Are You “Controlling” for Bringing Your Own Parenting Plan?
May 07, 2026Your attorney just told you that bringing a prepared parenting plan to mediation makes you "controlling." And you believed them. That's the problem right there.
I'm a former mediator. I've been doing this for a decade. And I'm telling you straight up: that "controlling" label is bullshit designed to keep you dependent, confused, and broke.
Here's what actually happens: You walk into mediation completely blind, shaking, possibly about to vomit (because that's what divorce anxiety does to you). Your attorney sits there. Your mediator sits there. Both of them getting paid $250-750 an hour. And they want you to have absolutely nothing prepared. No thoughts. No plan. Nothing.
If that doesn't sound like a fucking scam, we're not the same.
When someone walks in prepared with their parenting plan, I immediately know they care. They've educated themselves. They're not going to waste time on bullshit about the past (which, by the way, is literally how attorneys make money). But here's the thing: your attorney doesn't want you educated. An educated client is a threat to their business model.
I spent 300 court dates and hundreds of thousands of dollars with a four-page garbage parenting plan because I didn't come prepared. I didn't know any better. You're not doing that.
Your mediator doesn't know your kids. Doesn't know your schedule. Doesn't know your ex. Doesn't know shit about your actual life. You do. So why the hell would you walk in empty-handed to the most important negotiation of your entire life?
Your future is literally the most important thing you'll ever negotiate. Act like it.
Here’s What You Can Actually Take Away:
- Preparation Wins Over Powerlessness - Walking in prepared with your thoughts organized on paper means you walk in knowing you've got this. That's not controlling, that's power.
- Your Attorney Has a Financial Incentive to Keep You Dependent - Billable hours are their business model. The longer you need them, the more they make. Don't let that be your problem.
- Your Mediator Doesn't Know Your Life - They don't know your kids, your schedule, your ex, or what's actually going to work for your family. You do. Trust yourself.
- Anxiety Is Exactly Why You Need Preparation - You're going to be shaking, sweating, possibly vomiting. Having your thoughts on paper means you don't have to think clearly at that moment. You just have to read.
- Bad Templates Destroy Families - A four-page generic parenting plan that doesn't grow with your kids keeps you in court for years. Spend the time getting it right from the beginning.
- Your Parenting Plan Is Your Future - This isn't about the kids, it's about your future as a single parent. Your time with your kids. Your decisions. Your money. Of course you should be prepared.
- How You Present It Matters - You don't slam it on the table like a boss (even though you are one). You present it as your thoughts, a starting point, and ask for their expertise to make it better.
- Education About Your Future Is Non-Negotiable - You educate yourself about your kids' illness, your job, your finances. Why would you not educate yourself about the document that controls your entire parenting future?
The Truth Bombs
- "Your mediator doesn't know shit about you, your ex, your kids, your job, or your schedule. But you do. So why is walking in prepared considered controlling?"
- "If your attorney doesn't want you prepared, ask yourself: do they want you dependent on them? Do they want you to keep coming back? It almost seems like they want you to fail."
- "Coming prepared to the most important negotiation of your entire life is being a baller and being absolutely on top of your game. Don't let anybody tell you different."
- "I spent 300 court dates, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and years of my life because my parenting plan was four shitty pages long. Don't be me."
- "When someone walks in prepared, I know they've educated themselves, they care about their kids, and they're not going to waste time on tit-for-tat bullshit about the past. That's the client every good professional wants."
- "Your anxiety is going to make you shake, sweat, have diarrhea for days. That's exactly why you need your parenting plan written down. So you don't have to think clearly when you're about to vomit."
- "Nobody should be raising their children off of a Mad Libs template that's been copied since the late 90s. Your family is unique. Your plan needs to be unique."
- "Stop apologizing for being organized about your future. You're not controlling. You're prepared. You're thoughtful. You're organized. You're proactive. That's who you are, own it."
PURCHASE your own custom plan here:
About to sign something you don't understand? Walking into mediation empty-handed? I can help.
Custom Parenting Plan — I'll write your plan. Built for your kids, your schedule, your high-conflict ex. Not a template. A plan that protects your time for the next 18 years.
The Parenting Plan Masterclass — Learn what strong parenting plans actually look like before you sign anything. I'll walk you through decision making, parenting time, holidays, communication boundaries, and how to prepare for mediation so you know exactly what to ask for and what garbage language to avoid.
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Samantha Boss: All right. My attorney said if I come to my mediation session with my parenting plan, I will be labeled as controlling. Here's another one. My ex said I am being controlling because I wrote everything down. Let's talk about this because in my opinion, coming in prepared is the most important thing you can do.
