Draft Parenting Plan

---
name: draft-parenting-plan
task_id: trusts-estates-private-client/draft-parenting-plan
description: Drafting a comprehensive parenting plan requires translating mediator recommendations and case-specific child-care, medical, therapeutic, and school-related information into a legally complete residential schedule and decision-making framework, with a companion cover memo addressing risks and open issues.
activates_for: [planner, solver, checker]
---

# Skill: Draft Comprehensive Parenting Plan Under Washington State Law (RCW 26.09)

## 1. Subject-matter triage

- Treat the parenting plan as the primary deliverable and the cover memo as secondary.
- Extract the existing family-court posture first: any temporary plan, interim orders, mediator recommendations, agreed terms, and points of disagreement.
- Identify each child’s age, schooling, medical or therapeutic needs, extracurricular commitments, transportation constraints, and any safety or communication issues that affect drafting.
- If more than one child, parent, household arrangement, or schedule variant is in play, enumerate each separately before synthesizing the plan.

## 2. Failure modes the skill is correcting

- Drafting a generic residential schedule without integrating child-specific school, medical, therapeutic, or activity constraints.
- Failing to make the decision-making framework operational, including routine authority, major decisions, and an escalation path for deadlock.
- Omitting a dispute-resolution sequence that requires the parties to attempt resolution before returning to court.
- Ignoring the statutory modification framework, relocation notice concept, or other forward-looking provisions that should be reflected in the plan.
- Overlooking how the final plan relates to any temporary plan or interim arrangement, including when a departure needs justification.
- Producing a cover memo that lists concerns without ranking risk, identifying open issues, or giving concrete next steps.
- Naming a legal conclusion without grounding it in the governing Washington authority.

## 3. Legal frameworks / domain conventions that apply

- Use Washington parenting-plan law as the controlling framework, centered on RCW 26.09.187 for residential provisions and decision-making, RCW 26.09.191 for limiting factors where applicable, RCW 26.09.260 for modification standards, and RCW 26.09.405-.560 where relocation notice or related provisions are implicated.
- Structure the plan around best interests of the child, continuity of caregiving, stability, developmental needs, sibling relationships, and each parent’s ability to support the child’s relationship with the other parent.
- Distinguish residential schedule from decision-making authority: regular parenting time, holiday and vacation time, transportation, exchanges, and authority over education, non-emergency health care, and other major decisions.
- Include a practical dispute-resolution ladder before court intervention, typically beginning with parent-to-parent discussion, then a structured third-party process if available, then litigation only if unresolved.
- Reflect that temporary orders may function as the operative baseline; any material change in the final plan should be tied to a concrete child-centered reason.
- Where the record suggests safety, instability, alienation, substance, mental-health, or domestic-violence concerns, test whether statutory limiting factors or supervised/conditional provisions may be needed under RCW 26.09.191.
- Use the plan to make future administration workable: define handoff timing, communication channels, holiday precedence, and the handling of missed time, make-up time, and schedule conflicts.

## 4. Analytical scaffolds

1. Build the source map.
   - Separate controlling documents from background materials.
   - Identify the mediator’s proposals, client objectives, opposing positions, and any court-imposed defaults.
   - If the materials conflict, prioritize the most recent operative order unless the task materials indicate otherwise.

2. Triage the child-centered facts.
   - Pull out each concrete constraint affecting care or scheduling.
   - Note whether the constraint is recurring, event-driven, or contingent on a future condition.
   - Flag anything that requires client confirmation before final drafting.

3. Draft the residential architecture.
   - Select the residential framework that best fits the record: primary residential placement, alternating schedule, blended schedule, or other workable structure.
   - Draft weekdays, weekends, holidays, school breaks, vacations, transportation, and exchange logistics.
   - Align the schedule with recurring appointments and school routines rather than forcing the child to conform to an abstract rotation.

4. Draft decision-making provisions.
   - Separate day-to-day authority from major decision categories.
   - State who decides education, non-emergency medical and therapeutic care, extracurriculars, and communication issues.
   - If joint decision-making is intended but deadlock is possible, specify the tie-break or escalation mechanism.

5. Draft protections and contingency terms.
   - Address missed time, illness, travel, right of first refusal if supported by the record, notice obligations, communication expectations, and methods for handling schedule changes.
   - Where the facts raise safety concerns, tailor restrictions narrowly and only to the extent supported by the materials.

6. Draft the dispute-resolution sequence.
   - Use a clear sequence that escalates in steps before court.
   - Keep timing anchors practical and enforceable.
   - Make the process specific enough that future readers can tell what happens first, next, and last.

7. Draft the future-modification and relocation language.
   - Reflect the governing statutory standard for later changes.
   - If relocation is implicated, include the notice concept and align it with Washington law rather than inventing custom timing.

8. Prepare the cover memo.
   - Rank the risks and unresolved issues.
   - Identify provisions likely to draw objection.
   - Note any departure from the temporary plan and explain why the draft takes that position.
   - End with concrete next steps, assigned to the appropriate internal role and tied to the drafting timeline.

## 5. Vertical / structural / temporal relationships

- Use the temporary plan or existing arrangement as the baseline and explain any deviation in terms of the child’s best interests and administrative feasibility.
- When a child’s medical, therapy, or school schedule is fixed in time, let those commitments drive the residential design rather than treating them as afterthoughts.
- Treat holidays, vacations, special events, and school breaks as overlays that may supersede the regular schedule if the plan so provides.
- Distinguish current custody/placement facts from future modification standards so the plan remains usable both now and later.
- If multiple children or multiple schedules are involved, keep each child’s provisions separate enough that the plan can be implemented without guesswork.

## 6. Output structure conventions

- Produce the parenting plan as a complete, operative document with the standard Washington components: residential schedule, decision-making, dispute resolution, relocation language if needed, modification language, and any child-specific provisions supported by the record.
- Produce the cover memo as a separate internal advisory note with a risk-ranked list of open issues, points of likely contest, and recommended next steps.
- Draft the parenting plan first, then the cover memo.
- Use statutory and rule-based citations for every legal proposition relied on; do not state a legal conclusion without naming the authority supporting it.
- Keep the drafting concrete, implementable, and internally consistent; avoid generic filler or placeholders unless the source record truly leaves an issue open.