I’m looking for divorced/separated parents have structured their custody of their children. I’m going to ask for a change to having the children half the time and I’d like to see what options there are and the pros and cons of each.
I only know of two options, but I’m sure there are more. I have seen one week with the children, the next week with the other parent. I have also seen two days, two days, three days then switch the next week.
I want to help my children grow so I’d like to think about what would be a good option for everyone involved. So what kind of schedule do you have, how do you like it, and what would you change?
Speaking as someone who was the child of divorced parents, I’d go for something where you get the kids for the summertime or something like that. I think that “week here, week there” system (or worse yet, “two days here/two days there”) is hugely disruptive.
Mine are with me most of the time, and go to their father on Thursdays plus overnight and every other weekend. We picked Thursday because years ago he had something on Wednesday nights, but it works out nice for packing, because the weekends they’re with him, they pack Wednesday night for the Thursday night and the subsequent weekend (even though they end up at my house Fridays for a few hours after school).
In the summer they go to his house two separate two-week periods. This usually works out well, although now that they’re older and are gone a lot with band and other activties in the summer, it seems like I barely see them in the summer.
I’ve never been a fan of the alternating weeks custody arrangement. I know parents think it’s in the kids’ best interests to spend equal time with each parent, but it’s hugely disruptive to switch houses every week. Your other option sounds even worse. I can’t imagine many kids would like shuttling back and forth between houses every two or three days.
I really think kids need a home base. If you want to spend more time with the kids, how about three out of four weekends plus an evening or two per week (not overnight)? You can pick them up after school, help with homework, have dinner etc. and drop them back off for bedtime. They don’t have to pack and move stuff back and forth, and you still get some quality time with them when they’re not at school.
I’m not divorced, but I am a divorce lawyer. I’ve seen all sorts of arrangements. Frankly, I think the best arrangement is for the kids to stay at the same house and the parents to move back and forth every other week. Not surprisingly, few parents go for this option
I have a friend who does the 2/3/2 arrangement and it’s a LOT of work and communication and I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone who doesn’t have a great relationship with their ex.
They are in contact multiple times every week and they have to agree to how to deal with every activity that he’s involved it.
I have to agree with kathmandu however, if you’re looking for what’s best for the children - they get the house and the parents swap off.
My custody arrangements were simple, I had the kid. One summer when Ex was living out of state he took the kid for a month, but visitation has always been a non-issue for us. I planned on always having him and occasionally the Ex took him for a night or weekend. Our son is nearly 19, we broke up when he was an infant, I’d bet the sum of time in his father’s care totals maybe 6 months or so.
A girlfriend of mine does two weeks on, two weeks off with her ex. They live a few miles apart, for school access, and basically settled on that arrangement to avoid paying child support. Teachers seem to hate it, they never know which parent to call and it was devastating for the Mom when one school official suggested the children would be better off staying with Dad full-time.
The one plus side is the kids have their own stuff, their own rooms and doubles of everything so there’s virtually no packing and schlepping back and forth. Way better than the non-custodial parent getting a 1BR apartment and expecting the kids to bunk on the sofa for visits.
My ex and I have 50/50 physical custody. Our son determined the custody schedule. He was 6 when we separated, and other than changing some of the days up we have stuck with it for about 10 years. We also live about 10 minutes apart from each other, and now that he drives, it’s easier on all of us. Many of you will think this is crazy but it works for us, and it’s what he wanted to do.
He with me on Tues and Thurs nights. With his mom on Mon and Wed nights. We alternate the weekends.
Any custody arrangement you can make that works for you, your children and your ex-spouse is ideal, so long as both parties honor it.
The agreement I have with my exhusband doesn’t work, because he doesn’t honor it, or agree to modify it. It involves him flying our son out in lieu of child support, an arrangement that would save him several thousand dollars per year. I have primary custody because he did not want it. I offered it to him since it was my decision to move away, and he did have it for about a year and a half, but he no longer wanted that. I paid child support and travel costs, in fairness.
I paid for a few trips so that our son could keep the relationship with his dad, but when our son got old enough to understand (a middle-years teenager) I told him that I wouldn’t do that any longer. His dad has responsibilities, and so do I. It wasn’t a happy conversation.
So the moral of the story is please make an arrangement that you can live with long term, even if it’s less than the absolute maximum that you can do. You’re teaching your children not only that you still love them as much as you ever did and so forth, but that you’re a man who does what he says he will do.
Best of luck and I hope you’re able to work it out.
We have had full joint legal and physical custody since our divorce, when Jake was 18 months old. For us that meant swapping houses every week, but since we have never lived more than a mile apart it has never impacted schools or friends or even neighborhoods. Over the years we have modified the “swap night” a few times to accommodate scheduling, and at Jake’s request we added in dinner at the other parent’s house once a week (so if he’s with me, he goes to Dad’s house for dinner on Thursday and vice versa). Now that he is 13 he can ride his bike back and forth - and we also check in with him every so often to make sure his needs are being met.
I will say that this would never have worked if we had not had a very amicable divorce. Over the years we’ve had some very serious breaches of communication and/or civility resulting in months of not speaking/emailing…but since the custody arrangements were already enacted, there was never much issue with it. Jake has never known anything else, either, so he doesn’t have much to compare it to, and he does like having two sets of everything.
