All right.

One would think that if it says joint parenting in your custody agreement,

that it's automatically assumed that everybody has access to everything.

And that's not necessarily true.

And actually having access to everything does and can cause a

little bit of havoc and problems.

And I'm gonna explain.

So first and foremost, access to records should be a portion

in your parenting plan.

If it's not, you need to find an attorney that will include said

portion into your parenting plan.

' cause what this paragraph can do is alleve you from being someone's secretary, but

also give you access to information.

And so I wanna be able to have both, right?

I don't wanna be anybody's secretary where I'm constantly giving updates and I'm

constantly have to tell them things, and I constantly have to keep them in the loop.

That's not what I wanna do.

If I sign the child up for something, I easily wanna be able to put your name and

address and phone number and walk away, and you get the same info that I get.

Yay.

Everybody has access to the same information because I

put your information down.

That is a problem right there.

Do you know that there's parents out there that refuse to put the other parent's

contact information down to keep it a secret and to keep it a seek and find?

I had a parent who is literally trying to still figure out what field hockey

team her son is on because her ex refuses to share the information.

He won't just write down the name of the program.

He won't put her information down.

is refusing to share that information.

Instead, he's getting letters from her attorney and, and messages from her and

causing all this havoc just because he won't share what team the son is on.

So having this paragraph in your parenting plan is critical because we want both

parties to have access to information.

Now, we're not just talking about extracurriculars because I'm just telling

you right now, I'm from the decades before where everything was on paper.

They would hand you a practice schedule on paper.

Can some of you even fathom that right now?

Can you even comprehend that that happened?

That there was a time when people handed you paper and it had a literal

30 day calendar on it, and it would be marked three 30 to five 30, the

high school gym, you know, five 30 to eight 30 in the high school gym,

and went back and forth like that.

Like it was a time and it sucked.

But one of us would have to either give that information to the

other parent and or make a copy.

And then we're having to write it down or keep track of it on our own calendar.

But this whole idea of being able to have it all digital now genius.

But the one starting point is that, is that you have to share the

other parents' contact information, like their phone number or their

email to make it all digital.

So they get that digital information.

Now, let's move on school stuff.

When I register the kid to school, I should be putting the

other parent as party number two.

Do you know how many people don't do that?

This is just a warning.

That's what this podcast is about, the ugly truth, but is this, parents

do not put the other parent down.

You know who they put down the new step parent or nobody or grandma before

they'll ever put down the other parent.

So this portion.

Would say that you know, this party A, would be this parent party B needs to

always be listed, and if party B signs the child up, then party A should be

listed as the second parent and such.

So in school, again, everything is digital.

You guys are so lucky that all I have to do is put their email down or

their phone number down, and they're gonna get the same notifications,

the same reminders, the same emails.

Now when we get into doctor's offices, it's a little bit trickier

on who is the primary care provider.

With that insurance and does the other parent have access to records?

Now, I can't give you a definitive answer here because

I'm not your insurance provider.

I don't know what the rules are gonna be for your doctor's office in sharing that

information, but this is stuff that you have to get ahead of when you're building

your parenting plan, especially if your ex is already shown signs of doing this

behavior where they're leaving you out.

They're icing you out.

They're not putting you down as a contact.

They're not putting you down as an informative person that can

get the, the medical records.

So we really have to look at what do you want, especially the

medical portion to look like.

If your child is in therapy, does your ex have access to who that therapist is?

And I'm just gonna be a, a bearer of bad news here.

If you're in high conflict, which means you're dealing with somebody with some

type of personality disorder, narcissism, they are gonna hate that your child

is going to therapy and they will try to intervene with said therapists and

they will try to get that therapist to drop your case because they don't

wanna deal with your ex's bullshit.

Because your ex will nonstop call the office, harass the office,

threaten the office and and such.

And so when you're working with your attorney, I want you to really pay

attention to this section and making sure that it's worded to protect your future

self, that you're not back trying to.

You know, get access or reduce access.

So if you're the primary insurance holder, how does that look for the other parent?

Yeah, they have access to the child's records, but how do they get those if

they're not on the insurance any longer?

Okay.

And some of you might be.

You know, able to share that through portals and different things with

different types of insurance.

But I want you to just be thinking about that.

How will this other parent who's not on the insurance have

access to my child's records?

Will I have to be that person that does that in and shares that information out?

Am I gonna have to jump into a secretarial role where I'm gonna have to share what

happened at that doctor's appointment?

But here's the caveat to that.

Will that high conflict parent believe what happened out of your mouth?

Most likely no, because they're high conflict and nothing you

say is honest or truthful.

Ask them.

They'll tell you.

So access to records, essentially, and I love the way my team writes this

up because we essentially say in a professional way, put your big boy pants

on and take care of this shit yourself.

Meaning if it's on the internet, you can find it.

So there's no calling your ex and saying, what's the baseball schedule?

When parent teacher conferences, what grades do the kids have?

If it's on the internet, your ass is responsible for finding it.

We even take it a step further and we literally tell in the parenting plan,

if your child has a relationship with another adult, whatever that means, you're

responsible for knowing who that adult is and building that relationship yourself.

So there's no going to parent a and saying, Hey, how's a therapist?

What kind of person are they?

what times do they go?

You figure that out.

You're a big person.

Go research that.

Go find out who the, who the teacher is.

You wanna know who the pediatrician is.

Look it up.

Go there.

I've told you once.

I'm not telling you again.

Go meet with the doctor if you wanna know about them.

I don't have time to lead you to water.

We have to be careful about overextending ourselves into

taking care of the other household.

