When Parenting Coordination Doesn’t Work — and Why Structure Sometimes Matters More Than Coaching

Apr 01, 2026·By Cori McGuire

High-conflict parenting matters exist on a spectrum. Most families who enter Parenting Coordination are not at the extreme end of that spectrum.

Many parents arrive overwhelmed, reactive and uncertain, but remain capable of adapting how they communicate and make decisions over time. With clear structure, consistent expectations and assistance understanding how their court order or parenting agreement operates in practice, many parents gradually reduce conflict and stabilize their day-to-day parenting arrangements.

For those families, Parenting Coordination that includes education, coaching and structured consultation can be highly effective. The Family Law Act expressly contemplates consensus-building, communication guidelines, strategies for resolving conflict and information intended to improve communication and parenting skills as part of the Parenting Coordinator's role. This article addresses something different. It considers what happens when reasonable efforts at education, structured consultation and implementation-focused coaching stop producing enough progress to justify the additional time and cost.

The question then becomes less about whether someone needs another explanation and more about what amount of process is proportionate and what structure is required to move the parenting issue toward resolution.

Parenting Coordination Is an Implementation Process

Parenting Coordination in British Columbia operates within existing parenting arrangements. A Parenting Coordinator helps parents carry out an existing parenting agreement or court order and may assist with disagreements about how those arrangements are put into effect. A PC cannot make a determination that fundamentally changes the underlying agreement or order. That legal boundary is important. Parenting Coordination can provide education, coaching and structured consultation, and where jurisdiction exists, a Parenting Coordinator may make a binding determination when the parents cannot resolve an eligible implementation dispute.

The objective is therefore not to change either parent's personality or eliminate disagreement. It is to create a sufficiently reliable process for implementing the parenting arrangements already in place.

When Parenting Coordination Coaching Adds Value

Education and coaching add value when they help parents exchange relevant information, identify proposals, narrow their disagreements and move toward an implementable outcome. Improvement does not have to be perfect or immediate.

A parent may remain frustrated, distrustful or unhappy with the other parent and still use a structured consultation process successfully. Parents do not need to like each other, agree about the history of their separation or respond identically to conflict.

The practical question is simpler: Is the intervention making consultation and implementation clearer, more focused or more efficient over time?

When the answer is yes, continued education and coaching may be worthwhile. When the same professional intervention repeatedly produces more process without bringing the parenting issue closer to resolution, the Parenting Coordinator may need to change how the process is managed.

When the Process Begins to Consume the Parenting Issue

One of the most important limits of Parenting Coordination appears when the implementation issue gradually disappears beneath disputes about the process itself.

A disagreement may begin with a relatively discrete question about school, healthcare, an activity, a parenting schedule or another implementation issue. Consultation then expands into collateral matters, historical disagreements, objections to wording, repeated process questions or concerns about how the Parenting Coordinator is managing the file.

The important question is not why a parent does this. Trauma, fear, mistrust, emotional dysregulation, rigidity, previous experiences of conflict and many other factors may affect how people respond to disagreement. A Parenting Coordinator generally does not need to diagnose the cause.

What matters professionally is what is actually happening to the process. Observable indicators can include:

discrete implementation questions repeatedly remaining unanswered;
collateral issues being introduced before the existing issue is resolved;
previously answered process questions being raised again without new material information;
requests for alternative wording not producing alternative wording;
consultation repeatedly expanding rather than narrowing;
increasing professional time being devoted to the process rather than the parenting decision; and
significant costs accumulating without corresponding progress toward implementation.

These are process observations rather than conclusions about a parent's personality, intentions or motivations.

When More Explanation Stops Adding Value

Education is one of the valuable tools available in Parenting Coordination. But more education is not necessarily better education.

Additional explanation is useful while it materially improves understanding, narrows a disagreement or helps the parents implement their parenting arrangements. Once the same question has been answered and no materially different information is being raised, increasingly detailed explanations can add professional cost without moving the underlying issue forward.

This distinction matters particularly in Parenting Coordination because professional time is privately funded. Parents should not have to purchase unlimited explanation before an implementation issue can reach an endpoint.

Sometimes the proportionate response is therefore not more process. It is less process, more clearly structured.

