Divorced parents what is your custody schedule?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Child support payments are usually calculated based on where the child sleeps in the evenings. While the welfare of the kids is very important, I think that hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month in support if the child lives full time with one parent is pretty much the opposite of “There’s no reason they can’t live in one house all the time.” When me and my wife were looking at separation, and she wanted full custody, I looked into this. (In Canada, fwiw) I could spend my every waking moment with the kids, pay for everything they need, and I still would have been liable for 60% of my paycheck in child support since they would be sleeping at their mothers house. (We reconciled, and we are doing much better these days now that my stress level is lower)

It’s just my opinion, but the only people I’ve ever seen pushing for sole custody are stay-at-home mothers who don’t want to have to go back into the workforce, and expect their ex to keep paying for it all. All in the name of “stability for the children.” Not to argue that kids don’t need routine and stability, but they can get that from two households too, without just one parent paying for it all.

In response to the OP, the best arrangement I saw when growing up was one set of parents where the Dad got all of them alternating weekends, and took each of them one night per week by themselves. The kids loved having one on one time with their dad, and it seemed to work out well.

22

I’ve have 50% physical custody of my three children (now aged 14, 12, & 9) for the past 3.5 years. Before that, it was almost 1.5 years of every other weekend plus one evening per week.

My relationship is far more solid with my children now than it was before. Before, doing “every other weekend” there’s the strong temptation to become Disney-Dad. You do special things and fun things but you don’t get to see the day-to-day. I wasn’t responsible for homework, I wasn’t responsible for getting them to choir practice or whatever. In many ways, I don’t think the kids saw me as their parent - I was their babysitter but not their parent. My place wasn’t “home”. Mom was “home”.

Now we switch ever Monday. I take them to school on Monday morning, they return to their Mom’s house and stay a week there. The next week I pick them up on Monday after work and they stay the week with me.

The have bedrooms, clothing & toys at my place so there’s no shuttling of belongings back and forth other than cell phones).

I live 7 miles from my ex, the kids attend the same school which is local to their mother but not to me. I drop the kids at school each morning it’s my week (since there’s no bus) and they ride the bus or walk back from school to the ex’s house. After work, I pick them up from her house.

We make adjustments for family vacations, visiting relatives & the like but, for the most part, we’re pretty good with week-on, week-off.

I’d never want to go back to the 14% relationship.

From a monetary POV, which I hate to consider but I’ll bring up since it’s been brought up earlier… my child support at 14% custody as the same as 0%, $1800 per month. It’s about half that today.

There’s a old-school opinion that kids are better with stability, and somehow that almost always translates to, “better with their mother”. I disagree. I’m a full parent, too, not some babysitter.

23

First of all, you’re not correct about the law about child support in Canada. Second of all (to address your first paragraph I’ve quoted), many of the people I’ve seen pushing for a 50/50 custody split are fathers whose sole motivation is to reduce the amount of child support they have to pay. Third, very few mothers who have primary physical custody (which, BTW, isn’t the same as "sole custody) are going to live high on the hog on the amount of child support they get.

Custody schedules should be based on what’s in the best interests of the children, not on how much support the non custodial parent wants to pay.

24

This is exactly how I feel. I know so little about my own kids now. We just had a parent teacher conference for the 5 year old and I just learned she can read. I don’t get told this kind of thing. I don’t even know what kinds of shows they like to watch or are allowed to watch.

I also a lot of the times feel like a baby sitter and I have to ‘do’ something with them when I have them. I’ve also been to a couple of mediators and a counselor all of who have said that I need to take parenting classes and that I am not able to take care of my children. Just tonight I sat on the floor and played two games at once with them. I read to them, I draw with them. I’ve taught the oldest to do the monkey bars, tie her shoes and how to act in a restaurant. I was able to get the youngest to sleep in her own bed at two, she was co-sleeping with the ex.

I knowingly and willingly became a parent. I can not help that my ex left and didn’t want to try. I still want to be a parent and not some guy they seem every so often. I have only an ok relationship with my own father due to the same thing, I don’t want that to happen with my girls.

25

… just an addendum since I was re-reading and I saw that your ex was moving.

In Colorado, my ex cannot move to a place that would cause “hardship” in my ability to see my children (since I have half custody).

It’d be a court issue if she wanted to move out of Denver. Within the Metro area (which is huge enough to cause hardship), I’d probably have a harder argument with the courts.