About the decisions you are getting ready to go through about your own future. This is not a future with you and your ex. This is about your future that you want as a single parent, navigating your children and your relationship. So you coming in with your thoughts wrote down, in my opinion, is you being a baller and being absolutely on top of your game and knowing what you want. But let's talk about this controlling label and the antics around it.
People throw it around all the time in divorce, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous, especially when someone is showing up prepared. So we're labeling being prepared as controlling. But think about this. You are the only one that knows your kids really well. You know your schedule, you know your work, you know your ex, and you know what's probably going to be a conflict in the future.
Your mediator doesn't know shit about you or your ex, or your kids, or your job, or your schedule, or the things that are needed or the things that you want in your future. Guess who else doesn't? Your attorney. But you do. So why walking in with all of your thoughts wrote down is considered controlling? It's not. But they make you feel that way.
The Real Cost of Walking Into Mediation Unprepared
You mean you want me to come to the meeting and negotiation of my life and have nothing prepared? You want me to come in blind, uneducated, unknowledgeable about all the subjects that are gonna be talked about. I don't even have a list of things that I'm coming into it completely blind and you want me to pay mediator and you to sit there and hold my fucking hand and walk me through this and talking it all out by dollars by the minute. Where I would rather you come in with your whole parenting plan written already to save not only money, also sanity. Also the feeling of knowing that you know what the hell you're talking about and that neither of one of those professionals can tell you what to do with your future, with your children.
When those kids are done, when we're done with the story, those kids and you are living off of that parenting plan. Your holidays are determined by that parenting plan. Your vacation, your decision making, your money is all determined by that, and they want you to walk in empty handed because it'd be controlling if you walk in with that. No, no. It's not controlling. Don't let them spend that on you and make you feel bad that you want to be educated and have your thoughts down on paper.
Now, I don't know about you all, but I get nervous. My anxiety kind of runs the show sometimes when I'm nervous. So if I'm gonna go into a mediation session, guess what? I'm probably gonna be fucking nervous and I'm probably gonna be shaking a little bit. My stomach's gonna be upset. I've probably had diarrhea for three or four days. I haven't ate much. So my blood pressure and my heart rate are all fucked up. I got the shakes, I got the sweats. My mouth is dry. My armpits won't stop sweating, and even my ass is sweating and I'm sitting there on the verge of vomit.
They want me to just think off the cuff of my decisions. They want me to just think out of nowhere of what's best for my future. I'm not doing that and I don't advise you to do that.
What Mediators Actually Think About Prepared Parents
When someone comes in prepared, and this is as a former mediator, when someone walks in prepared, here's what I think about them. Number one, they know this is important. They have educated themselves. They have thought about what this will look like as a future single parent. I also truly believe when they walk in with their parenting plan that they actually have thought about their children's needs. I don't think they're trying to be controlling. I don't want them to forget anything, and they obviously know that they need stuff wrote down. This is the way they learn, or this is the way they communicate.
I also truly believe when parents walk in with their parenting plan done, that it shows that they want to stay focused during the meeting and not get into this tit for tat bullshit about the past, which I'm going to tell you mediators and lawyers love for you to get into a spat during the middle of mediation. Why? This causes this. It's just a turn of a hand when you start doing this and bitching about the past. And you should have done this. And I can't believe you did that. And attorneys sit back there with their pens. Oh, they look frustrated. They look frustrated. But in the back of their mind, they're going, billable hour, billable hour, billable hour. Money, money, money, money. Let them talk. Let them talk. Let them bitch. Let them fight. We're getting paid either way because we get paid by the hour.
So when a parent comes into my mediation session prepared with their parenting plan, I think all those things. Being prepared under pressure is smart. That's smart thinking. That's the client I want. If I was an attorney, I'd want the smart one. I'd want the educated one. I'd want the prepared one. I would want the one that knows what the hell they're doing.
Sometimes attorneys though don't love it when their clients bring their link because they think, oh, it looks controlling, or, you know, just let me handle that. I've heard attorneys say that to my clients: Well, why don't you just let me handle that? You know, and we have templates that we use. But the reality of that is, is actually their ego is pissed off that you actually did part of their job for them, and it changes their perspective of you. You actually have a clue. Things. And now maybe they can't keep you in the dark and keep billing you, and that frustrates them. And it forces them to actually have to look at the details that you did bring because this parenting plan affects your future.
Why Your Parenting Plan Matters More Than You Think
You have to cut the ties with this attorney at some point. But when these parenting plans are written so poorly, you have no choice but to either argue with your ex forever or use your attorney forever. And if you know, you know, I didn't go have 300 court entries because we got along. Because our parenting plan was written so well is because we didn't get along and our parenting plan was only four fucking pages long, and it didn't grow with our children and it didn't have detail.
