Coming up with a parenting plan isn’t just about how you’ll share the days in each week, though it is certainly about how you’ll share the days in the week. To make matters even more complicated, there are many other considerations that should be reflected in your parenting plan, and you’ll want to make sure there’s a general hierarchy of importance when it comes to each parent’s parenting time, so that everyone’s clear, for example, that holidays like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day trump the regular parenting time schedule. There are also considerations related to your geographic location to each other and the ages, abilities (or disabilities) and other unique facets of your family life.
In addition to figuring out whether you’ll share or split physical custody, or whether one of you will have primary physical custody, you’ll have to figure out how to divide the days – in detail- and, then, what the shape of those days should take.
In most cases, regardless of how you structure physical custody – the ways you share access to the kids day in and day out – you’ll usually share legal custody, too. It is relatively rare for legal custody to be awarded solely to one party.
Keep in mind that your parenting plan is like the foundation of a house. Your specific structure is the walls of that house; you continue to give yourself (and your kids) structure with these walls that you build around your parenting time. But you still have to fill the house! You need all the things inside that make up a house, a life, and the best way to do it is by creating a well-drafted parenting plan that takes all of these considerations into account.
What else should we be considering in our parenting plan?
The age of your children
Different parenting plan arrangements will work best for children of different ages. Whether we’re talking about a nursing infant, a toddler, school aged kids, young teens, or even older teenagers, the same arrangements aren’t necessarily appropriate. Plan for your kids now, and do your best to envision how things might adapt over time, too.
Geography of the parenting plan
How far apart you and your child’s father live will determine a LOT. If you’re considering a relocation, you may want to think about this as you begin to put forward your ideas for a parenting plan. If he’s relocating or if you’ve already relocated, you may not have a lot of control over this – what’s done is done – but there are still complications that come from geography. Whether you’re too close for comfort or too far for certain types of parenting plans, how far apart you live will have an impact on how you coparent.
If you want custody arrangements with more frequent switches so that you don’t have to go long periods of time without seeing your children, you’ll need to live close. If you live further apart, you’ll also need to consider whether it will be possible – even on a week on/week off basis – to go back and forth. If you (or your child’s other parent) live outside school bussing zones, for example, on “your” weeks, you or he will have to drive the kids back and forth to school. Is the commute reasonable? Does it work with your work schedules? How much time would the children spend in the car? With pick up and drop off times, does it unnecessarily hurt their sleep or extracurricular time? Does it work for you with your children’s age and school schedule now and will it work as they get older – maybe as they move to middle or high school, which often have earlier start times?
Holidays and Special Occasions
You’ll also want to make sure that you consider things like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day; usually, mom takes Mother’s Day and dad takes Father’s Day, and this trumps any other normally scheduled parenting time. You could specify the hours, too, if you wanted to go the extra mile (example: between the hours of 8 am and 8pm) or prevent the possibility of your soon-to-be ex trying to ruin “your” holiday.
Include how you’ll handle the child(ren)’s birthdays. Maybe you alternate. Maybe you specify that the parent without parenting time that day has a window of opportunity to see the child on that day. Maybe, because you have more of the time, you want to say nothing – because the majority of the time you’ll have the child on that day anyway. (Check the calendar, just to make sure.)
If there are other holidays you want to ensure are handled in a specific way, you’ll want to specify that in your parenting plan, too. Most parenting plans don’t handle Halloween, for example, so if you want to have a specific plan for the day, that’s something you’ll need to add in. Even if you don’t celebrate, say, Christmas or Easter, you may still want to make a plan for those holidays if your children go to a school where a major school break aligns with those holidays. Keep in mind, too, that some provisions – like a midday switch on Christmas day – may become more complicated in the future, if you end up in a larger blended family dynamic. You may prefer to divide the winter holiday in half, so that you each have the opportunity (if you so choose) to travel during the holiday, without putting in a specific provision that would almost certainly disallow it. Sure, you could modify, but it’s ideal if you can plan for the possibilities or preferences that might emerge later.
