How to Reduce Parenting Coordination Fees: Why Parenting Coordination Becomes Expensive and What Parents Can Do About It

Jun 20, 2026·By Cori McGuire

One of the most common concerns parents raise about parenting coordination is cost. After more than 18 years as a Parenting Coordinator in British Columbia, I have come to believe that the biggest costs in many parenting coordination files are not created by the children's issues themselves. More often, they are created by the process surrounding those issues.

Parents frequently assume that Parenting Coordinator fees are driven primarily by meetings, recommendations, determinations, and dispute resolution. In reality, a substantial portion of Parenting Coordinator time is often devoted to reviewing communications, managing process concerns, addressing clarification requests, organizing information, documenting services, preparing reports and accounts, and ensuring procedural fairness throughout the process.

In high-conflict files, the process surrounding an issue can become more expensive than the issue itself. Understanding why this happens is one of the most effective ways to reduce parenting coordination fees.

Why Parenting Coordination Fees Become Expensive

Most parenting disputes are not particularly complicated in isolation. Disagreements about holiday schedules, travel consent, extracurricular activities, camps, transportation, tutoring, communication arrangements, medical appointments, or implementation of an existing parenting plan are often capable of resolution through a straightforward consultation process.

What becomes expensive is the expansion of the process surrounding those issues.

A single disagreement can gradually expand into discussions about fairness, timelines, communication style, process concerns, jurisdiction questions, repeated clarification requests, allegations of bias, historical grievances, collateral issues, and responses to previous responses. As the process expands, the amount of professional review, correspondence, administration, and documentation required increases significantly.

The result is that parents may feel they are paying for one issue, while the Parenting Coordinator is actually managing ten.

The Hidden Cost of Parenting Coordination Reports and Documentation

Many parents are surprised to learn that one of the largest costs in parenting coordination is often documentation.

Every communication sent to a Parenting Coordinator may require professional review, consideration, organization, response, file management, billing description, and eventual reporting. In some cases, a brief email may ultimately require substantially more time to document than it took to write.

In high-conflict matters, detailed documentation becomes particularly important because parents may later question neutrality, fairness, jurisdiction, billing, recommendations, determinations, or the manner in which the process was conducted. The Parenting Coordinator must then be able to demonstrate what information was received, what information was reviewed, what work was performed, and how the issue progressed through the process.

This means that every communication has a downstream cost. The expense is not limited to reading the email. The expense includes the future work required to accurately document, explain, and account for that communication.

Communicating With a Parenting Coordinator Is Similar to Communicating With a Lawyer

Most people understand that communication with a lawyer should be disciplined if legal bills are to remain manageable. Clients generally do not send their lawyer every frustration, concern, reaction, or disagreement because they recognize that professional review costs money.

The same principle applies in parenting coordination.

Every email, message, proposal, concern, complaint, request for clarification, fairness concern, or jurisdiction concern requires professional attention. Just as communication with a lawyer should be focused and purposeful, communication with a Parenting Coordinator should also be focused and purposeful.

This does not mean parents should remain silent. It means communications should be directed toward resolving parenting issues rather than expanding the process.

Fairness Does Not Require Unlimited Correspondence

Parents are entitled to procedural fairness. They are entitled to raise concerns about process, neutrality, jurisdiction, fairness, timelines, and the children's interests. Those rights are important.

However, procedural fairness should not be confused with unlimited correspondence.

There is a significant difference between raising a concern and repeatedly debating a concern after it has been reviewed and addressed. There is also a difference between seeking clarification necessary to participate meaningfully in the process and repeatedly challenging the same process step because a parent disagrees with the answer.

Effective parenting coordination requires fairness, but it also requires proportionality. If every explanation generates another explanation, the process itself can become more expensive than the issue that originally required attention.

One of the most important lessons in high-conflict parenting coordination is that fairness is often best protected through structure rather than through unlimited discussion.

When the Process Becomes the Dispute

In many high-conflict files, the parenting issue gradually fades into the background and the process itself becomes the dispute.

What begins as a disagreement about summer holidays or extracurricular activities may evolve into ongoing discussions about fairness, timelines, wording, communication methods, process rules, jurisdiction, previous disputes, and allegations regarding the other parent.

At that point, the Parenting Coordinator is spending increasing amounts of time managing the process rather than helping resolve the actual parenting issue.

This is one of the primary reasons parenting coordination becomes expensive.

In my experience, the most expensive files are rarely the files involving the most difficult parenting decisions. They are often the files where the process itself becomes the focus of the conflict.

The One-Active-Issue Rule

One of the most effective ways to reduce parenting coordination costs is to focus on one significant issue at a time.

