My t will do phone contact when I am out of town, and he charges for that in 1/4 hour segments at his usual rate. I am fine with that, although face to face is far preferable for me. Although I am one that gets texting for "free" the texts are limited, they are really just check-ins and will rarely go beyond two or three exchanges. And they are rarely more than once per week. If it was more often, I think we would figure out a plan to pay for his time. I think it is probably a tough area to come up with fair and reasonable boundaries and I think you are brave to open the topic up for discussion.