What Can Go Wrong With A Week By Week Parenting Rotation?

Sharing parenting time equally with your ex-spouse is an admirable goal, but it is hard to make it work in practice.  Some parents rotate custody week by week, where the children spend one week with Mom followed by one week with Dad, and the cycle repeats until the children reach adulthood, at least in theory.  This arrangement tends to work better when the children are young; for toddlers, there is not much difference between summer and winter or between a weekday and a weekend; each parent can catch up on sleep during the other parent’s parenting time.  It is difficult to maintain a weekly rotation of parenting time once children enter school, though, especially since they might also participate in extracurricular activities on weekday evenings or on weekends.  It is hard enough for a married couple who lives together in the same household to coordinate the schedule of even one school-aged child, so imagine a divorced couple with two children trying to do this.  If your idealistic parenting plan has run into trouble now that your children are in school, contact a Birmingham child custody lawyer.

The Messy Ex and the Chronically Late Ex Face Off Every Week

An Alabama couple formalized a parenting plan in which the children would alternate residences on a weekly basis, spending one week with the mother and then one week with the father.  The children were both in school, and problems started almost immediately.  The father complained that the children were frequently late for school during the mother’s parenting time.  The mother complained that the clothes she sent with the children to the father’s house either were never returned, or else returned unwashed and wadded up in the children’s backpacks.  The mother also complained that the father got drunk on several occasions during his parenting time.  All of this led the parents to seek a modification of the parenting plan.

The court ordered the mother to exercise parenting time Sunday evening through Friday afternoon and the father to exercise parenting time from school dismissal time on Friday until 6:00 on Sunday.  It also indicated which parent would be with the children on which holidays, and it ordered the father not to drink alcohol in the children’s presence.  The only provision in the court’s decision that could have caused more conflict is that the court instructed the father to meet the children at the school bus stop every weekday afternoon at 3:45, and to return the children to the mother at 6:00 every Monday through Thursday evening.  One can only wonder whether the new arrangement turned out to be feasible, since the parents did not go back to court afterward.

Contact Peeples Law About Parenting Plans for School-Aged Children

A Birmingham family law attorney can help you and your former spouse agree to a parenting plan that accommodates your children’s school schedules and extracurricular activities.  Contact Peeples Law today to schedule a consultation.

Source:

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