Wisconsin Parenting Plan

In a contested case, a parent seeking legal custody or periods of physical placement has to file a proposed parenting plan within 60 days after the court waives mediation or the mediator reports that no agreement was reached, unless the court sets a different date. Miss that window without good cause and you give up the right to object to the other parent's plan. (Rewritten to drop the em dash. Flagging one tension: the file's header comment says it deliberately carries 'no statutes, no deadlines' because they change. The existing sentence already asserts a deadline, so stating the statutory default is strictly more accurate than leaving it, but if the team wants to honor the no-deadlines policy the alternative is to say the clock runs from mediation rather than from a court order, without the number.)

Physical placement is the time a child spends in each parent's care. Legal custody, the right to make major decisions, is decided separately.

Wisconsin refers to it as a parenting plan, filed in the Circuit Court. The state uses "legal custody" for decision-making authority and "physical placement" for the time each parent spends with the children. Check the current forms published by the Wisconsin judiciary before filing, as forms and local rules change.

Whatever your schedule actually produces, and the plan should state it precisely. In most states the overnight count feeds into the child-support formula and into how the arrangement is classified, though a few states, Texas among them, set guideline support from income alone. The calculator on this page gives you the exact annual figure for the schedule you choose.

Parents routinely prepare and file their own agreed plans. Where Wisconsin publishes a mandatory or preferred form, work the schedule and figures out first and then transfer them onto that form. Having an attorney review the plan before you sign is advisable, particularly if the two of you disagree on anything substantive.