"Communication is key," says Dr. Tracy Masiello, but for high-conflict divorced parents, even simple messages about a tired child can escalate into legal battles. When that happens, parenting coordinators have the skills and court authority to resolve communication breakdowns.

Dr. Masiello, founder of Reaching Resolution, specializes in court-involved therapy, family reunification work, and high-conflict family systems. She and host Sheila Passenant walk through what listeners should know about this unique tool in North Carolina family law.

Sitting at the intersection of psychology and the law, a parenting coordinator is a neutral professional, backed by court statute, who guides parents on custody orders or other issues that arise related to children. As she explains, “the courts essentially give the parenting coordinator the authority, very similar authority that the court has, to make these decisions.”

She clarifies that while many roles in family law involve neutral professionals – from lawyers to therapists to parenting coordinators – there are key differences. Unlike mediators, for example, parenting coordinators make binding decisions when parents reach an impasse. “The simplest way I could say it is that it's like the judge is giving the parenting coordinator kind of the authority to act very similarly as though they're the judge and make those decisions,” she says.

Tune in for this in-depth examination of a parenting coordinator’s role, the appointment process, and real-world examples of the job in practice. Sheila describes a hypothetical scenario where parents argue about a custody exchange: “A parent coordinator may say, ‘Okay, where do you live? How long does it take you? Where do you work? When can you get there? I'm going to pick the exchange place.’”

The conversation explores how parenting coordinators address everything from holiday schedule confusion to helping parents implement court orders effectively, with the ultimate goal of teaching parents skills so they no longer need intervention. “I love it when they don’t need me,” Dr. Masiello says.

For more information on Dr. Masiello’s practice, visit www.reachingresolution.net or connect with her on LinkedIn.

The insights and views presented in “Welcome to Splitsville” are for general information purposes only and should not be taken as legal advice for any individual case or situation. Nor does tuning in to this podcast constitute an attorney-client relationship of any kind. If you’re ready for compassionate and reliable legal guidance on your journey through divorce, contact the team at www.TouchstoneFamilyLaw.com

Hello there. Going through a divorce considering one. Sorry to hear that. But here you are. Welcome to Splitsville. You'll find Splitsville to be a pretty unique place, a new world really with its own rules, its own expectations with, and in many ways its own language. But don't worry, you have a knowledgeable guide along the way. And now here she is.

Hi, good afternoon. My name is Sheila Passenant and I'm an attorney at Touchstone Family Law and welcome to Splitsville. We have an honored guest today, Dr. Tracy Masiello. And today's topic is the role of parenting coordinators. We get a lot of questions about what they can do, how do we get them appointed, how they can help in our case, what cases need them. And so we've asked Dr. Masiello, who's a certified parent coordinator, as am I, we're going to have a little conversation about this very, very important tool that parents can access when they're having problems with the other parent, when they're having problems even with their child. And it's just a really great tool that people can access. So Dr. Masiello is a psychologist, a licensed clinical mental health counselor supervisor, a certified parent coordinator, a divorce coach, and a divorce mediator. She is the founder and owner of the group practice Reaching Resolution, which provides mental health services for children through adults.

She specializes in court involved therapy, family reunification work, and high conflict family systems. And we are very lucky to have her in our community. I personally have been working in high conflict custody cases for about 26 years as a guardian ad litem and a parent coordinator. And a lot of times without the help of a qualified mental health person who knows how to deal with these special dynamics, we could not help these families the way we relate. They deserve to be helped. So let's lead off with just a very simple question, but if you could Tracy, just explain what is a parenting coordinator and how do you get one involved in your case?

Right, absolutely. So essentially a parenting coordinator really is somebody whose overall goal is to help keep families out of court and help parents resolve issues faster. So it's really an interesting area for me as a therapist because it's kind of an area where psychology and the law really beat. But essentially whether it's an attorney parenting coordinator or a therapist parenting coordinator, it's a neutral professional. It's somebody who's appointed by the court to really help parents stick to custody orders to reduce ongoing disputes and really resolve any issues that come up post-divorce or separation that are related to the child when they reach an impasse, right? When they can't figure it out or solve it on their own. And it does require that you have a court order in place. So you do have to have that because the courts essentially give the parenting coordinator the authority, very similar authority that the court has to make these decisions.

