Thank You Proud Parent
The lawyer who wrote up my divorce decree said that the wordage he used is extremely common in SD.
It says that
when the two parties can not agree on visitation that the SD guidelines shall be put into affect.
Without the full text of your order to provide context, I would interpret the bolded statement above as meaning that when the parties are unable to agree to adjustments to the parenting
schedule, the court-ordered schedule and/or SD guideline parenting schedule shall be enforced. I would NOT interpret it to mean that everything to be found in SD Shared Parenting Guidelines shall be enforced.
But as you say, it's all hypothetical
, as I do not live in SD and you aren't really asking. I will tell you that if I were in SD and my order stated only that "the SD guidelines shall be put into affect [sic]", I'd be petitioning to have the order modified to include the specific language.
Is that what you mean by being adopted by the visitation order?
It's not a question of what
I mean by "being adopted by the visitation order". That language comes straight from the SD judicial website I referenced before; it is the legal disclaimer that appears before the full text of the SD Shared Parenting Guidlines.
I personally interpret that disclaimer to mean, "Unless your court order includes the exact language contained in these guidelines, these guidelines are absolutely unenforceable." In other words, they are guidelines and not statutes. Furthermore, they are guidelines originally authored by who knows whom. I may agree with some of those guidelines, but I do wonder how one could expect children never to receive mixed signals from their parents unless one of those parents is no longer living!
If I were in SD and involved in writing a parenting schedule/parenting plan, I would never agree to including the language you first quoted unless a judge ordered it to be included. IMO, unless the parties' court order states that a particular parent's rules of conduct and discipline shall control in both households, each parent has the authority to decide what goes in his/her home.