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Child Visitation Schedule Examples


Child Visitation Schedule Examples

Everyone can agree that, in most cases, children deserve to spend a significant amount of time with each of their parents. Yet such a simple concept in principal can become incredibly difficult in practice. What is enough time to be significant? How do the busy lifestyles of parents, and of their children, affect a visitation schedule? 

Complications such as that are why it’s so important to be aware of various child visitation schedule examples while you plan out your own. Different parents and different children may have special considerations. Your own family’s schedule should be personalized to your own needs, but a child visitation schedule example may be a good place to start when deciding whether you are spending enough time with your child.

Child Visitation Schedule Example: Normal Case

If your child is no longer an infant and attending school, then some variation on this child visitation schedule example will likely be a great fit for your situation. The child lives with a primary residential parent and then spends every other weekend with the secondary residential parent. The period of the weekend normally starts at 6 p.m. Friday and ends 6 p.m. Sunday. 

As for weekday visitation, it will typically occur one day per week, beginning with the secondary residential parent picking up the child from their school and returning them to their primary place of residence at 8:30 p.m. If the secondary residential parent lives more than 30 miles away from the primary, then they may be obligated to stay at the primary residential parent’s house or their neighborhood during the visit. Wednesday, coming in the middle of the week, is a common weekday to choose for visitation.

Holidays in this child visitation schedule example occur on a rotating calendar. In even-numbered years (or odd-numbered, as you choose), the secondary residential parent will have visitational rights over Easter, the 4th of July weekend, Thanksgiving weekend as judged from 6 p.m. Wednesday until 6 p.m. Sunday, and the first half of Christmas vacation. In odd-numbered years, the secondary residential parent will have visitation rights during the weekend Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the weekend of Memorial Day, the weekend of Labor Day, Halloween, and the second half of Christmas. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day should be spend with the appropriate parent, and the child’s birthday should be spend in alternating care.

Five weeks of summer vacation should be spend with the secondary residential parent. This will usually be in one three-week block with one two-week block and not five consecutive weeks. Smaller time groupings may be negotiated between the two parents.

Other Child Visitation Schedule Examples

If the child is still an infant, weekend visitation will usually only constitute one full day, from 6 p.m. Friday to 6 p.m. Saturday. Weekday visitation shall be expanded to two evenings a week, but limited in time from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. 

If the secondary residential parent lives more than 150 miles away, then visitation is much more limited, to only one half of Christmas vacation and all of spring vacation, with six additional weeks to come, usually in the summer.

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