So whereas when I'm a mediator and I might talk with parents and we come up with some parenting time agreements and things like that in the plan, if one parent doesn't follow it, there's really not a lot of legal recourse or action that can happen based on that without them going to the courts to try to get some resolution With a parenting coordinator role, the simplest way I could say it is that it's like the judge is giving the parenting coordinator kind of the authority to act very similarly as though they're the judge and make those decisions. So if somebody doesn't follow that, then it is content, right? They can't have a judicial hearing and a judge can act on that based on what the coordinator had decided.

And one of the things people ask us questions about too is if you want one, you can file a motion. If you have an attorney, your attorney can ask for one. Sometimes the court can appoint one if they feel like I'm tired of seeing these people go to court to have a disagreement about what soccer team or child should play on resolved by the Dutch. So to Tracy's point, I've served as an attorney parent coordinator for many, many years, but in order to do that I had to take extra training in a lot of the areas that Tracy is super qualified in. Yes, I'm an attorney, but I had to take a lot of classes on alienation, resist, refuse, child developmental, had to interview children because sometimes as a parent coordinator you do have to meet with the child and sometimes you definitely meet with both parents and sometimes you meet with the child and you have to call different people because they may say one thing and the other parent says the other thing and you have to figure out what the truth is.

So you can help them to try to make the decision together, but if they can't, there are certain decisions, for example, and Tracy, if you want to think of just a test case that you've had, I've been appointed to some single issue cases like public school versus private school or homeschool. So sometimes they can't make a decision about whether to get tubes in a child's ear or something. So you have to help them with that. You do the research, you call the ENT, you read the medical records, you dig deep and still every chance you try to say, Hey parents, here's the info. What do you think and why? What do you think and why? And try to teach them and get them some skills. Certain cases I think call for an attorney parent coordinator versus a mental health parent coordinator. And I was going to ask Tracy if she could give me some examples of cases where you would definitely want a mental health parent coordinator versus an attorney one.

Absolutely, and just some of the things are big, like you said, picking what school that they're going to go to. Those are some big decisions that parents have to make and sometimes can't agree about. But sometimes what we do is really about small decisions too, like scheduling. Can we have an extra day on Christmas break or winter break with the child or can I pick them up early from school on Friday because I want to take them on this trip for the weekend? And one parent's saying No, the pickup time is when school gets out. So sometimes it's really small things and having a parenting coordinator is helpful to families because they don't have to file a motion every time one of these kinds of things comes up, right? It's so much like being kind of part referee, part coach, part translator. We kind of help parents interpret the order and stay child focused and just really also help them communicate without things escalating.

So when it comes to being a therapist, sometimes it's really helpful for families to have somebody who has that clinical background, a therapist. I would say that's especially true if there's a lot of emotional intensity between the parents and needing a lot of help with regulating that emotion or anxiety and really helping with that. If one or both have any kind of mental health or substance use issues, it could be really helpful. If you have cases where we see in the children that they're showing a lot of emotional or behavioral distress because of that conflict, that would be a great time. When you have somebody who really understands those behaviors and what a child needs when a therapist PC is involved, it really helps to bring that developmental and systems lens, looking at how the family patterns are playing out and even helping parents make sometimes just small practical shifts that can help reduce some of the tension that they have. We don't look at it so much as who's right, but we look at it more about how do we stabilize the family dynamic. It's really helpful in those cases where you do have a lot of emotionality to it or like I said, a lot of mental health issues happening or behavioral issues happening. We can really be helpful in those areas.

And I know other questions people have is, okay, so my parent coordinator happens to be a therapist, but you're not that parent's therapist.