I've lived this life of having a poorly written parenting plan. So you coming into a mediation session or even to interview an attorney, there's a little bit of tea for you. There's a good idea. Have your parenting plan written before you even interview attorneys. That way you know which ones love it and which ones hate it because I don't want to hire somebody that's gonna hate that. I have my own thoughts about my own future and my own children, and I'm sorry. Your lives in this world we're living in doesn't fit into a fucking template. Nobody should be raising their children off of a Mad Libs template. That's bullshit. But these attorneys make you feel like you have no choice.
No judge will sign that. Really? Yeah, they have. Number one, I've been around for a long time. Hi, my name's Samantha. I've been doing this for a decade and my parenting plan's been signed for over a decade, and now I'm actually teaching lawyers how to write better parenting plans. Thank you. But that comes from an attorney that's intimidated. Their ego is bent because you actually are a smart client and not the dumb one that they can keep billing and it's not controlling that you actually are worried and concerned, but also prepared and determined to have details put into your future with your children as a single parent.
Now, here's where people go wrong though. I'm not gonna lie. When they get my parenting plan, they get you know, they get balls of steel and they're like, let's go. I got this. You know, I have my parenting plan. I'm headed into mediation. Now. We can't go into mediation. Just slap that shit on the table and be like, here it is. This is what we're doing. I have to know how to deliver this. Okay? This is where a little bit of acting, little bit of role play needs to come into play here.
Now you don't just walk in and just slam it down. Like I said, you walk in and you say, hey, the way I learn and retain things is paper to pen. I have to have things in front of me visually. I'm a visual learner. I can't auditorily talk about things, and there's some things that I know that I didn't want to forget. So I wrote my thoughts and concerns down about my future with the children. These are just my thoughts. It's a starting point. It's a rough draft. I'm here to edit it. I'm here to make it better. I'm here to use your expertise mediator and make this thing so good that you won't have to see us again to make this so good that we won't have to keep spending money on lawyers to make this so good that I can relax and he can relax and we can enjoy our future with our children when we have our children.
That's how you sit down at the table with that thing. You don't walk in and say, I know more than you mediator. I know more than my attorney. No, that's not what we're doing here. They know the laws and they know the procedures, but they don't know you. They don't know your ex. They don't know your children or your circumstance. Only you do. So why wouldn't you be the one writing that down?
Education Is Your Weapon Against a Broken System
It blows my mind that all these templates are floating around that have been used since the late nineties, and they're god awful. They are awful. They do not keep people out of court. They do not keep people from fighting and they do not keep from harming children because if I'm fighting with my ex, I can't help but be in a mood that affects my children. When I'm being financially abused, having to go back to court, back to back to court, I can't help but have that affect my children.
This is a child crisis of all these people saying that you shouldn't be educated and you shouldn't be prepared. Well, when I'm not educated and I'm not prepared, I am anxious. I feel behind and I feel lost, and I feel without. And then who does that have an effect on? My fucking kids? And I get really upset about this because education. Why would you not want to be educated about your future and what it looks like? Nobody goes into a marriage thinking divorce is on the fucking table, but when it is, it's something I want to know about.
When our child gets diagnosed with an illness, I don't go, oh, well, yeah, I prepared myself for three years about that. No, I didn't. But when my child does get diagnosed with something, you better bet I am fucking the Wikipedia of knowledge in a matter of seconds. I am the encyclopedia about that diagnosis. I'm gonna know fucking everything there is to know about it because it's my fucking child. So why in the hell would I not do the same goddamn thing for my parenting plan?
This is about my kids. Why would I not be the most educated about it? I need to be the best educated person in the room about it. These are my kids and my future. And guess what? For all of you saying, you keep saying, my kids, my kids. This is my kids with my future and my ex better be doing the same damn thing if my kids are that fucking important to them. I shouldn't be heavy lifting all this shit. They should have walked in with a fucking parenting plan too. If their kids are important to them.
It's my kids when they're with me and they're his kids when they're with him. That's the way it is. I'm sorry if you don't like it. Stay fucking married and they're your guys' kids. But when they're with me, they're mine. And when they're with him, they're his. That's the way it is. And you best bet your ass better have a parenting plan that's written well. That when this is your time, it is protected.
If you walk into these appointments with your attorney, with your mediator, with your GAL, with your evaluators, with your psychologist, whoever it is, and you don't know what the hell you're talking about, that will come across crystal clear and everybody is going to keep billing you and taking you down this long fucking ridiculous rabbit hole in family court that takes the loving soul away from you because you didn't stop and just educate yourself.
