Parents who use parenting coordination, or who need to hire mediators and arbitrators for long-term appointments, tend to have more intense levels of conflict than other separated parents and tend to experience that conflict more frequently. Thanks to smartphones, arguments don’t need to end when someone slams the door shut or hangs up the phone. They can carry on for hours, days and weeks, through text, email and social media, and often do.

Understandably, when people in conflict have hired a parenting coordinator, mediator or arbitrator, they sometimes want to send that person copies of all those text messages, emails and social media posts, often the moment they’ve sent or received them. This can get expensive for everyone involved, since parenting coordinators, mediators and arbitrators typically charge by the hour to review material, regardless of whether the flood of texts, emails and posts actually helps them understand or resolve a dispute. It can also get rather frustrating, especially if there are any expectations that the parenting coordinator, mediator or arbitrator is going to be rushing to respond to those communications right away.

These guidelines are intended to help establish a few boundaries and set some common expectations about how communication with John-Paul Boyd will usually work.

communications After business hours

John-Paul will not usually be available to respond to emails and answer phone calls outside of normal business hours, 8:00am to 6:00pm mountain time, Monday to Friday. He will do his best to make himself more available for people who are in the middle of resolving a problem or when there is an urgent issue to be dealt with. Otherwise, you mustn’t expect that John-Paul will be able to respond to after-hours emails and phone calls.

transparency & confidentiality

When serving as mediator and arbitrator, John-Paul must remain neutral and unbiased, and be seen by everyone as remaining neutral and unbiased. This means that communications must generally include everyone, and that John-Paul will usually copy his emails, including replies, to all parties and their lawyers.

Parenting coordination, however, is not a transparent or confidential process. John-Paul will exercise his discretion in deciding what to share with everyone, including communications he has received from just one party. There are a few exceptions to this general rule.

First, John-Paul will not share emails marked “confidential” in the subject line. If he feels that there is something in an email which another parent should know about, especially anything that affects children’s health or wellbeing, he will talk to the sender about his concerns and try to work out how the information in the email can be shared with the other parent. Second, John-Paul will usually but not invariably avoid sharing emails he receives in the course of trying reach a compromise on a sensitive issue. Third, there will be times when John-Paul intentionally does not share a communication with the other parent. Reasons for this might include his concern that the tone or content of the communication will derail the progress that is being made, his opinion that the communication is unnecessarily or pointlessly inflammatory, or his opinion that sharing the communication would not be in the interests of the children.

Lengthy emails

Reading and replying to long emails requires an enormous amount of John-Paul’s time, which we charge for, and John-Paul will not always have the time to do so as a result of the needs of other clients. While John-Paul will usually be able to provide a prompt response to emails that demand only a brief reply, he will not be able to reply as quickly to emails that demand more of his attention and time.

You may send long emails to John-Paul as you wish, of course, but it’s important to understand that John-Paul’s reply to lengthy emails will at times be delayed.

It may instead be more cost-effective to address the content of long emails by telephone or videoconference. It’s often easier and faster for everyone to deal with a lengthy list of concerns in a conversation than through a written reply.

Frequent emails

Tracking and meaningfully replying to multiple emails every day — or every hour — is almost as challenging and time-consuming for John-Paul as addressing lengthy emails. Frequent emails are sometimes necessary when a problem is in the midst of being resolved, and, in circumstances like that, John-Paul will often ask questions and raise issues that require multiple replies. Otherwise, it may be better to wait until the end of the day to send one or two emails than send a flurry of emails throughout the day as problems, complaints or ideas occur to you.

Response time

John-Paul will not always be able to reply to communications on the day they are received. This is especially likely to be the case when he is attending a meeting or hearing away from the office, is involved in a mediation or arbitration that runs into the evening, or is engaged in a time-sensitive task that cannot easily be interrupted.

John-Paul aims to reply to incoming communications within two or three days. Unfortunately, this goal cannot always be met.

abusive language

Abusive, accusatory and threatening language will not be tolerated, and may result in the suspension or termination of services, or the redistribution of a portion of our fees between the abusive party and the other party, depending on the terms of the participation agreement the parties have signed.