Correct?

So talk about that.

So just like being an attorney pc, you're not their attorney, you're not going to give them legal advice, I'm not doing therapy. I understand the symptoms, I understand the issues, I understand how to help. If a parent comes to me and their child is very dysregulated and very anxious and they're trying to make these decisions, I can use that lens if I'm helping them make decisions to say, alright, if we do this, this is probably likely going to escalate that anxiety. If we do that, this might help reduce the anxiety. So why don't we look at how can we make this other option work so I can use that background and then use that to inform some of the options that I might help parents talk through or if they're trying to make decisions about different options, I can weigh in on some of those matters.

I think just like with an attorney, you use some of your skill and your knowledge of the law to inform your clients and give them options or help them think through those decisions. It's very similar, but you're not actually practicing law, you're not filing motions for them, you're not giving them legal advice. It's the same thing I'm using the skills that I have and the tools that I have and the knowledge that I have to help inform our conversations. But I'm not going to be a therapist for either of them. I'm not going to be a therapist for child, we're not doing family therapy. I'm, I'm not going to have a dual role where I'm going to be doing coaching with them. I might give them some co-parenting tools just as any PC would do, but I'm not going to be sitting there having a couple session with them

As part of your process. If you could go through the process and then I can tell the audience what my process is, but tell me what your process is. You get appointed as a parent coordinator, what are the steps that parents should expect?

So for me, typically what I want is a copy of the order, not just the one that's appointing me, but also all the documents up until that point. Do they have an order of parenting time and what does that look like and have there been other proceedings or pleadings? I just want to see what the filings have been so that I can get some background on the case and just understand sort of where we're here, what are some of the issues that have been identified through the legal system and the findings of fact so that I have some sense of that. And then I will meet with each one of the parents and do an intake with them individually and just really find out their background. How did we get here and are there any pressing issues that we really need to handle right now?

Sometimes it takes a while from when a co-parenting couple has asked for a PC until the order gets put into place and until I can actually begin work. And they also have to pay the retainer. That's a state statute that most of the courts have in the order that if there's a retainer, it has to be paid before you begin. So there's things that have to happen before you just meet with parents and start helping them and help fix things. So I always want to take some time to really understand how did we get here and what are those hot button issues. I'll ask too about other issues, but sometimes there's things we can table for a bit. And then once I've had that chance to meet with both parents and get that information from both of them, then I very quickly thereafter try to have our first joint session. I have an agenda and we start talking and I want hear from both of them. There are perspectives on each of these pressing issues and I try to get those solved right off the bat. And then we start looking at, okay, what are the things coming up? What are the things down the road? What are the other areas that bubble up here and there? And then we kind have a plan for starting to work on those and address those proactively so that we could do less reactively.

I think the big difference with a parent coordinator and any other tools in the toolkit that parents can and access is if we are appointed, there's an actual statute that lays out what the authorities are and what the responsibilities are. So it's super clear what we're able to do and what our authority is. It's 50 92, but I have a very similar process to Tracy when I get appointed as parent coordinator, review all the pleadings. Sometimes I'll also, if there are attorneys involved, have a meeting with attorneys if there's a guardian ad litem involved, perhaps talk to the guardian ad litem and then with each parent individually and say, what's your top five hot button issues like Tracy said, and our first meeting will be an agenda, and I usually take one from dad, one from mom, one from dad, one from mom. And I see how far I can get along the list of, and these are the deadline to sign up for travel soccer is soccer November 15th and it's October 29th today.

And I'm like, we got to do that first because that kid is an elite athlete and it's really important to him. We got to decide this right away so someone's not filing a motion with the court because the kid misses the deadline and then he's stressed out and then he doesn't want to go to dads or moms or whoever it was that said they can't play. And then we have resist refuse in the making of kids saying, I'm not going. He won't let me play soccer. So parent coordinators, that's how we can keep parents out of court and working together for the best interest of their children by holding the mirror up and just reflecting and saying, Hey, remember this other person who you had these children with has a say in this and let's have a discussion. And in the end, we don't want you guys to need us anymore. We want to be obsolete. We want to teach you some skills. So speaking of which, Tracy, what are some good co-parenting skills that you absolutely think parents need, especially when they're going through litigation and court and there's a lot of mistrust. So what are some skills that you ask them to work on? And then if you have any resources or books or anything you would recommend.

