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Overcommunicating with the other parent if you share custody or parenting time can hurt you and your child both now and in the long run.

One of my recent trials involved my client, the father, accusing the other parent of stalking like behavior. She harassed him and overcommunicated with him. He sought to have the judge limit the amount of communication that he and the other parent were having.

He wanted exchanges never to be in person, he wanted texts and emails limited to no more than a certain number per week unless the child was sick. He really wanted nothing to do with my client.

It's really not a good idea when you share custody to cut off all communication with the other parent because the child needs both parents to understand what's going on when the child is with Dad and with the child is with the Mom.

This is good because as the child gets older they might try and manipulate the other parent. In a coparenting relationship no communication is not the ideal solution when the parties are at each other's throats.

But in reviewing the potential evidence that my client had for his case, I saw tons of email strings. Sometimes the email topics would go on for days. What I saw from those emails is that maybe the father's concerns were actually real. In a lot of the cases that I handle people make stuff up or have a skewed view of the way facts appear to other people. In this case there was overcommunicating and what it boiled down was my client being afraid of what was going on with the daughter when she was away from Dad.

In this situation there were no issues of mental health, substance abuse or domestic violence. It was just a situation of two parents who were both fit and good parents but there was a lot of bad blood and a loss of trust that happened way in the past. But the mother was a Type A personality and had a hard time letting go of control.

So you need to be mindful of how you communicate and how often you communicate with the other parent. Are you being rude, condescending, listening to the other parent, making demands, etc. And if you end up down the road in a trial the text and email messages are going to end up as Exhibit A, B, C....and you want to make sure you are not the one that looks bad in those communications.

You want to make sure you are the one that looks reasonable and is respecting the other parent. So think before you hit the send button.

Wendy Hernandez is a family law attorney in Phoenix, AZ and founder of Command the Courtroom which teaches you how to handle yourself in court and achieve the best outcome when representing yourself in your divorce or child custody case.

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