We'll go back to parallel parenting here.

I know that I wanna go to appointments 'cause I wanna be

informed and I wanna be there.

So I go, it's not my job.

To keep another parent informed who knew about the same appointment,

they knew about the same appointment and they chose not to go.

Now again, if they asked me cordially and nicely what happened?

Absolutely, but let's be real.

You wouldn't be on this channel if it was cordial and nice.

So we have to be careful of what does the parenting plan say?

I have to share, and what is the other parent able to get

on their own information?

If it's more than three clicks.

Cool.

Go find it.

But it's clickable, so if it's there somewhere, go find it.

I just see a lot of my clients, my one-on-one clients going down this

rabbit hole of like, oh, Sam, I sent that screenshot like three weeks

ago when we signed the kid up for soccer, and now he wants it again.

Okay, well I can easily scroll through.

I also know how to search for images, so I don't know that you need to send that

again 'cause you've already sent it once.

They're just being lazy slash controlling slash manipulating to

see if you'll send it to them again.

And if you don't, they're gonna label you as a bad co-parent.

Are you a bad co-parent?

So we had a good doctor on TNC.

If you don't know what TNC is, it's monthly membership

group for moms for the men.

Sorry.

We don't have anything yet.

On hold for that.

But for moms, we had this amazing doctor come in and they were talking about this

connection between us feeling like we have to constantly place secretary and take

care of them and do all these things and make sure that we're keeping up with, you

know, keeping them informed and keeping them informed and, and them telling

us, well, you're a bad co-parent if you don't, well, you're a bad co-parent.

I'm gonna take you to court.

I'm gonna take the kids.

If you don't tell me, if you don't, tell me if you don't keep

me informed and all this shit.

And it plays a fuckery on our heads.

And what the doctor end up saying is, all you have to do is when your ex accuses you

of something, of being a bad co-parent, you simply ask yourself, is that true?

No it's not.

Because here I am giving you the link.

I gave it to you three weeks ago.

You just wanna get it.

You're lazy.

I'm not a bad co-parent 'cause you are lazy.

So ask yourself when your ex accuses you of something it's so simple, you guys.

It really is.

If I would've done that all those years ago, I probably would've switched to

parallel parenting a lot faster than trying to hold out for co-parenting.

But this access to records is, you know, if you're ex is accusing,

you have to keep me informed.

You gotta tell me that information.

you, you didn't tell me about parent teacher conferences.

Is that true?

No, because I put your number down just like I put my email down and your email

down and I got the same fucking email I know is in your inbox somewhere, whether

you read it or not, that's not up to me.

That's up to you.

But I don't have to remind you of parent teacher conferences because

you're a big person and if you can vote, then you can look and you can read

on your own and get the information.

If it's on the web, you have access.

Right.

They're walking around with a literal fucking computer in their hand,

24 7, attached to their hand and take it to the fucking bathroom.

The least you can do is use it to look up information instead of, or thumb,

thumb, thumb back to you and saying, Hey, let me know when this is happening.

Why didn't you let me know this?

You have access to the same information.

And I see this a lot on social media where there's parents saying, you

know, my ex won't give me information.

My ex won't tell me about this.

My ex. The internet is wild with information.

It's wild with information, and if you have legal custody of your child joint or

just partial, you can call said school and say, I am a legal guardian of this child.

I deserve to have my information down.

But so many of you go the rabbit hole of telling your ex

to put down your information.

I had a client years ago the wife, the ex-wife put the mom put down her new

husband's information and left dad off.

Now, dad went ape shit as he should because he was left

off of school registration.

Now they didn't have a paragraph like this saying that she had to write down his

information, so she did what she wanted and she wrote down her new husband's

information and dad went ape shit again.

yes.

You should go nuts.

But what he did wrong was he went to his ex-wife to change it.

You should put me down.

You should put me down.

He spent hours, thousands of dollars with attorneys telling the ex-wife to change

it, change it, change it, change it.

What I would've done is I would've taken my parenting plan signed,

dated, and and approved by a judge and slapped that on the secretary's desk

at the elementary school in a nice way, 'cause it's not her fault, and

said, Hey, we got some update to do.

Okay.

I don't know what Ms. Susie over here told you or put down ' cause

she did it from home on the internet.

My information needs to be on here.

I'm the legal guardian of this child.

I mean, this is not rocket science, but when you go to a high conflict

person to fix their own doing, you might as well hold your breath.

Death will come upon you faster.

They're not going to change.

This is who they are.

They thought they'd get away with it.

So this is common practice to have a paragraph where we both say, put

your big boy pants on, find the answers yourself, but also just enough

respect that we're obligated by our parenting plan to both put information

down that includes both one another.

Again, something you don't look for in a parenting plan before you need it, right?

But then when you need it, you're like, shit, where's that paragraph that Sam

was talking about where we have to put each other's information down?

Yeah, it's not there, right?

So the paragraph we list inside of ours that we build for people

doesn't have loopholes, right?

Doesn't have vagueness.

It just has.

You're both grown adults.

Here's what you're gonna do, and if not, you're easily in contempt because it says

right here you are supposed to do this.

But again, I want you to all realize if you are in a high conflict journey.

You are gonna have to have a workaround once or twice, if not daily, in

dealing with your high conflict X.

And you're gonna have to figure out a way to make sure this shit happens on your

dime, and you go find those schedules, you go find those doctor's appointments,

you put yourself on the Remind Me app, you make sure your email got added.

You go to that school and make sure you're listed.

You have to go do the work.

Don't expect somebody that hates you to include you.

That doesn't make sense, does it?