So I would say in terms of the skills, I would start with communication. There's always that expression. Communication is key that you hear people throw around all the time, but it really is in these cases, so often what I see are parents who are still trying to litigate their case. They're emailing. And so it'll start out with a little, Lauren is tired today because she didn't sleep well last night. Instead of just putting a period there, then it's like, and it's probably because she's stressed out because of what you did the other day and she's upset about blah, blah, blah. And then they go into this whole thing of this s back history of all of this other stuff. And then what happens is that the other parent reads that first sentence starts out strong and then all of a sudden they read all this stuff coming at them and then they want to defend themselves against all of that.

And so then it starts as back and forth argument and the message gets lost, which is that Lauren's tired and let's make sure she gets some sleep tonight. And so I really want to help parents learn how to keep all the emotion out of it to stick to the facts, keep it brief, keep it factual, inform friendly, be polite, be civil. That's one of my big tools. Another one, and this is one of my top things that I require parents to do is say hi to each other. When your child's around, you don't have to say it verbally, you can just wave. A lot of parents won't do that, right? They're so upset with that other parent, they don't like 'em. They just really want to make it clear to that other parent that they're not even going to acknowledge them or their existence. That is so hard for child, especially if you love both of your parents and it's awkward if they're at soccer, they feel like every other children's parents are all saying hi.

And of course, especially as you get teenage, you feel like everyone's looking at you. Kids feel embarrassed when their parents are the only two who don't even acknowledge each other. It's really stressful. I have so many kids in my role as a therapist where I'm not even the parenting coordinator who have these situations and they come in and it's amazing how much anxiety and upset kids get around fact that their parents won't say hi to each other. So that's one of my top things with my couples. I'm like, you'll say hi. I know that if a stranger drives down your street that you've never met before, you're probably going to put your hand up the little wave that we do here, they're going to do it. You've never even met them. So if you can do that with someone you don't know who for all could be a horrible person, but yeah, you'll say hi to them. You can at least say hi to the parent of your child whom you would not even have these beautiful children. So if for no other reason than that they helped you create these children, you could put your hand up and say a little hello. You could even maybe even actually say the word hello. It's a small ask, but it has such big implications for a child. What are some that you use? What are some of your top ones?

So to your point, I try to the brief informative, fact filled communications. So I always recommend that they look at Bill Eddie's books, his the Biff, and basically treat the other parent as you would a business partner and your business is raising your children, and would you treat your business partner like that or would you say that to a business partner? You're trying to solve a business problem? Do they need to know how angry you are about such and such? Or your mother did this to me this many years ago and blah blah. Is that going to solve the problem or is that going to make the problem worse? And so I echo you, the communication piece is a key. And over-communicating can be just as bad as not communicating or communicating in a poor way. That one. And also just keeping, I often will tell them when I first meet with them, I will say, show me a picture of your children.

And whenever we do our joint sessions, I have a picture of the children so that we remember why we're here and who's the most important person in the room. And we put everything aside and we focus on the children. And I think a lot of times they do. People might try to use parent coordinators to bolster their case or win them over so that if they file something, they'll say, Tracy's going to take my side. I know she likes me better, or Sheila's going to take my side. And I'm like, Uhuh, that's not what we do. We're appointed by the court and our job is to help parents to implement an actual court order to interpret it when there's a misunderstanding. Sometimes there's no time for the exchange on the order and everyone's fighting and so-and-so thinks it's after school. So-and-so thinks it's at 6:00 PM.

