Mark Ashton, a partner in our Exton, Pennsylvania office, and a contributor the firm’s Pennsylvania Family Law blog, wrote an interesting post on that blog entitled "Is Parent Coordination for You?"

Parent Coordinators in New Jersey are nothing new and have been an arrow in the quiver of judges for years to address high conflict divorce cases. I have blogged about the use of parent coordinators and the use of other professionals to assist with custody and parenting issues in high conflict divorces before and they prove a use way to avoid litigation for issues that either require an immediate resolution and/or for issues that require some other way to address the complexities.  I recently had a parent coordinate involved overseeing things in a case where there were some serious mental health issues as to one of the parents, as well as medical issues related to a child.  The parent coordinator was able to gather and distill information and make recommendations.

Parent coordination is not a panacea and not a replacement for a judge.  Judges cannot abdicate their judicial decision making duty nor can they send enforcement issues to a PC.  In fact, that was something that the Appellate Division reiterated in my case of Parish v. Parish which was a reported decision (which we previously blogged about.)

In any event, Mark’s blog gives us another perspective of the types of issues you might want to use a PC for and some of the upsides and downsides of doing so.