604 - The Best Advice for Co-Parents, as the Summer Holidays Loom

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Welcome to Modern Mindset, the show that picks the brains of the world's leading minds to help you unlock yours. Decoding the beliefs and strategies of global experts to give you an updated mindset to make the most of modern life.

**Rory McGowan** (0:21)
This is Modern Mindset, the show that picks the brains of the world's leading minds to help you unlock yours. My name is Rory McGowan, and today we're talking about all things co-parenting. Whilst children look forward to the summer holidays, it's sad to say that many co-parents do not. With new research suggesting that 72% of co-parents across the country are expecting conflict over the summer, I'm sitting down with a family law solicitor who can give you the best tips when it comes to knowing what your rights are and how to avoid any co-parenting disputes ending up in court.
I'm joined by Daniel Ryan, a family law solicitor, and the soon-to-be host of his own podcast, the That Family Law Guy Unfiltered Podcast. Daniel, it's lovely to have you on.

**Daniel Ryan** (1:05)
And it's lovely to be here, Rory.

**Rory McGowan** (1:07)
Well, thank you very much.
I think to start, could you paint the picture for us a little bit? For those who are more co-parents who are listening to this, who are being introduced to this world, why is the summer holiday such a tough time for people who have co-parenting responsibilities?

**Daniel Ryan** (1:25)
The difficulty with the summer holidays is that co-parents, mom and dad, lose their structure. The school, schooling and term time provides this very natural framework that parents can work with in, because children have got to be in school at the start of the day and the end of the day.
As soon as school breaks up and we enter into summer holidays, suddenly we've got this free-for-all, this sort of open framework that parents have then got to try and deal with, and they've got to deal with, well, who's going to have the children? How is that going to work? What about my work commitment? What about your work commitment? What about the fact that I don't want to be cooperative? And what about the fact that nor do you? So it can open up into a conflict that rages for the whole of August into early September and then suddenly calms down again when term starts again.

**Rory McGowan** (2:19)
And of course, yeah, those six weeks can be very pivotal, because the last thing a child wants is, you know, the time that they associate with fun and happiness and getting outside and doing something different to turn into a time that they remember for their parents having disputes and rows all the time. So you've been doing this, you've been a family law solicitor for some time. What are kind of the most common disputes then that you end up dealing with when you're talking about situations like this?

**Daniel Ryan** (2:49)
Heading into some of the disputes is always one of possession. What I mean by that is that each parent feels they have the right to possess the children and dictate what it is is going to happen.
Within family court, there are invariably two parents carrying different titles. We have one we refer to as the primary, i.e. the parent where the children live for the bulk of their time. And then we have the secondary parent, often the dad, not always, but often the dad, who gets given an amount of time available to him to see his children or their children. The issue over summer is that the primary parent feels that they have the right to dictate what will happen, and that their wishes and feelings come first. So I have these plans with the children, I intend to make these plans happen for the children, your plans, whatever they might be, will come second, or not at all.
And that is what brings the conflict through the summer, is the fact that parents just can't take, and I appreciate all the emotion and all of the issue, but they can't take a common sense approach, which is, it's the summer, we all remember the summers of our childhoods, and hopefully for most of us, that was a good time. Surely, we have that obligation to deliver that same good time to our children for their summer, and they get to do things with mom, and they get to do things with dad.

**Rory McGowan** (4:19)
Yeah, appreciating that it is a very emotional time, Daniel.
There's two real issues there that I initially pick up on. The first is that it must come down to some sort of communication breakdown. If both partners are trying to force their plans onto one another, clearly they do not seem eager to communicate the compromise there. But it's also the idea, as you say, of being dutiful, you know, understanding that it's not about necessarily what you want to do. But to be fair to both sides of this, I imagine that that kind of duty is in part then thinking, well, I don't like the plans that they have with the other person, and therefore I don't want my child to be doing X, Y or Z over the summer holidays.