will have the right to make decisions regarding the children’s health, educational, and religious upbringing. Parents are encouraged to outline how major decisions will be made, specify who gets to make these decisions, and put a plan in place for how major disputes will be resolved.
- A parenting plan specifies in writing which parent will have legal custody of the children and where the children will primarily reside. The parenting plan may also place restrictions or limitations on visitation. Restrictions and limitations on visitation are not common and often involve situations where there is a proven history of abuse, domestic violence, assault, sexual abuse, or other major issues that could significantly impact the best interests and well-being of the children.
- A parenting plan will often outline visitation schedules, transportation plans for visitation, and will also detail how holidays and other special occasions will be divided between the parents.
- Finally, the parenting plan will also detail how schedule changes, schedule conflicts, and parental disputes will be resolved, should they arise.
When unmarried parents break up, they don’t need to file for divorce and can often separate without court involvement. Yet, there are situations where parents may still need to petition the court to receive certain parental rights. Parents may need to petition the court…
- To formally establish parentage through court-order
- To establish an order for child support
- To establish a formal parenting plan
- When a parent seeks a protection order, or domestic violence restraining order
In this article, we’ll explore how unmarried parents can go about establishing parentage (paternity), if they have not done so already; why unmarried parents should strongly consider having a parenting plan if they don’t have one already; how unmarried parents can get a parenting plan; and how parents can negotiate a parenting plan that works.
How to Establish Parentage (Paternity) in Washington State
Before you can create a parenting plan, or seek child support, you’ll need to establish parentage (paternity). When married couples have children, parentage is granted to both parents automatically when the child is born. Unmarried couples who have children together may need to take additional steps to establish parentage.
Before you can get a parenting plan, custody order, or seek a child support order, you’ll need to establish parentage.
In Washington state parentage is established several ways:
- Parentage is automatically established for the mother who gives birth to a child. The mother automatically receives custody and decision-making authority. The father or other parent may need to take additional steps. These include…
- Through an Acknowledgement of Parentage form at the hospital where your child was born. If you and your unmarried partner signed an Acknowledgement of Parentage form when your child was born, and either you or the hospital filed the form with the Department of Health, then both parents named on the Acknowledgement of Parentage form have parental rights. Parents who sign an Acknowledgement of Parentage both have the right to seek child support, and have the right to petition the court for a parenting plan.
- Through a petition to decide parentage. Parents can ask a judge to determine parentage through court order. You can initiate a case by contacting the state Division of Child Support. When parentage is decided through court order, a judge might order genetic testing to determine parentage.
The judge may also evaluate the child’s best interest when deciding parentage. There are situations where a judge might decide that a parent who isn’t a child’s biological parent is still their legal parent. This usually happens when one parent acted as a child’s parent for the first four years of the child’s life.
- Through holding out a child as your own for the first four years of their life. If you have held a child as yours for the first four years of his or her life, you can file a court case to confirm parentage (petition to decide parentage).
If you aren’t sure whether parentage has been formally established in your situation, you might want to speak to a family lawyer. The family lawyers in Washington state at Truce Law can help you establish parentage, file for child support, and file for custody and visitation. When parents file for parentage through court order, they can also seek a parenting plan and child support order as part of the parentage case.
Why Unmarried Parents Need a Parenting Plan
Custody and visitation aren’t automatically granted to a parent even if he or she has legally established parentage. Parents who want custody and visitation will need to pursue these rights through the courts. Custody and visitation rights are established through a parenting plan.
When seeking custody and visitation, unmarried parents have the same rights and responsibilities as married parents who are seeking custody and visitation after divorce. The courts tend to favor arrangements where both parents have a role in their children’s lives and tend to award sole custody or limit visitation only in cases where there is a danger to the child or where it is in the best interests of the child for the child to have limited contact with one parent.
An unmarried father who wants to ensure that he can continue to visit and parent his son or daughter will need to file a court case asking for custody and visitation. An unmarried mother who wants to have clarity about visitation schedules and parental responsibility regarding her child’s father might also want to file a court case seeking custody.
If your child’s father hasn’t been involved in your child’s life, you can establish this through a parenting plan that lets the court know what your current arrangement is.
Children need consistency, stability, and structure, and tend to do better emotionally, socially, psychologically, and educationally when their parents don’t have high levels of conflict. One way to establish consistency, stability, structure, and reduce conflict is to have a formalized parenting plan in place.
Even though you and your partner might be breaking up, your relationship as co-parents remains. A parenting plan can offer formal guidelines for how you and your former partner will communicate and negotiate this new relationship. A parenting plan can also help you and your former partner develop strategies for negotiating conflict and disagreement. Finally, a parenting plan can offer clarity about visitation schedules, custody, transportation, and holidays—and offer clarity about how you and your former partner will negotiate making major decisions for your children.
