The Day-By-Day Agreement™

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I think it is interesting that attorneys get paid for drafting parenting agreements and even more interesting that they are asked to draft them by the parents. A parenting agreement by its very nature demands simplicity, fairness, clarity and the ability to keep the parties focused on true north. As a whole, the legal profession does not have a draftsmanship history rich in the themes of simplicity, fairness nor clarity. So what you end up with is either a document with Draconian standards of conduct or one resembling the structural equivalent of oatmeal – warm, sweet-smelling, with a pleasant texture, but no staying power. The result of implementing either extreme of document is that you create a conversation that mimics the tone of the trials at Nuremberg or at the other extreme, a conversation that resembles the late Mr. Rogers on Prozac.

Our experience has shown that once the two divorcing people move past dividing the property, discussing the children seems a bit easier. It is also been our experience that if you can't agree on who gets the toaster, you most likely can't agree on who gets the youngsters. Our bias in the DMP™ is that adults who can't agree on toasters have some pretty large hurdles to overcome to get to agreement on children.

The Day-By-Day Agreement™ is our attempt to enable the parents to create communication, cooperation and collaboration in their conversations about the children. If the document is designed correctly you create a structure that addresses about 80% of the things that need to be addressed with the remaining 20% being subject to some amount of flexibility, adaptability and innovation when it is appropriate. As a guidepost, innovation is about experience for the child and civility as about the child's experience with others. Innovate when it comes to vacation. Don't innovate when it come to manners.

The Day-By-Day Agreement™ is really the beginning phase of The Future Child Project™. It becomes the daily operating system that allows two physically and perhaps emotionally estranged people to manage a project together, without resorting to violence. Think of The Day-By-Day Agreement™ as the parenting equivalent of Microsoft's Windows™. In fact, it functions as Windows™ for Parents. It allows you to multi-task, with numerous screens running, communicate effectively with each other, all with a fairly flexible and adaptable structure.

The Day-By-Day Agreement™ has as it's core operating system the principles of clarity, accountability, responsibility and duty. The Parent C.A.R.D.™, if you will. Think of the acronyms that we use as a sort of flash card for adults. Here's how the principles of C.A.R.D.™ work in The Day-By-Day Agreement™:

• Clarity – The mutual standards for responsibilities, boundaries, duties, accountability, standards, expectation, etc. of each parent are crystal-like in the clarity so that the possibility for excuse, misunderstanding, and other forms of the "I didn't know you meant that" excuse are eliminated.
• Accountability – Each parent is accountable to themselves and to each other in the agreement. You ultimately are accountable for what you can control: your time, your attitude, your choices, your decisions, your behaviors. Accountable means there are no "the dog ate my homework" conversations.
• Responsibility – Responsibility means "if it's yours to do, it is yours to do." If it's easy, do it easy. If it's hard, do it hard. Just make sure it gets done. There is no one to blame in the model; no one to look to, no one to shirk off the task to. It is yours and yours alone.
• Duty – The Day-By Day Agreement™ has as one of it's premises that parenting is first of all a duty. It is a duty you chose by creating children on purpose or by accident. You have a duty to participate, to protect, to provide and to promote all that is in the best interests (as you see them) of your child. Don't think of duty as a burden. Think of it as a privilege. Think of yourself as sort of attendant to nobility. All children are noble, or should at least be treated that way.

The Day-By-Day Agreement™ as an operating mechanism doesn't require that as co-parents you like each other, admire each other or respect each other. It doesn't depend on how you feel in order to operate. How you feel depends on the weather, the traffic and what you shouldn't have eaten. The Day-By-Day Agreement™ does not depend on how you feel, it depends on what you do. At the risk of offending the "feelings as litmus for behavior" crowd, it seems to me that figuring out what to do based on your duty is a much clearer path than figuring out what to do based on how you feel.

A psychologist acquaintance asked me what The Day-By-Day Agreement™ was based upon. Being an amateur climber in the relatively thin air of psychoanalysis theory, I replied that it was based on the idea that if we as people are given a structure to operate from, goals and objectives to accomplish and duties and responsibilities to assume, then usually something gets done. Whether the motivation is Freudian, Jungian, New Age or Napoleonic doesn't really matter. What matters is whether two people can complete jointly, but apart, what they began jointly and together. The proof is simply whether a child or children are given structure in such a way that when they leave to join the world they do so with dignity, honor, confidence and contribution as their guideposts.

On the following pages is a sample of how we might design such an agreement for clients. Is it too shallow or perhaps superficial? Perhaps. It, like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder. As a creator of documents and a reader of even more, I am clear about a couple of things. When it comes to agreements, no document, no matter how carefully structured, analyzed or thought about, can cover all the possible situations and contingencies that may arise in the course of the agreement. I am also clear that not having something written down is a prescription for disaster. The Day-By-Day Agreement™ is really based on the idea that less is more, less is simpler and less is more flexible. Documents should be frameworks for statements of intent and guideposts. They were meant to refresh memory and not create character.

Think of The Day-By Day Agreement™ as a highly flexible, highly adaptive, highly evolving structure that is capable of being responsive and innovative to the changing demands and requirements of parenthood. We had fun creating it. We hope you have fun using it.