Their primary residence is with their mother. We have joint custody.
Every other weekend, I have them Friday afternoon (get them from school) until Monday morning (take them to school).
I see them 1-2 times during the week, for sports such as football and soccer, but they don’t go home with me.
In the summer, they spend the regular time with me (every other Fri-to-Mon. stretch), but we also add two vacations of 9-10 days each. Over Christmas break, add in another 7-9 days stretch with me. We alternate holidays, and there are some other extended weekends.
Any other way is so disruptive to their routine that I can see how it’d benefit anyone. I feel they need an identifiable, full-time home. In my experience, every time someone went the alternating weeks route, or created something as close to 50/50 as possible, it was to reduce child support.
Also, given my career and the dependency I and they have on it, my career would be in the toilet if I had to do a back-and-forth shuffle. They’d probably lose their home over it, because the child support is about 80% towards the mortgage and transportation.
Each situation is different, and only you might know what is best. I have a better, more intense and rewarding relationship with my kids than any other father had with any kids I knew growing up who had non-divorced families – including mine.
We did the one week with us, the next with the other parent. We lived fairly close to each other, so it didn’t seem difficult from my point of view. I was surprised just recently when my son, who is now going through a divorce himself, expressed how awful it was for him. He is the kind of kid that goes with the flow and doesn’t make waves. We really had no idea that he hated it so much.
We would have changed things had we known how he felt. Are the children old enough to talk to about this? I think that as much as is possible and as long as it is not harmful, what they want should play a part in the decision.
Right now we live close to each other, about a mile. She did tell me the other day that she is planning on moving so that will change things.
Right now the girls are to young to talk about it much, they are 5 and 3. I have also been talking to a counselor about it who specializes in children so I’m still thinking about what will be best.
My parents were divorced when I was young and I really don’t know my father that well. I don’t want that to happen with my children. I don’t want to be the guy who they see every other weekend and here and there other times.
I don’t know any other parents who are divorced, which is odd, so I have to ask elsewhere. I want to do what’s best for the kids so I’ve been looking at as many options as I can before just jumping into something.
It’s just my opinion, but I think a split custody arrangement is a terrible idea for kids that age. They need routine and stability and predictability, which they’re going to lose if they’re incessantly shuttled back and forth. There’s no reason why you can’t spend a whole bunch of time with them without having them live half time in each home.
We go one day one day two days one day and base it on our work schedules. She’ll be dropped off at school by one parent and picked up by the other.
People disagree, I know, and say it’s disruptive, but the little one is happy and it works. She has a complete household on both ends, so there’s no “packing” to be done.
It helps, of course, that we live five minutes apart and get alone in a friendly manner. It wouldn’t work otherwise. Were one parent to move unilaterally it triggers a clause in the agreement wherebv the arrangement has to be revisited.
I am also interested in this discussion. My son is 21 months old, and we have been using the 2-2-3 schedule.
It seems to work ok, but there have been minor difficulties. One of the reasons we haven’t done a week or more at a time is because frankly we don’t want to go that long without seeing him.
My work schedule is 12 hour days, 3 or 4 days a week. My ex has 3 days off every week. We are basically on opposite days off. I have my son on my weekends, he has him on his weekends. No packing. Two complete households.
My son is (almost) 3 years old. My ex and I believe he is best served by being able to spend quality time with those who love him on a consistent basis. He would be heartbroken to lose out on time with either of us.
The ex lives over an hour away, though we both work for the same department. When the Little Bit hits school age, things will have to be changed.
My step-son only sees his mother every other weekend. She just isn’t very involved. When she does bother to show up for functions, she’s inevitably late. He misses her, and it sucks. I won’t let that happen to my son.
My ex has access to my Google calendar, every month my roster is auto-filled into the calendar and she goes through and puts in when she would like me to have our two daughters. It averages out at 2 nights a week. I then check it and discuss with her if I want to change anything (I don’t normally.)
My parents were also divorced and this was back in 1960. I hated it and also feel cheated out of a good relationship with my dad. We saw him about every other weekend.
There is probably no one size fits all answer. I wonder if there are any studies out there on what seems to work best? I’ve heard of some people that have the adults go back and forth every week instead of the kids.
FWIW, I admire your efforts to do the right thing. Not all parents put the kids first. I guess the best advice I can think of is just to pay close attention to how the kids are doing. If you have one like ours, that might mean asking questions that don’t seem like they need asking. If that makes any sense at all.
SWMBO’s schedule, when the kids were younger, was that the Ex-From-Hell had them on Wednesday evening 6:00 - 10:00 p.m. for dinner and every other weekend. They alternated Christmas where he got them from the 18th to noon on the 25th one year, then noon on the 25th to the 1st the next year. He also got them for two weeks during the summer, but they had to agree on the times.
From the time Stepson was about 14 until his 18th birthday, he absolute raised hell about having to go visit; it took Stepdaughter until she was about 16 to start raising hell about it. Their dad is a total waste of skin. He has four kids by two seperate marriages, plus two stepkids from his current marriage, and there isn’t a single one of those kids who would piss in his ear if his brain caught on fire. His oldest son, from the previous marriage, is married and has two kids of his own and absolutely refuses to let Ex-From-Hell see them.
