A child's birthday and divorced parents can bring up a lot of emotions, not to mention complications. The best way to handle future birthdays is to get your arrangements in writing ahead of time with a martial settlement agreement. This way you and your spouse have a set scheduled agreement on how to handle the event and not have to fight it out later.
This is your child's special day. Memories will be created, for better or for worse, about their childhood on these momentous occasions. Focus on what your child's needs are and leave the baggage of divorce at the door. There are a few different options when considering how you want to handle your child's birthday.
One of the first items you will want to work out is if you want to have a joint-celebration, with both parents included in the event, or if you will alternate each year between each of you. If you wish, you can even split the day in half between the two of you. After you have decided how to handle your child's birthday schedule, here are some other items you may want to add to your marital settlement agreement:
- How will invitations be handled? This can even include the number of relatives from each side of the family, don't forget to include grandparents.
- How will you handle the logistics of the celebration? Will you split the responsibilities of decorating, choosing a location, events, games, etc? Will you alternate certain responsibilities on a yearly basis?
- Will you have a plan on how you share pictures or videos from the special day? Don't burden family and friends with two sets of the same pictures.
- How are you going to take care of expenses? This could include things such as cake, rental fees and deposit fees?
- Think about landmark celebrations, such as Sweet Sixteen. Do you need to include any special plans for these types of events?
- Who will be responsible for clean-up?
Keep in mind the perils of gift requests from your child. Some children will independently ask both the mother and father for the same gift to try to make sure s/he gets that special gift. Plan to talk with your spouse before buying a gift; this will save you the embarrassment of each of you getting the child the same gift. Also, watch out for when a child says "Mom/Dad is getting me _____". Don't let your child pin you and your spouse up against each other in a gift giving competition.
Once you have talked with your spouse about how you want to handle your child's birthday and other family celebrations, contact Attorney James Cairns for a marital settlement agreement questionnaire. Just fill out the questionnaire and Attorney Cairns will draft up your marital settlement agreement, it's that easy. Also, you can contact Attorney Cairns if you have any questions about your marital settlement agreement at 888.863.9115.
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