However, she knows that I would fight her for custody if she wanted to move away. She threatened that during the early days, she had an opportunity to take a job about 100 miles away in the mountains and she “threatened” me with full custody. I said, “fine”. She backed off quickly - she thought I’d give the kids up that easily. There was no terror in her threat for me.

My advice on being a half-time father, go for it - it’s definitely more rewarding and kids need their fathers too.

I’d advise taking the parenting class if you think there will be a fight. This would demonstrate your desire to the courts that, not only do you want the kids, but you want them enough to learn all you can about being a better father.

Of course, IANNL, but I’d recommend you talk with a family lawyer and find out just what kind of fight this might be. Do they have anything they can hold over you that implies you wouldn’t be a good father? Alcoholism or anything?

My CO lawyer assured me that drugs, alcohol, etc were the biggies for the CO courts. “Best interests of the child” was the supposed yardstick.

26

Would you care to be more specific? I paid for that legal advice, and if it was mistaken, or if I misunderstood, I would appreciate a correction.

I don’t have a problem with that. I think that in most cases, a 50/50 split is in the best interest of the child. And while I am sure there are some men who are only care about the money they pay in child support, I’m sure the majority just want equal time with their kids.

I never said they did, find someone else to argue that strawman. My personal experience is that out of the three divorced women I know with the kids full time, two don’t have jobs and the third works only part time. In comparison, their ex-husbands have 4 full time jobs between the three of them. I`m pretty sure none of them are living high on the hog, but they are supporting themselves and their kids on their ex-husbands child support plus child-tax credits, GST credit, etc.

And its funny how women (and the courts) love repeating that line, when 84% of the child support payments made are made by men. No one is arguing that the welfare of the children isnt important, but ignoring the financial realities is naive at best, and sexist at worst.

Anyhow, I think I`ve derailed this thread enough. Feel free to start a GD or pit thread if you want to continue this argument.

27

As a child of divorce, I’ll give you the same advice I give others: you should live in the house with the kids Monday-Wednesday, and then move out and let your ex live in the house with the kids Thursday-Sunday. Then next week you switch.

If you don’t like that idea because the idea of moving your home twice a week sounds awful, please be assured that your kids will find it just as awful, although they may not be able to explain why things are so unstable for themselves.

From the age of 13 (when my parents separated) to about 15 (when I unilaterally declared that I was living with my dad), I was sort of homeless: emotionally, there wasn’t one place that I thought of as home. I don’t recommend putting your kids in that situation.

28

How precisely do you know this?

Not to point out the absurdly obvious, but there isn’t a lot of money to be saved in not paying child support but, you know, maintaining a home for children. If I didn’t have half custody of the Small One I could have a smaller place, spend less money on food and sundries, and all that sort of thing. I’d save as much money as child support would be. But it wouldn’t be worth it. You couldn’t pay me a million bucks to give up custody.

I would rather pay double child support to HAVE custody than give up custody and not have to pay.

29

I’m a child of divorce myself and I have no real relationship with my father today as I didn’t see him that often.

As for your proposal, that’s an ok idea, but the big thing that I think you’re missing is that my children do have their own room, beds and clothes. If I had to shuttle back and forth then either my ex and I would have to share a room or we’d need another room. I also call my house their house as well and when they say dad’s house I say it’s your house as well.

That and I don’t think my ex, her fiancee and his two kids would like that idea.

30

It’s more of a thought experiment than an actual proposal. Although they may have their own room, beds, and clothes, I think there’s something pretty fundamental about having a base of operations that you can call “home.” Joint custody removes a kid’s ability to have a home: “homes” doesn’t cut it, in my experience, but rather is closer to having no home at all.

Obviously your kids may have a different experience; I’m just passing along my own.

31

Yeah, it becomes more like “my room at dad’s house” and “my room at mom’s house” instead of “my home.”

32

That’s it right there. To this day, I’m not sure if my parents realize how we perceived it (I’ve talked with my siblings, and they felt something similar going on): they were just trying to make the best of a bad situation, and it never occurred to them that joint custody with twice-weekly moves meant we had no home.

33

I was going to suggest that the best custody arrangement is one that both parents have worked together to arrange, for everyone’s benefit. Unfortunately, it sounds like that ship has sailed.

It sounds like you may have some more serious issues to contend with than just scheduling.