And so the parent coordinator may say, okay, where do you live? How long does it take you? Where do you work? When can you get there? I'm going to pick the place, I'm going to pick the exchange place. We can't have the child waiting at the afterschool program after it's closing and no one's picking them up because you've dug your heels in and said it's at 6:00 PM and you just let the child wait at school because you're going to stick it to the other parent. That's not okay. And so parent coordinators get in there, we can say, here's what's going to happen with no arm. We're going to do what's best for your child. We can make temporary decisions about things that are not directly addressed in the order. And if parents don't like it, the statute actually allows them the opportunity to either through their attorneys or on their own to say, Hey judge, we don't like this decision.

So as much as we do keep you out of court, if we have to go to court, we are not mom's attorney or dad's attorney or anyone's attorney. We are simply a neutral who is trying to help the parents to communicate co-parent and follow the court order. And we will simply let the court know, here's what I tried, this worked that didn't work. Or Hey, your honor, I need help or we need, or another thing I think Tracy would be helpful is what kinds of recommendations can parent coordinators make along the way? We're involved in a case and a child presents with some mental health issue. Can we jump in and address any of that?

Yeah, absolutely. We can make recommendations that the child see a therapist or at least be evaluated to see if there's either a reason. So if we have some concerns or one parent raises concerns, I see that a lot where one parent says, I think that my child's struggling and they need to see a therapist and the other parent says, no, they seem fine when they're with me. So sometimes we can just make that the call that we're going to go have an evaluation done. We're going to go let somebody who is trained actually assess that and determine does this child need it or not? And if they recommend therapy, then we're going to put that in place. And if they don't, then we're going to go with that. So we can help in areas like that as well. There's really a lot of different areas.

It comes down to anything that's essentially child related, that are child focused, that the parents are unable to agree upon unless it's not in the order. Again, the judges will give us, there's some standard statute in North Carolina of things which are pretty much automatically in the purview of the parenting coordinator, but then there's things that can be added to it as well. And so unless something's excluded from it or specifically it says you cannot do it. For example, finances, we can't help with making child support and things like that. But if it's not something that's excluded, then we can help with that.

And oftentimes, sometimes a child's involved in a special activity or they're being homeschooled or there are practices that involve travel and tournaments, et cetera. And we spend a lot of our time with calendars and schedules and trying to coordinate swaps of time. One parent's like, I'm not driving enough to wherever for that tournament. And the other parent's like, I'll take her, but then there's a matter of makeup time and that's always sticky, but we can help with that too, to make sure that if you do a swap of some sort, we can make sure that whatever makeup time is put in place is fair

And we can make some changes or sometimes just buttoning up, if you will, the order. So I see cases sometimes where we'll say that parent A is going to drop the child off at school on their last day of parenting time. Let's say it's a Friday and parent B is to pick the child up at 3:00 PM When school gets out on Friday, the other parent will take them for their parenting time, and that's great until the day that there's early release. So school gets out, it's not three. So what happens, right? So does that mean that parent A goes and gets the kid early, hangs onto them, and then comes back to the school at 3:00 PM for that switch? Does it mean that parent B then actually gets to not have to wait till three and gets to pick them up early so we can help with that, right? With giving some really clear direction around that to get rid of some of those gray areas? Because a lot of times that does end up causing conflict between parents because one parent's like, no, I get them. And the other parent's like, no, that doesn't make sense. I get them so we can help with that.

Yeah, exactly. Sometimes orders are not as clear about when a holiday starts. Sometimes it'll say when school dismisses and when the order was entered, the child was in a preschool and now the child's in a private school and it's a totally different schedule, and the other child is on a public school schedule. So now we have three kids on three different schedules and everyone's confused about when the holidays. So we can help with that, we can help them navigate that. And a lot of times it's just common sense, but it does help parents, I think, in the long run to keep them out of court to help them to keep their children front and center and to focus on what's best for their children. I do think we make a difference when we get the chance to help.