If the active issue is summer holiday scheduling, then the process should generally remain focused on summer holiday scheduling until that issue is resolved, recommended upon, or determined. Other issues can be acknowledged, logged, and addressed later if necessary.

Problems arise when a discussion about one issue expands into discussions about five or six additional issues. A conversation about holidays can quickly become a discussion about extracurricular activities, communication concerns, grandparents, transportation, fairness concerns, and previous disagreements. Every additional issue generates additional review, correspondence, administration, and reporting.

Issue sequencing is not merely an administrative tool. It is one of the most important cost-containment tools available.

What Makes a Good Parenting Coordination Communication?

The most effective communications are usually concise, focused, and solution-oriented.

A useful communication generally identifies:

The issue;
The proposal;
The child-focused reason for the proposal; and
The outcome being requested.

For example:

Issue: Summer holidays.

Proposal: Two-week holiday period from July 15 to July 29.

Reason: Existing travel arrangements and family availability.

Requested outcome: Agreement, recommendation, or determination.

This type of communication is straightforward to review and often much less expensive than a lengthy communication discussing multiple unrelated concerns.

Practical Ways to Reduce Parenting Coordination Fees

Parents can significantly reduce parenting coordination costs by following a few simple principles.

1. Raise one issue at a time. A single communication should generally address a single issue.
2. Avoid combining multiple disputes into one email. Multiple issues are more difficult and expensive to review, organize, and report. Include a proposal rather than simply identifying a problem.
3. Focus on current parenting issues rather than historical grievances.
4. Avoid repeated requests for clarification after a question has already been answered.
5. Respect timelines and provide requested information when requested.
6. Raise fairness, jurisdiction, or process concerns promptly and specifically.
7. Attach supporting documents rather than repeatedly summarizing the same information.
8. Distinguish disagreement from procedural unfairness. Not every outcome you disagree with is necessarily unfair.
9. Consider whether the issue genuinely requires professional involvement before seeking Parenting Coordinator assistance.
10. Most importantly, remember that every communication may later require documentation and reporting.

The $367.50 Question

Before sending a communication to your Parenting Coordinator, consider one simple question: Is this issue important enough to justify the cost of professional review?

If a Parenting Coordinator charges $350 per hour, six minutes of professional time with G.S.T. costs approximately $36.75. Most communications require more than six minutes once review, consideration, response, documentation, and reporting obligations are considered.

This is not a reason to avoid raising important concerns. Rather, it is an invitation to communicate thoughtfully and strategically.

The goal is not to eliminate communication. The goal is to ensure that professional time is spent on issues that genuinely matter to the children and the parenting arrangements.

The Responsibility of Parenting Coordinators

Parents are not the only people responsible for controlling costs. Parenting Coordinators also have a responsibility to create structured processes that remain proportionate to the issues being addressed.

In my view, effective parenting coordination requires:

One active issue at a time;
Issue sequencing;
Clear timelines;
Focused consultation;
Concise proposals;
Distinguishing substantive issues from process commentary;
Containing collateral issues;
Addressing legitimate process concerns without allowing them to become the primary dispute; and
Maintaining proportionality throughout the process.

The purpose of structure is not to silence parents. The purpose of structure is to ensure that parenting coordination remains affordable, effective, and child-focused.

The Goal Is Not Perfect Agreement

Many people mistakenly believe that successful parenting coordination means reaching agreement on every issue. It does not.

Success means having a process that allows parenting issues to be addressed in a timely, practical, child-focused, and affordable manner. Parents do not have to agree on everything. They do need to work within a structure that permits disagreements to be addressed efficiently.

A well-structured process protects everyone involved. It protects children from being drawn into adult conflict. It protects parents from unnecessary escalation. It protects the affordability of the process itself.

Final Thoughts

The most expensive parenting coordination files are rarely the files involving the most difficult parenting decisions. More often, they are the files where the process itself becomes the dispute.

Reducing parenting coordination fees requires cooperation from both parents and Parenting Coordinators. Parents can help by communicating purposefully, focusing on solutions, and limiting communications to matters that genuinely require professional involvement. Parenting Coordinators can help by imposing structure, sequencing issues, maintaining focus, and preventing the process from becoming open-ended.

After more than 18 years of practice, I have become convinced that parenting coordination works best when everyone remembers a simple principle: the goal is not to win the process. The goal is to resolve parenting issues in a manner that is child-focused, practical, affordable, and sustainable for the family moving forward.

Written by Cori McGuire, a Parenting Coordinator since 2008 and a family law lawyer since 1998 in British Columbia. For further reading regarding PC fees try How Parenting Coordination Is Structured to Contain Fees and Is Parenting Coordination a Waste of Money When Your Co‑Parent Won’t Budge?