What to include in a parenting plan
A UK parenting plan should cover fourteen areas: the children and review dates, living arrangements, the schedule, holidays and special days, handovers, communication, decision-making, education, health, money, travel, childcare and other adults, what happens when you disagree, and anything needed about safety. Most plans cover eight of them well and leave the other six to be discovered as arguments.
The checklist #
| # | Section | The question it's really asking |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Children and review | Who this covers, and when you'll look at it again |
| 2 | Living arrangements | Where do the children mainly live? |
| 3 | The schedule | Which nights with each parent, in a pattern you can both state |
| 4 | Holidays and special days | School holidays, Christmas, birthdays, religious occasions |
| 5 | Handovers | What time, where, who travels, and what if someone's late |
| 6 | Communication | Between you two, and between each parent and the children when they're away |
| 7 | Decision-making | Who decides what alone, and what needs both of you |
| 8 | Education | School, parents' evenings, who's first contact, how school post is shared |
| 9 | Health | GP, dentist, appointments, medication, who's told what |
| 10 | Money | The extras that sit outside maintenance, and how they're split |
| 11 | Travel and abroad | Consent, notice, passports, what information is shared |
| 12 | Childcare and other adults | Grandparents, new partners, babysitters, who can collect |
| 13 | When you disagree | The process, before anyone applies to court |
| 14 | Safety | Anything either of you needs written down about how contact happens safely |
The five that get skipped, and cost the most #
13 — When you disagree. The most-skipped section in every plan we see, and the one that decides whether a future disagreement costs you an afternoon or £4,000. "We'll discuss it" is not a process. Write: "If we can't agree within seven days, we go back to mediation before either of us applies to court, and we split the cost 50/50." Name the mediator if you have one.
5 — Handovers, in detail. Not "Friday evening". A clock time, a place, who does the travelling, and the rule for lateness — a fifteen-minute grace period and a message if it'll be longer removes an extraordinary number of arguments.
7 — Decision-making. Most plans say "we'll decide together" and stop. Better is a list: day-to-day decisions belong to whoever's household the child is in; school, non-urgent medical treatment, passports, changing a surname and moving away need both of you in writing; emergencies get dealt with and reported as soon as possible.
10 — Money, beyond maintenance. Maintenance is a formula. Uniform, trips, clubs, kit and childcare aren't, and that's where the arguments are. Agree a split and a threshold above which you ask first. More on the extras →
11 — Travel and abroad. Whose passports, held where, how much notice for a trip, what details get shared. Taking a child abroad without the right consent is a serious matter, so agreeing the process calmly in advance is much better than discovering it in an argument about a booking.
Writing it so it survives #
Be specific to the point of feeling pedantic. "Reasonable contact" causes more disputes than any other phrase in this area. Specificity feels cold while you're writing it and kind eighteen months later.
Write it for a stranger. If a grandparent or a new childminder couldn't work out this week's arrangement from the plan, it's not written clearly enough.
Cover next Christmas, not just next Tuesday. The weekly routine settles quickly. Plans break at holidays.
Date it, and put a review date in it. Annually, plus whenever something structural changes.
Put the child in it. Not their preferences as ammunition — their actual needs. The club that matters to them, the friend they want to see, the fact that they need half an hour to decompress after a handover.
Keep it short enough to be read. A forty-page plan is a document nobody consults. Cover the fourteen sections properly and stop.
Two things not to put in #
Anything about the other parent's behaviour. A plan is a set of arrangements, not a list of grievances or conditions. "Mum will stop being late" isn't a plan; a handover time and a lateness rule is.
Anything you can't live with on a bad week. People agree ambitious plans at the end of a good mediation session. If a commitment only works when everything goes right, it will be the first thing broken, and the first broken commitment does real damage to the rest.
How OurPath uses each section #
This is why the sections matter to us more than to most. In OurPath the plan isn't stored, it's run.
Section 3 becomes your shared calendar, eighteen months ahead, with your local authority's term dates in it. Section 4 becomes the holiday and Christmas entries, applied every year without renegotiation. Section 10 becomes the default split on every cost either of you logs. Section 13 becomes a button — raise an issue, pick the part of the plan, and OurPath sends your mediator a structured request with the facts already attached.
Whatever template you're using — Cafcass's Our Child's Plan, your mediator's house style, or your own — OurPath maps it onto the same sections and relabels them to match.
Common questions #
How long should a parenting plan be? Long enough to cover the fourteen sections and short enough that you'll both read it. Most good ones run to a handful of pages.
Do both parents have to sign it? There's no legal formality, but both of you should agree it and date it. An unsigned plan one parent wrote isn't an agreement.
Can we use Cafcass's template? Yes, it's free and it's the one most UK professionals recognise. It's now called Our Child's Plan. Our guide to it →
What if my co-parent won't engage with a plan? Write your proposal, send it, keep a record that you did. If they won't engage, a MIAM is the usual next step — and attending one is a requirement before most court applications anyway.
Does it need a solicitor? Not to write one. You may want one if you're turning it into a consent order, if where the children live is disputed, or if there are safety concerns.
General information about England and Wales. Not legal advice.