This is the whole purpose of why I exist. When I went through my divorce, I was puking and shitting in a bathroom the fucking first day and one of the last days and every day in between that, I went to court with my ex-husband and I kept begging and crying to my mother, why do I have to go through this? Why is my divorce so hard? Why is it taking years? Why is it taking hundreds of thousands of dollars? And she kept telling me, Sam, because God puts you through this for a reason.
Oh, that's great, Mom. I love that for him. But why am I, why did he pick me? This is why. So I'm here. I'm on your screen. I'm in your ear. I am here to educate you and rattle you and get you to understand this is your job. Your kids just got diagnosed of having divorced parents. You better get the most education out of this as you possibly fucking can and get it all wrote down on paper and make their future as best possible as you can.
Educate yourself. Do not hire an attorney and think that that attorney is there for you 100 percent. They are there to make an earning, to make a living. That's their job. It's not their life. This has become, this was my fucking life. I was you. I was sitting there not having a clue what the word parenting plan even was. Not to mention, when I looked at it, I was like, oh, that looks great. It was four pages. I was happy, uh, till I started using it, and it was unusable. It wasn't practical.
And I'm getting heated about this because I hate the idea that you go get educated, you put your words to paper, and then someone that you're paying thousands of dollars to, like your attorney has the balls to tell you dead in the eye: Don't take that. You'll be labeled as controlling. Well, guess what, sir? I like fucking labels. So what if they think I'm controlling? But they haven't said that yet. You did. Maybe your ego's in the fucking way. Maybe you can't see that you actually have a smart client because they're educated and they're so smart. They hired your ass. Look at it that way, Larry.
Quit telling people they're controlling because they want to plan their own future. My god, it surprises me how many people have an attorney tell them that and they fold like a deck of cards and they leave the fucker at home. They leave the whole parenting plan, they spent thousands of dollars on it with me, and then they just leave it at home because their attorney said they'd be controlling.
No, take that. Deliver it the proper way. There's a whole video on how to deliver it to your mediator or to your attorney inside of my work or inside of my course. Take that, educate yourself. Deliver it the best way possible. But I'm telling you right now, I would not let some overpriced Larry the lawyer tell me what to do about my future.
I'm taking that parenting plan with me. I'm gonna be prepared. I'm going to set it down and use it. Do you know how many times parents go to mediation? Let the mediator run through the whole damn thing at the end, go, oh shit. Uh, we didn't talk about that. We didn't talk about that. We didn't talk about that. I saw a video. Sam did. We didn't talk about that. We didn't include that. We didn't.
Not every mediator's good guys. Not every mediator's lived this life. Not every mediator understands high conflict. Not every mediator understands that you should grow your parenting plan with your children. And why don't they? Oh, I don't know. Because you have to come back to the mediator to go to the next stage of life with your children. That's bullshit. Be one and done. Be one and done.
So writing out this plan keeps you on task. It avoids you forgetting important details that you know you want. It's going to save you money and time with your attorney and or mediator, and it's going to avoid you getting stuck with these shitty templates that are out there. You've heard tons of episodes with me already, where I've talked about all the lame, horrible things inside of template parenting plans.
You want to be thinking about what do your years of parenting look like in the future? What do you want them to look like? You need an education about that. So reframe the word controlling, translate it to, Nope, I'm prepared, I'm thoughtful, I'm organized, and I'm fucking proactive. That's what I am. I'm not controlling. And no longer will you be using that word for me.
You know your kids. You know what kind of life you want. You know the dynamics that you and your ex have. A template and a stranger in a conference room don't know that. You do and you know better. So writing all of your thoughts down and bringing them in a room is not controlling. It's being prepared for your future that you're about to negotiate.
You're about to negotiate most important negotiation of your life. Now, again, I will end with this. I put, I was put through all of that, all of what I went through for eight years in and out of court, hundreds of thousands of dollars, horrible high conflict situation so that I can rattle you into understanding. Don't be me. Don't settle. Don't let an overpriced attorney with a bunch of plaques on the fucking wall lead you through your future.
You lead yourself through the future. These are your kids and your future. You plan for it. You go get an education. Know all the terms that are gonna be used, and understand what they mean and how they will impact you later. Understand all of that. It's your job as their parent to protect their future as best as possible.
So go get an education, learn what you need to learn. Take your parenting plan with you. Don't let anybody talk you out of that. Not a single person until someone says, what is that? Remove it from the table. Which by the way, I'd be like, uh, was there rules that I couldn't bring some? I would talk you through that one in a heartbeat as well. It's all on how you present it and your best bet that you're gonna want to use it because you are gonna be the most nervous you've ever been in your life.
You want to go into it not forgetting anything and have clear thoughts on paper. That's what you're gonna want. Don't let somebody talk you out of what you need and what you want for that negotiation.
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