Negotiating arrangements to share parental rights and responsibilities can be the hardest element of divorce. Parents generally don’t want to sacrifice time with their children or put their bond with them at risk because a marital relationship fails.
Parents have to find ways to divide the overall time spent with their children and also need to share legal authority for their kids. Even after agreeing to a specific breakdown of parenting time, there are more details to address. There are special days, including holidays and birthdays, when parents want to be present with their children.
Addressing those days can be particularly difficult for those who share custody. Occasionally, parents come from different cultures and may prioritize different days with the children. When they both want to spend the same days with their children, how can they go about dividing custody for special days?
An alternating schedule
One of the most common solutions used for splitting up holidays, birthdays and other special events is an alternating schedule. This arrangement allows the parents to each spend every other holiday with their children. They then invert the schedule for the next year. The alternating schedule works well in high-conflict scenarios and in situations where parents live a significant distance away from one another.
Splitting holidays
Spending a birthday or an entire holiday away from one parent can be hard for the child, just like it may be a challenge for the parents. It may sometimes be possible to negotiate arrangements where the parents split the special day in half. The child spends the night before and the morning with one parent. They spend the afternoon and evening of the special day with the other parent. Such arrangements work well in cases where the parents live close enough to one another to make midday handoffs practical without forcing the children to spend hours in the car.
Sharing holidays
Occasionally, parents can put aside most of their negativity about one another to keep the focus on their children. In such cases, they might be able to actually maintain the current household traditions by celebrating jointly. Sharing holidays can help preserve the traditions and keep the extended family involved. However, the risk of conflict is important to address. If parents cannot ensure that they keep their negative emotions in check, then sharing special days might result in unpleasant memories for everyone.
Creating a working shared custody arrangement requires that parents consider many different details carefully. A reasonable holiday schedule can be as important as an appropriate division of overall parenting time.