Navigating these questions isn’t always easy. A parenting plan is a written agreement that protects you from having to re-negotiate these questions on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, and can protect you and your children from one parent making unilateral decisions about relocation, schedule changes, travel abroad, school choice, and more.
The collaborative family lawyers at Truce Law help couples negotiate parenting plans that work, outside of court. When you choose the collaborative process, you both agree to draft a parenting plan at the negotiating table and then submit your agreed parenting plan to the court. At no point, do you leave decisions for a judge to make.
A parenting plan is often filed after parentage has been formally established or when one parent seeks a child support order. While it might be tempting to just let your former partner pay child support “under the table,” or to simply “wing it” when it comes to parenting time, issues can arise.
If formal parentage hasn’t been established, you might not have legal rights as a parent. A formal child support order ensures that your children will be consistently supported by both parents and can protect you and your former partner from disagreements and arguments about money in the future. Because payments are often made directly to the Division of Child Support where they are then distributed to the other parent, there’s no risk of lost checks, bounced checks, or accounting errors.
Child support amounts are based on both parents’ combined income and are formally established through state child support worksheets. By seeking a child support order, there’s never a question of whether one parent isn’t paying their fair share.
It’s important to keep in mind that a parent still must pay child support even if there are restrictions or limitations on visitation. Having a child support order in place means that parents can take the steps they need to take to keep themselves and their children safe, while still ensuring that their children will be provided for financially.
How to Get a Parenting Plan
Unmarried parents can get a parenting plan through the courts when they file a court case to establish parentage.
Parents who have already established parentage can seek custody and visitation by filing for custody or child support through the courts. It is possible to file only for custody (for a parenting plan) or only for child support, though many parents choose to file for both at the same time.
You’ll generally file for custody and child support in the county where you and your children live, but if you and your children live in separate counties, or if you are a military family, you might want to speak to a family lawyer in Washington about which county will have jurisdiction over your children.
Parents can also draft a parenting plan and child support plan together and submit an agreed plan to the court.
How to Negotiate a Parenting Plan that Works
In many cases, unmarried parents who are breaking up face the same challenges in drafting a parenting plan that married parents face. In this situation, both parents often have a close relationship with their children, and they’ll need to negotiate parenting time schedules that support those relationships. The parenting plan that works for your family will depend on many factors including:
- The emotional, psychological, educational, physical, and medical needs of the children.
- The children’s school and after-school activity schedules.
- Each parent’s work schedule.
- Each parent’s desired schedule.
- The distance between both parent’s homes.
- The children’s preferences.
- And more.
If parents are in low conflict, they might try a 50-50 parenting time split, but this arrangement only tends to work when both parents get along, have strong communication skills, and when they live close to one another.
Most parenting plans are a compromise between offering stability for the children, while giving both parents adequate time to nurture their relationships with their children. This can be achieved in many ways. Weekend visitations, splitting weekends with both parents, weekday visitations, and more can all support these goals.
There are many creative ways parenting time can be split, and there’s no single solution that will work in every case. Couples who live far apart may be able to nurture parental bonds through scheduled phone or zoom calls, supplemented by visits during school holidays.
Sometimes a father seeks a parenting plan because he wants to formally establish visitation rights. In this situation, the children will continue to live with their custodial parent, but the parenting plan may also include a visitation schedule and a schedule outlining how holidays and special occasions will be handled.
While some parents fight over custody through the courts, the courts tend to discourage parents from seeking solutions from a judge. Judges are likely to order mediation to encourage parents to find solutions that work, without court interference.
Another path forward is through the collaborative family law process. With collaborative family law, both parents each hire their own family law attorney, and the attorneys agree to work together to help the couple negotiate a parenting plan that works for them and for their children. The collaborative process places an emphasis on negotiation rather than conflict, and amicable collaboration.
More parents who want to establish an amicable co-parenting relationship are choosing collaborative family law rather than litigation. If you are interested in exploring whether collaborative family law might be right for you if you are an unmarried parent seeking a parenting plan, reach out to the collaborative family lawyers in Washington state at Truce Law today.
Next Steps
It’s understandable if you are unmarried with children that you might want to avoid a big court fight over custody and child support. The good news is that there’s another way forward. With collaborative family law, you and your former partner can work together, outside of court, to answer the big questions about your parenting plan and child support.
Your collaborative lawyers can help you understand your rights, responsibilities, and your options, and help you and your former partner negotiate a visitation schedule and custody plan that works for your needs and for your children.
The collaborative family lawyers at Truce Law are here to help. Contact us for a Case Evaluation.
This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Every situation is unique. For guidance specific to your circumstances, consult a licensed family law attorney in your area.