Peace of mind is important, especially when your children are involved
Peace Talks’ collaborative team of attorneys, therapists and financial professionals will resolve your custody issues in a sane, sensible and fair way at a reasonable cost.
Creating a parenting plan
- Keeps focus on the children’s best interests
- Helps you make lasting, sound decisions about parenting, physical custody, and legal custody
- Tailors your custody agreement to your and your children’s needs
- Improves co-parenting and co-parent communication
- Keeps you out of court, saving money, time and emotional toll
At Peace Talks Mediation Services, our custody mediation and parenting plan mediation services assist divorced, divorcing and never-married parents in working together to develop a child-centered custody plan and improve your ability to co-parent.
Note: All of the information on Peace-Talks.com concerning parenting also pertains to never-married parents, separated parents, or divorced parents. Child support and parenting rights and responsibilities are the same for everyone.
Parenting Plan: Written court orders which outline how often and when the children will be with each parent and how child-focused decisions will be made. Parenting plans typically include decision-making protocols, a day-to-day schedule, vacations, holidays and travel, as well as other parenting issues like move-aways.
What is Child Support?
Child support is a monthly payment that one parent makes to another to help cover the costs of raising their child. These costs are for the necessities like clothing, food and shelter. In addition to the basic child support payment, the parents allocate payments for “add-ons”, such as medical expenses, child care, education, and activities.
How Does Child Support Work?
Parents come to an agreement on the amount of child support, which is signed as an order by the Court. If a child support amount cannot be agreed on by the parents, the amount to be paid is decided by a judge. Each county in California has a local child support agency, which is available to help spouses arrange, adjust, and collect support payments.
Child support is calculated based on numerous financial factors including income, insurance, medical costs, and education costs. Parents must disclose accurate financial information. This information is fed into California’s formula (aka "guideline") that determines how much child support should be paid.
To help you prepare, here’s a Child Support Checklist to get you started.