Most scenarios where parents divorce or start living separately lead to shared custody or co-parenting. Both adults have regular overnight visits with the children and share parental authority. Such arrangements aren’t always ideal or even possible.
Maybe one parent travels regularly for work and simply isn’t available consistently enough to accept parenting responsibilities. Perhaps they don’t have stable living arrangements or have difficulty relating to their children. Sometimes the best arrangement is for one parent to assume primary custody of the children while the other has lesser custody rights and more limited parenting time, also known as visitation.
How do parents make it so that parenting time arrangements are fair and appropriate?
Exploring different scheduling options
There are a variety of ways for people to handle regular visitation. Some parents have the children for the whole weekend every other weekend.
Others have the children for dinner and after-school time multiple nights a week and then for a single overnight once a week. Typically, the goal is to have the parent with visitation maintain about 20% of the total parenting time.
Addressing special events
For visitation arrangements to be fair, parents may need to consider special occasions when the children may want to have both of their parents present, such as birthdays, holidays and athletic events. A solid visitation schedule factors in those occasions in addition to day-to-day life and the need to divide that time with the children. In low-conflict scenarios, the custodial parent might allow the other parents to attend birthday parties and holiday celebrations at their home. Other times, short visits on special days can be part of the visitation schedule.
Planning to adjust as necessary
Parenting time schedules often need to be flexible as well. Parents working in unpredictable professions or dealing with unstable living arrangements may become suddenly unable to spend time with their children as planned. Parents may need to implement a rule about how much advance notice is necessary for changes or cancellations and when the parent with visitation is eligible for make-up time.
Thinking carefully about the needs of the children and the circumstances of the parents can help adults establish appropriate child custody arrangements, including parenting time schedules. Parents who can focus on what the children need may find that sharing custody is less of a challenge after they adjust to their new circumstances.