Absolutely. I love it when they don't need me. Like you said earlier, this is one of those jobs where you measure success by the fact that you work yourself out of the job. And I have cases where the co-parents come to me and there's a lot of things going on, and we spend quite a bit of time in the beginning just solving things and fixing things and getting things on track. And then I might not hear from them for years. And then out of the blue they'll call me and say, Hey, we're stuck on this one thing. Can we come and talk to you? And we figure it out and then I don't hear from them again until the child turns 18. I love that. I love getting the update of how they're doing, and I love the fact that they're not needing me, but it's nice to also be here and to have that, they have that comfort that they know they can just call me just if they get stuck. But that is what we're always looking for, is that we can take on new cases and help new people because we're less, we're not needed so much by the ones that we've already been working with. So I do think we make a difference. I have pretty much all the cases I start with as I've had them for a while. I rarely if ever hear from the families anymore. So that's always a great feeling that you do know that you're making a difference and that you're doing well.

So with regard, yeah, the parent coordinating versus the parent coaching, I know that you do the parent coaching, that would be a different scenario. That would be something that they could just contact your office and you could coach a parent. But that's different, right?

It's different, right? Again, because it doesn't have the authority of the court behind it. But if people don't want to go and have a parenting coordinator or don't have the means to do that or want to go through the court system, they can get divorce coaching or what's called co-parent coaching. They're a little bit different. Divorce coaching really looks at the whole thing of helping you navigate emotions and lots of other parts of the divorce and coming up with ideas for parenting time. Co-parent coaching is really, we'll sit down with you and coach the two parents and trying to resolve some of these issues, and so you don't have to have that same court order. Both of those are really just there to help parents improve their communication, have them manage their conflicts, and really just come up with some more effective co-parenting strategies, if you will.

Yeah, the co-parenting therapy. Now, I know there's co co-parenting, coaching, divorce coaching, which you're helping people navigate the new terrain of early separation so that you can deescalate your emotions and kind of focus on resolving problems. But what would co-parenting therapy be as opposed to what we were just talking about?

So co-parenting counseling is going to be a little different because it's going to have that therapeutic focus. So really it is a more emotional therapy. So it's helping parents identify and understand their emotional triggers, right? Learning how to do some activities or some tools or some things to manage those emotions. So it really is going from a much more therapeutic lens. It's still there to help improve collaboration. It's helping parents really have more insight into their own selves and kind of their contributions to conflict that might stem from their family of origin or things that have happened in their own life, and maybe they're projecting onto their co-parent. So it really is using a lot more of a therapeutic lens through which to look at the situation, but it is still also there to help them come up with some tools and some ways to manage those things, right, and to help improve that co-parenting relationship and help make things less stressful and a lot more peaceful.

And then the other alternative that parents have too that I just want to make sure we mention is that there are co-parenting courses out there, right? They're educational program and they are there to teach parents how to reduce conflict, how to support their children's adjustment. Again, just how to build healthy co-parenting routines and behaviors. You can find them sometimes being offered in person, sometimes they're done as groups, and there's even some online courses that do that. So there's a lot of other alternatives to parenting coordinating that can help co-parents, but they each serve a different role depending upon what the situation is and what's going to be the right fit for that family.

Well, thank you very, very much for all your time today. We really, I've learned a lot even after doing this for so many years. You've thrown it even more often than I didn't know about. So thank you for that. And goodbye everyone. Thank you for joining us today.

All right, thank you for having me.

So there you have it. Another neighborhood of Splitsville explored. There's still so much to learn here, so I hope you'll tune in to the next episode. While Splitsville is not a fun place to be, thankfully, it is full of helpful people, valuable resources and sound advice. If you know where to look, see you next time.

The insights and views presented in Welcome to Splitsville are for general information purposes only and should not be taken as legal advice for any individual case or situation. Nor does tuning into this podcast constitute an attorney-client relationship of any kind. If you are ready for compassionate and reliable legal guidance on your journey, contact lease sellers and her team at www.touchstonefamilylaw.com.