Making Your Custody Schedule

Making Your Custody Schedule

The task of creating a custody schedule can be overwhelming for divorced parents. It can be an arduous challenge to figure out how much time the child will spend with the parents and when that time will happen. It can turn into a massive project of day counting, rewriting, and figuring out details.

Adding to the stress is the fact that the custody schedule is of primary importance in the custody agreement. This little schedule and calendar dictate the time that you will have with your child. So, it is vital that parents complete their schedule despite the difficulties they encounter.

One common type of custody schedule is a joint schedule. A joint custody schedule means that the parents spend about equal time with the children. It doesn’t have to be an exact split, but it is pretty close.

Similar to the joint custody schedule is a fifty-fifty shared schedule. This is when each parent gets fifty percent of the time with the children. A common sample of a fifty-fifty split schedule is the parents alternating custody every other week.

If parents want to have joint custody or a fifty-fifty custody arrangement but the child needs more stability during the school year, there are ways to get around that. Many parents set up a schedule in the school year where the child lives primarily with one parent during the week (the other parent may get weekends and a weeknight visit) and then the schedule switches in the summer break or other breaks. This is a way to compensate time for the other parent.

The custody schedule includes the basic rotation of custody. Some samples of this are one parent having primary custody with the other parent having custody every other weekend, one parent having primary custody and the other parent getting several overnights in the month, and one parent having primary custody with the other parent getting every weekend and other visits or overnights.

The schedule also includes the custody time for the holidays. The mother and father usually split the holidays between them. Then they alternate the years of the holiday. It’s important for the mother and father to both have major and minor holidays.

Although the task of making a custody schedule can be complicated and difficult, it is worth the time and effort you put in. Once the schedule is set up you won’t have to worry about it any more. Then you can spend your time having fun with the children.