Legal Question in Family Law in California

Ultimately you need a court order, even if you reach an agreement. The question is how do you get to the order. Many couples who want to have a cooperative co-parenting relationship turn to private mediation. The up-side is that, assuming you choose a good mediator, you get a trained professional facilitator who will assist you in reaching an agreement. The down-side is that it costs a lot more than the public programs. If you do not use a private mediator, you will have to go through Family Court Services mediation before you can get a hearing. FCS mediation is free, but quite frankly it is about the most miserable excuse for "mediation" I have ever seen. You get a total of about an hour with an overworked social worker who is usually a wet-behind-the-ears kid just out of a masters program in some psychology discipline, or a burned out career civil servant. There are rare exceptions, emphasis on "rare." If you can't reach agreement through FCS "mediation" the mediator will issue a report, and in most counties the report includes a "recommendation." You then get to court where the judge almost always follows the recommendation. In otherwords, that green kid or burned out drone gets to decide what happens to your kids. You have the right to request a long-cause hearing and a full custody evaluation if you don't agree with the "recommendation," but you will have that order in place for several months until the full hearing.

Bottom line: Once you have kids, you don't get to end your relationship with your husband or wife. All you get to do is change it from a married parents relationship to an unmarried parents relationship. It's up to the two of you how that new relationship will be, but it will affect your kids far more than the two of you. So choose wisely how you want that new relationship to be, because you are going to be in it as parents, and probably eventually grandparents, together for life. Do it right.