If you are a parent who is getting divorced, issues related to your children will be some of the most important matters that you will need to resolve. As you work to negotiate a divorce settlement with your spouse, you will create a parenting plan that fully details all decisions related to the allocation of parental responsibilities (child custody) and parenting time (visitation). The determination of how you and your spouse will divide the time that your children will spend in each of your homes will affect many other issues in your case, so you will want to make sure you have addressed this issue properly and made arrangements that will provide for your children’s best interests.
Common Parenting Time Arrangements
There are a multitude of different ways that parents can divide parenting time. When making these decisions, parents should consider the roles that they have played when caring for their children in the past, the feasibility of a proposed schedule, and how they can maintain consistency for their children and work together as co-parents to meet their needs. Some common ways of dividing parenting time include:
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50/50 schedules - If both parents have played equal roles in raising their children and providing daily child care, they may be able to maintain these roles by creating a schedule in which they will each have equal amounts of time with the children. In these cases, parents will need to make sure arrangements are in place for transporting children to and from school or daycare, and they will both need to have time in their work schedules to care for their children on a daily basis and on weekends. Parents may use a 2/2/3 schedule in which children stay at each parent’s home for two days during the week while alternating three-day weekends between parents, or they may alternate weeks with each parent or use other arrangements for sharing equal amounts of parenting time.
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