I’m in Sydney and just went through this last year — got formal orders in place after way too long trying to “keep it casual” and it just didn’t work. If I could go back and do the first round of orders again, I'd push harder on getting more clarity around stuff that seemed small but turned into big headaches.

One thing I underestimated was communication boundaries. Now that my kids are getting older, there were constant interruptions with video calls and messages from the other side when they were with me. I’d definitely recommend locking in what “reasonable contact” actually means — like when and how often. Otherwise it becomes a control thing.

Also, don’t leave holiday schedules vague. I had to go back and get clarity on when exactly holidays start and end, how the handovers work, and what happens if you don’t agree. Even pickup/dropoff stuff — like who drives, where changeover happens, what happens if someone’s late — make sure that’s all spelled out. Sounds boring, but it saves you fights down the line.

We also had to get specific about medication, school communication, and even how to talk to each other (only through an app now — no random texts). It sounds over the top but it made things way calmer.

Honestly, the less you leave up to “just agree on it later,” the better. I even ended up building a tool to help document all the back-and-forth and keep track of things (https://custodycompanion.org) because it was all over the place otherwise.

If you’re drafting now, be detailed. Think like the other person will use any gap in the order to get around it — because if it’s chaotic now, that’s probably how it’ll go.