Parenting Coordination Can Move at Different Speeds

Not every family requires the same amount of consensus-building before a decision becomes necessary. Nor does every dispute within the same family necessarily require the same process.

Where parents are able to exchange proposals constructively, the Parenting Coordinator may appropriately allow considerable opportunity for consensus:

Identify → Inform → Propose → Consult → Revise → Agree

But experience on a particular file may demonstrate that extended consensus efforts repeatedly generate additional process without materially increasing the likelihood of agreement. A more contained process may then be appropriate:

Identify → Relevant Information → Defined Proposals → Proportionate Consultation → Agree or Determine

That does not change the parents' underlying parental responsibilities. It does not expand the Parenting Coordinator's jurisdiction. It changes the amount of professional process devoted to attempting consensus before an authorized decision becomes necessary.

Jurisdiction always comes first. A Parenting Coordinator may proceed to a binding determination only where the issue falls within the PC's lawful and delegated authority. The role remains implementation of the existing parenting arrangements rather than fundamentally changing them.

Determinations Are Not a Failure of Parenting Coordination

A binding determination is not necessarily evidence that Parenting Coordination has failed.

The statutory process contemplates attempting to help parents resolve disagreements and, where they cannot agree and the matter is within jurisdiction, making a binding determination. In some files, the healthiest and most proportionate intervention may be to recognize earlier that further consensus work is unlikely to justify its cost.

The Parenting Coordinator can identify the discrete implementation issue, obtain the information reasonably required, invite each parent's position or proposal, provide a fair and proportionate opportunity for consultation and, where agreement is not achieved, proceed to determination if authorized.

The objective is not less procedural fairness. It is enough process to make a fair and informed decision without assuming that maximum process is required before every determination.

Children Do Not Need Their Parents to Agree About Everything

It is unrealistic to suggest that children will never know their parents disagree. Most children understand that separated parents sometimes have different views.

The greater concern arises when recurring adult conflict delays decisions children need or when children themselves become incorporated into the disagreement. That may occur when children are used as messengers, exposed to adult narratives of blame, expected to validate one parent's position, positioned as emotional supports or pressured to align with one parent.

The purpose of Parenting Coordination is not to create an artificial world in which disagreement disappears. It is to provide enough structure that parental disagreement does not continually prevent implementation or unnecessarily draw children into adult conflict.

Parenting Coordination Fees and Proportionality

Process has a cost. Every email that must be reviewed, process question that must be answered, collateral issue that must be separated and consultation that must be managed, including reporting, requires professional time. That does not mean every additional cost is inappropriate. Difficult disputes sometimes legitimately require considerable work.

But proportionality matters. Where one party's use of the process generates identifiable additional work beyond what was reasonably required to address the implementation issue, the Parenting Coordinator may need to consider whether the applicable agreement or order authorizes a different allocation of those costs.

Fee reapportionment should not be treated as punishment, enforcement or a mechanism for compelling agreement. It is a cost-allocation tool that, where authorized, can address disproportionate process use and help preserve the financial proportionality of Parenting Coordination.

The focus should therefore remain on the work actually generated rather than assumptions about motivation.

When Concerns About the Parenting Coordinator Arise

Parents are entitled to question the Parenting Coordination process. Concerns about jurisdiction, procedural fairness, neutrality, proportionality, cost or the professional services being provided should not be presumed illegitimate simply because they arise in a high-conflict case. Nor does an unfavourable recommendation or determination, by itself, establish bias.

The Parenting Coordinator should consider genuine concerns on their merits, remain open to correcting mistakes and distinguish new material information from repetition of matters already addressed. The appropriate response depends upon the nature of the concern and the review, complaint or court processes that may be available.

There is also an important professional boundary here. Once a process concern has been considered and adequately answered, the Parenting Coordinator must determine whether subsequent communications actually add material information requiring further consideration. Repeatedly defending previous communications or explaining the same process decision in increasingly greater detail can consume significant professional resources without advancing implementation.

The PC's responsibility is to create a sufficient record, provide procedural fairness, remain neutral and make decisions within jurisdiction. It is not to persuade every parent that every professional decision was correct. Sometimes the determination and the record must speak for themselves.

