In the Minnesota Family Court System many parents have been advised to consider a new thing called a Parenting Consultant. A Parenting Consultant has similar functions as a Parenting Time Expeditor. However, Parenting Consultants are not authorized by Minnesota State Statutes or regulations but are created solely on the basis of a contract. 

Under current law, parenting time consultants are not regulated in statute. This
bill H.F 3220 provides statutory qualifications for parenting consultants, providing the authority parenting consultants have to modify custody and parenting time orders, and providing methods to discharge parenting time consultants.

Link to proposed H.F.3220

Since Parenting Consultants are contract appointed they can be granted the authority to make permanent schedule changes to a parents parenting time. Parenting consultants are given the authority to decide legal custody decisions.
Parenting Consultant order becomes a ruling that a Judge will most likely follow.

The issue with a Parenting Consultant there are no regulations to hold then accountable and make sure that they are neutral. If you have a biased parenting consultant this can create conflict between both parents and the Parenting Consultants decision maybe not be in the best interest of the child. 

Parenting Consultants notes are considered to be fact even if they are wrong and a Judge in Minnesota can use those and most of the time will rely on the Parenting Consultants ruling. 

The only way to remove a parenting consultant is if both parties decide to remove them or go to court and see if the judge is willing to remove them. If either of these fail you are stuck with a biased parenting consultant that will not take the best interest of the child in mind.  

The solution would be create some regulations on parenting consultants, hold them accountable for their actions, make sure that the notes and orders by a parenting consultant cannot be used in court and a Parenting Consultants contract should be looked at every 2 years between parties to see if they are still needed or the parties would like to have the option to move to a different Parenting Consultant. 

Myself and many other parents that have had Parenting Consultants they have been either insulted, overcharged, not looked at the facts, made decisions based solely on the other parties responses, and has not looked at the best interest of the child.  When I have tried to remove my Parenting Consultant I went to court and presented a recording of the insults and facts that the Parenting Consultant got wrong the Judge disregarded the recording and I am stuck with the Parenting Consultant that is hostile, biased towards me and still disregards the facts that have been presented to her. 

Here is my story