Both religious and cultural holidays – or even family traditions – are important. Valentine’s Day? Easter? Yom Kippur? Ramadan? Halloween? Consider, too, all the school vacations, long weekends, teacher workdays, and how you’ll handle snow, election, and/or inclement weather days. Every family is different, so there’s no one size fits all.
Sure, you could also celebrate holidays or birthdays together, but I prefer – when couples decide to do this – that they decide on the fly that this will work and they don’t put in writing that they will be obligated to do this. Some years, it may not be a peaceful or even possible arrangement, which can lead to last minute holiday drama (and, potentially, additional legal expense).
Summertime
The summer creates a lot of logistical challenges for families. You will definitely want to consider how you’ll handle the summer, even if your kids aren’t yet school aged, as much as you can ahead of time.
Many families have a specific parenting plan for the school year and a different one for the summer. Maybe, because there’s no school, you have a little more freedom to go back and forth. You go from week on/week off to 4-3-3-4, or something else. Maybe, because of the activities or summer camps your kids are involved in, they go longer periods with one parent or the other. Maybe, because of the distance, they spend the entire summer with the non-custodial parent.
Vacation
Specify whether vacation time should be consecutive (if you get two weeks, can they be taken all at once, or must they be split?) and/or whether you’ll specify who gets preference of dates in odd versus even years in the event you both want to take a vacation on a particular week. Do you want to set a deadline – say, May 1st – by which time you must have notified the other parent of your intention, with preference to mom for her dates in odd years and preference to dad for his in even years in the event they conflict? Is there specific itinerary information you need? (Keep in mind that whatever you ask for from him, you’ll likely have to share with him when it’s your turn to travel.)
Extra Rules in your Parenting Plan
Consider whether you’ll add a right of first refusal, or include a list of approved (or most definitively NOT approved) caregivers. Do you want to allow phone calls? If you travel (or he travels) what kind of itinerary information do you want?
Do you want to agree, ahead of time, about how and when to introduce future romantic partners?
Do you want a step up plan, either because your kids are young – before they’re school aged, because they’re nursing, or whatever – that will expand as the kids get older? Are there triggering events that will help determine when the kids are ready for more time? Events, on the other hand, that might suggest that it’s not going well and to dial back parenting time?
If parenting time will be supervised, who will supervise, how and when? Are there alternative supervisors, if your specified supervisor isn’t available?
What about drug and/or alcohol use, if that has been an issue in the past? I’ve done agreements where we had provisions regarding breathalyzer testing (sometimes, even, at the demand of one parent or the other; other times mutually agreed). I’ve also seen agreements where the parents specify that neither will consume alcohol 24 hours before parenting time and throughout the time the children are in their care. (Also: COULD you agree to that, if it came down to it? No drinks at a family wedding, or a neighborhood barbecue, or a backyard pool party …ever, when you have your kids?)
How do we feel about unrelated overnight guests, keeping in mind that these provisions – when they’re agreed to – are usually mutual?
You may want to include other specifics, too, that relate only to your specific situation. Maybe I’ve never even done an agreement with the exact type of provision that you want included. That happens ALL the time, even still – after 15 years in family law practice!
We always say that the only limitations when it comes to these parenting plans is the creativity of the drafters, so, if you can dream it up, we can put it in an agreement. Of course, we want to be sure that what we’re putting in will actually make your life easier, not harder, so it’s usually not an ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ type situation. Consider the common problems that you have and how to address those. Are your concerns that he’s always late, or regularly doesn’t show up? Does he always want to reschedule or shift days? Do you worry he’ll leave the kids almost exclusively in someone else’s care, rather than taking care of them himself, and you want to address that? Put those provisions in, but then leave out other ones that apply less to your situation. We don’t have to address drinking, for example, if everyone is an adult and no one has a drinking problem.
In any case, consider all your options – for babies, for toddlers, for school aged kids, during the school year, during the summer, once they’re teenagers, when they start driving, and even when they object to visitation – now. The more you put into your agreement, the stronger the foundation your coparenting relationship will have, and, hopefully, the less hiccups you’ll have to address in real time when tensions are high.
For more information or to schedule a consultation, give our office a call at 757-425-5200 or visit our website at hoflaw.com.