An Allocation Judgment is the document that is used to set forth and specifically assign parenting time and parenting responsibilities.
An allocation of parenting time is very simply a schedule of which parent the children will be with on any given day at any given time. The parenting schedule includes pick-up and drop-off responsibilities and will also set forth a holiday parenting schedule, which states which parent will have parenting time with the children on each holiday.
An allocation of parenting responsibilities sets forth which parent will have decision making authority for issues affecting the children. In Illinois, there are four major parenting decision making areas which the law presumes the parents will work together on. Those areas are issues of healthcare, religion, education, and extracurricular activities. This means that, under Illinois law, for the issues of healthcare, religion, education, and extracurricular activities, the law defaults to joint decision making by the parents. The starting place for decision making for these four children’s issues is that the parents will consult each other and will work together to make a decision that is in the best interests of their children. It is possible to overcome the presumption of joint decision making, but it is very difficult.