When Funding Becomes Part of the Problem

Parenting Coordination is a privately funded professional process. Determinations require time to establish jurisdiction, review relevant information, provide procedural fairness, consider the parties' positions and prepare an implementable decision.

An inability to pay and a refusal to maintain required funding may present very different circumstances. Genuine financial hardship raises questions of affordability and access to justice that should not simply be characterized as non-participation.

But both circumstances can expose an important practical limitation: an unfunded Parenting Coordination process cannot indefinitely provide privately funded professional dispute resolution.

The Parenting Coordinator does not acquire enforcement or coercive powers because continued funding is necessary. Where the solution requires judicial authority that the PC does not possess, the difficulty has moved beyond what Parenting Coordination itself can resolve.

When Parenting Coordination Reaches Its Limit

A particularly important question arises when the Parenting Coordinator has already contained the process.

The issues are considered separately. Collateral matters are deferred. Consultation is focused. Parents receive a meaningful but proportionate opportunity to provide information and proposals. Determinations are made efficiently when necessary. And still, issue after issue requires professional adjudication. At that point, the answer may not be better Parenting Coordination.

Repeated need for determination can become information about the underlying decision-making structure. Parenting Coordination works within existing parenting arrangements. It cannot fundamentally redesign those arrangements merely because they have become difficult or expensive to implement. That distinction is critical.

Sometimes a Parenting Coordination process needs to become more efficient.

Sometimes the Parenting Coordinator needs to answer a process question once and move forward. Sometimes an authorized determination is required sooner. And sometimes even a well-managed, proportionate Parenting Coordination process is no longer an adequate solution to the structural problem facing the family.

Why Returning to Court Is Sometimes Necessary

There are matters a Parenting Coordinator cannot solve. Court involvement may become necessary where judicial authority is required to address the underlying parenting structure, clarify or change parental responsibilities, address matters outside Parenting Coordinator jurisdiction, or otherwise provide relief that an implementation-focused professional cannot provide.

That does not mean every funding disagreement, process complaint or difficult Parenting Coordination file should automatically return to court. The first question remains diagnostic: Where does the actual problem lie?

It may be the Parenting Coordinator. It may be the process being used. It may be the amount of consensus being attempted. It may be funding. It may be the existing parenting arrangements. Or several of those things may be operating at the same time. The appropriate response depends upon identifying the level at which the problem actually exists.

Structure Rather Than Blame

Persistent parental conflict can involve fear, trauma, emotional injury, threat responses, rigidity, mistrust and years of established patterns. Understanding the neuroscience of conflict can help explain why more information does not always produce different behaviour. But Parenting Coordination does not require diagnosis.

The more useful professional question is usually: What structure allows this family to make and implement the decisions their child needs despite ongoing disagreement?

For some families, education and coaching are enough. Others need clearer communication protocols and more structured consultation. Some require a shorter path from consultation to determination. And some eventually demonstrate that even proportionate Parenting Coordination cannot reliably or affordably overcome the limitations of the existing parenting structure.

Choosing the Right Level of Structure

Parenting Coordination should not be measured by whether it eliminates conflict. Its value lies in whether it helps an existing parenting arrangement function more reliably, fairly and proportionately.

Recognizing that a particular process is no longer producing useful results is not necessarily a finding of fault. Nor is it necessarily a failure of Parenting Coordination.

It may be information. It may indicate that education should give way to more contained consultation, that consensus should move more quickly toward determination, that disproportionate process use must be addressed, or that the underlying parenting structure requires judicial reconsideration.

Capacity can change over time. Processes can change as well. Children, however, grow up on schedule. The central question is therefore not which parent is right or wrong. It is whether the existing process provides a fair, proportionate and reliable way to move from disagreement to implementation for the child. Choosing the right amount of structure at the right time is not a defeat. It is responsible process design.

Written by Cori McGuire, a Parenting Coordinator since 2008 and a family law lawyer since 1998 serving Vancouver and all of British Columbia. For further reading on the process try How Parenting Coordinators Work to Keep You Out of Court and When Cooperation Stops: How the Parenting Coordination Process Manages High Conflict.