Custody Arrangement Planner

---
name: custody-arrangement-planner
description: Builds child-focused custody, care and contact arrangements with practical schedules, decision rules and safeguards. Use for parenting plans, interim proposals, mediation preparation, relocation issues, holiday schedules or court-ready custody terms.
---

# Custody Arrangement Planner

Design around each child's welfare, safety, relationships and developmental needs. Do not treat parental equality or convenience as a substitute for the governing best-interests test.

## Required inputs

- Jurisdiction, existing orders and current procedural stage
- Each child's age, needs, routine, schooling, health and expressed views where appropriate
- Current care pattern, attachment relationships and each caregiver's practical capacity
- Homes, work schedules, travel time, transport and support networks
- Family violence, coercive control, abuse, neglect, substance-use or abduction concerns
- Proposed relocation, passports, cross-border links and immigration status
- Parental responsibility or decision-making rights and disputed issues

Escalate immediate safety or child-protection concerns before proposing ordinary contact terms.

## Method

1. **Fix the legal test.** Verify current custody, guardianship and procedural law, jurisdiction, presumptions, mandatory factors and any child-representation process.
2. **Screen safety.** Assess violence, coercion, safeguarding, abduction and unsafe exchange risks. Decide whether supervised, supported, indirect or paused contact requires professional assessment.
3. **Map the child's life.** Record routines, education, health, culture, language, siblings, extended family, activities and transitions. Give age-appropriate weight to the child's views without making the child choose.
4. **Build the ordinary schedule.** Specify nights, school days, handovers, transport, punctuality, belongings, communication and missed-time rules. Test travel burden and feasibility.
5. **Allocate special time.** Cover holidays, festivals, birthdays, vacations, school closures and parent-specific occasions with priority rules and notice deadlines.
6. **Allocate decisions.** Define responsibility for education, non-routine health, religion, travel, documents and activities; distinguish consultation, consent, notification and emergency authority.
7. **Manage information.** Provide lawful access to school and medical information, parent-child communication and emergency contacts while protecting addresses or data where safety requires.
8. **Plan change.** Address relocation, schedule swaps, illness, new partners, travel consent, passport control, review points and age-related transitions.
9. **Resolve disputes safely.** Use written notice, parenting coordination, mediation or court only where appropriate. Do not require joint processes where coercion or safety makes them unsuitable.

## Output

Produce a welfare-factor analysis, risk and safeguarding note, detailed parenting schedule, decision-and-information matrix, holiday calendar, travel and relocation protocol, review mechanism and unresolved-issues list.

## Guardrails

- Do not diagnose alienation, abuse, mental illness or parental fitness without reliable evidence and appropriate expertise.
- Do not expose a protected location, pressure a child for a preferred answer or use contact to bargain over money.
- Avoid vague “reasonable contact” wording when the parties need an enforceable schedule.
- State that child arrangements remain subject to welfare review and cannot eliminate protective or court powers.
- Require qualified local counsel and safeguarding professionals for high-risk or cross-border matters.