The Joyce Model in Parenting Coordination

Changing the Decision-Making Structure When Parents Remain Deadlocked

Parenting Coordination is often used when separated parents have difficulty consulting, making decisions and implementing parenting arrangements together. It can provide structure when parents reach an impasse and, where jurisdiction permits, provide a pathway to a determination when agreement cannot be reached.

Sometimes, however, the problem becomes larger than the particular parenting issue being discussed. Decisions repeatedly become delayed, consultation produces more disagreement rather than resolution, professional involvement becomes disproportionate, or the Parenting Coordination process itself becomes the subject of dispute.

At that point, the important question may no longer be who is right about the latest issue. The more useful question may be whether the family still has a workable structure for getting from disagreement to decision and implementation.

First, Identify the Problem

A breakdown in decision-making does not establish its cause. Concerns about the Parenting Coordinator, jurisdiction, procedural fairness, proportionality, cost or the services being provided may be legitimate and should not be dismissed simply because they arise in a high-conflict parenting case.

The difficulty may instead lie in the existing parenting arrangement, the parents' ability to use that arrangement, the dispute-resolution process supporting it, or some combination of these factors. Different problems require different solutions, which is why diagnosis should come before restructuring.

Parenting Coordination should not become another forum for deciding which parent is to blame. The objective is to understand why decisions are not being made reliably and what structure might allow the family to move forward.

Sometimes the Issue Is Not the Issue

A disagreement about school, counselling, healthcare or an extracurricular activity may look like a dispute about that particular subject. But when similar disputes repeatedly follow the same path, the recurring difficulty may be the decision-making process itself.

The parents may exchange increasing amounts of information without getting closer to a decision. New concerns may emerge during consultation, the scope of the discussion may expand, or substantial professional time may be required before the original question can finally be resolved. Resolving the immediate issue may therefore solve only today's problem. Tomorrow's issue can reproduce exactly the same process.

That is when it becomes useful to step back and ask: What structure takes this family from information, through reasonable consultation, to a timely decision and implementation?

Structure Creates the Process

There is no single decision-making structure that will work for every separated family. Some parents need very little professional involvement, while others benefit from considerable structure around consultation and dispute resolution.

The amount of consensus-building that is useful may also differ between families. Where parents can frequently reach agreement, giving them room to do so can preserve autonomy and reduce professional costs. Where extended consultation repeatedly produces issue expansion without resolution, a more contained process may be more proportionate.

The objective is not to eliminate disagreement. It is to create a sufficiently clear and predictable pathway through it:

Information → Consultation → Decision → Implementation

The mechanism used to move from consultation to decision can vary.

Different Families May Need Different Models

Possible structures may include shared decision-making with little outside involvement, shared decision-making supported by Parenting Coordination, a more streamlined Parenting Coordination process, allocation of particular parental responsibilities between parents, arbitration of defined disputes, or another structure appropriate to the circumstances.

These are possibilities rather than an exhaustive list of models. A family lawyer, Parenting Coordinator, arbitrator or court may identify other approaches depending upon the parenting arrangements, the issues requiring decisions, the child's best interests and the legal authority available.

Nor should movement toward greater structure automatically be understood as a consequence imposed upon one parent. The question is functional: What decision-making structure is reasonably capable of working for this family?

Parenting Coordination Is One Possible Structure

Parenting Coordination can be particularly useful where parents have an existing parenting arrangement that generally works but need assistance implementing it. The Parenting Coordinator can structure consultation, assist parents in resolving disagreements and, within the authority actually conferred, determine eligible implementation disputes when agreement cannot be reached.

The amount of intervention need not be identical in every case. A process can allow meaningful opportunities for parental agreement without assuming that every dispute requires prolonged facilitation before it can move toward resolution.

Proportionality matters. Professional dispute resolution should help families make decisions, not unintentionally create a process in which the cost of reaching the decision becomes greater than the significance of the decision itself.

Arbitration May Provide Another Path

Some disputes may be better suited to a defined adjudicative process rather than ongoing Parenting Coordination. Arbitration can potentially provide a structured pathway for resolving a particular dispute, or a defined group of disputes, where arbitration is legally available and the necessary jurisdiction and process have been properly established.

The process itself can then be designed around the problem. Issues can be identified and contained, appropriate information or submissions obtained, opportunities for agreement provided where useful, and unresolved matters moved toward decision rather than allowing consultation to continue indefinitely.

This does not make arbitration preferable to Parenting Coordination. They perform different functions. The important insight is that the dispute-resolution process should fit the problem rather than requiring every problem to fit the same process.

Sometimes the Parenting Structure Itself Needs Attention

There will also be situations in which neither better Parenting Coordination nor another individual determination solves the underlying difficulty. Repeated inability to make necessary parenting decisions can raise a broader question about whether the existing allocation of parental responsibilities remains workable.

That question belongs in the appropriate legal process. A Parenting Coordinator should not fundamentally redesign the parenting arrangements simply because implementation has become difficult.

Court involvement should therefore not always be viewed as a failure of dispute resolution. Sometimes the useful work of a dispute-resolution process is identifying that the existing structure has reached its limits and that a different legal structure requires consideration.

The Goal Is Reliable Decision-Making

Children's lives continue while adults disagree. School decisions arise, activities have registration deadlines, healthcare needs develop and circumstances change. A successful parenting structure therefore does not require parents to stop disagreeing. It requires a reliable way of moving through disagreement so that necessary decisions can still be made.

The appropriate structure will differ between families and may change over time. Parenting Coordination is one possible tool. Arbitration, differently allocated parental responsibilities, court intervention and other carefully designed processes may also have a role.

The central question remains simple: Does the existing structure help this family move from disagreement to decision and implementation in a fair, timely and proportionate way?

If the answer is no, the next step should not automatically be more of the same process. It may be time to examine the structure.

Written by Cori L. McGuire, family law mediator, arbitrator, collaborative family law lawyer and Parenting Coordinator with a family law practice in British Columbia since 1998. 

© 2026 Cori McGuire. All Rights Reserved. Proprietary Workflow.

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