In Georgia, a parenting plan is not optional paperwork — it is a required part of every case involving custody, whether the parents agree or the judge decides for them. The parenting plan is the operating manual for raising your child across two households, and the difference between a careful plan and a boilerplate one shows up every holiday, every school break, and every disagreement for years. The Law Offices of Scot Sikes drafts and litigates parenting plans for families throughout Columbus, GA and the surrounding counties.
What a Georgia Parenting Plan Must Cover
Georgia law requires parenting plans to address the practical realities of shared parenting in detail, including:
- Where the child will be every day of the year — the regular schedule plus holidays, birthdays, school breaks, and summer
- Transportation and exchange logistics: who drives, where, and when
- How major decisions are made — education, health care, religion, extracurriculars — and which parent breaks a tie in each area
- How the parents will communicate and share information about the child
- An acknowledgment that a close, continuing relationship with both parents is generally in the child’s best interest
Vague plans breed conflict. “Reasonable visitation as agreed” sounds cooperative on paper and collapses the first time the parents stop agreeing. Precision is a kindness to everyone, especially the child.
Matching the Schedule to the Child’s Age
No single schedule fits every family, and a plan built for a toddler will not fit a teenager. Some general patterns hold:
- Infants and toddlers need a stable primary home base, with frequent but shorter time with the other parent rather than long stretches away.
- Elementary and middle-school children typically handle predictable alternating arrangements well — regular weekday time and alternating weekends are a common framework.
- Teenagers need flexibility around school, sports, jobs, and friends; rigid schedules tend to break. At 14, a Georgia child may also elect which parent to live with, subject to the court’s approval.
Parents pursuing an equal-time arrangement should read our page on working toward joint custody — courts approve shared schedules, but they want proof the parents can actually run one.
Build In Room for Real Life
The best parenting plans anticipate change instead of pretending it won’t come. Jobs change shifts. Children start new activities. In a military town like Columbus, a PCS or deployment can rewrite everything — which is why plans for Fort Benning families should address deployment parenting time and make-up time explicitly. A plan should also say how the parents will resolve future disagreements; many families designate mediation as the first step before anyone returns to court.
Remember that the parenting schedule and money are linked: the number of nights each parent has can factor into child support, so schedule decisions should never be made in a vacuum.
When the Plan Stops Working
If your existing plan no longer matches your family’s reality, do not simply improvise — informal arrangements are unenforceable, and a parent who withholds time under an outdated order can create real legal problems. Modification of parenting time is available when circumstances change, and enforcement is available when a parent refuses to follow the order. Our child visitation page covers those disputes in more depth.
Scot Sikes has been building parenting plans for Chattahoochee Valley families — many of them military — since founding the firm near Fort Benning in 2006. He drafts plans meant to survive contact with real life, and he litigates them when the other side won’t cooperate. Every plan starts with a hard look at your custody goals and the facts that support them.
Build a Parenting Plan That Works for Your Family
Call the Law Offices of Scot Sikes at 706-494-6900 or request a consultation. Located at 5 Bradley Park Court, Suite 101, Columbus, GA 31904 — minutes from the Muscogee County courthouse and the gates of Fort Benning.