If you’re divorced w kids what is your 50/50 custody arrangement?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband is on a three four schedule with his ex.

I think I would prefer every other week personally

Does 3-4 mean 3 days at A then 4 at B, then do you do 4-3? Like 3-4-4-3 over two weeks?

It’s similar to 21:56

[Anonymous]

17, 14 and 12.

We switch every 2 weeks. This is at the request of the kids who as they got older hated the transitions more and more.

Honestly the fewer the transitions the better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm the Wed-Sat/Sun poster and I really like having set weekdays when I have my kid and don't have my kid. So I schedule late work commitments on nights I don't have my kid and don't need to check the calendar to know whether or not she will be with me. My friend does 3/3, so he ends up having his kid on different nights each week (I think that would be confusing).

I know a lot of people who do a 2/2/5/5, which seems to have the benefit of set days and alternating weekends.

Thank you, great point. I’d probably prefer to have set days but doesn’t that mean when you pick them up every Wednesday (in your personal scenario) you have them every Friday night? So one weekend you get them both weekend nights and the next your ex only gets them Saturday night as far as weekend nights go. Is that right?

Yes. When we started the schedule, I did feel like I got the worse deal. One weekend night without my child every two weeks and one weekend day to sleep in every two weeks. When I was dating a lot, it bothered me, but I found that if they are into you they will go out on a Tuesday night. Now I'm used to the schedule and I like it.

[Anonymous]

12 & 14, been separated / divorced for 3 years. In theory it’s every other week, but Ex H has rarely made it through a full week. Also I think it’s too much back and forth for one of my children in particular, who has moderate ADHD & related anxiety and executive function issues. Ex refuses to relinquish any of his time even though he rarely takes it all. I think 50/50 sucks for kids, too much back and forth. I would prefer the classic every other weekend even if it meant I had less time with me ie I was the weekend parent. Idk, divorce sucks. It’s only better than the alternative of an utterly intolerable marriage.

[Anonymous]

We do 2-2-5-5. DC is with me M/T overnights, ex W/Th overnights. We alternate weekends.

This means that transitions are Monday, Wednesday, and every other Friday evenings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We do 2-2-5-5. DC is with me M/T overnights, ex W/Th overnights. We alternate weekends.

This means that transitions are Monday, Wednesday, and every other Friday evenings.

This is what my ex and I do with our 7 & 9 year old. As they get older I think I might like the week on/week off, but this has worked really well for us the past few years.

[Anonymous]

This all sounds very complicated. Do kids hate these schedules?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This all sounds very complicated. Do kids hate these schedules?

Mine like it more than seeing their sad abuse me. Any other questions Sherlock?

[Anonymous]

Dad. Sad, angry, abusive dad. Not all of us marry monsters but some of see the ones we loved become them via drugs or health issues or alcohol.

[Anonymous]

My sons are teenagers. We do 50/50 and every other week. I have dinner with them several times on my off week since my ex works late.

[Anonymous]

When my son was still a minor we’d switch weekly on Monday nights (to account for three day weekends). The second he started driving he was at my house almost every day hanging out, and would go to his dads to sleep. And now that he’s an adult he still tries to keep it even when he’s home from college but ends up with me the majority of the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This all sounds very complicated. Do kids hate these schedules?

DC, 8, still says that they wish we were together b/c it'd be easier. This is not what I wanted for us, but sometimes you're left w/no choice.

(I validate their feelings and help problem solve best I can. The most I can hope for is they learn how to make the best of situations that you don't always like.)

[Anonymous]

Wait, op, you said this isn’t a “sure thing yet” in response to someone suggesting you and your ex talk. Does your ex know he/she is about to be an ex?

While it’s true that the two of you can set up whatever custody plan you want in the sense that the court doesn’t care, what nobody has told you yet is that your ex doesn’t have to do what you ask. For example, if your kid plays drums and every Tuesday they are learning how to play American Revolutionary War cadences, and you just love this type of drumming, your ex can say “This activity is for the kid, I want the Tuesdays where she does the Revolutionary War cadences, if you like it so much go find a drum class” when what you love is seeing how your kid plays those cadences, you don’t want to do it yourself. This is the sort of thing you can’t solve on paper because of the emotions involved, and your ex has no reason to care about your feelings.

Know too that many parents will start out saying “8:30 is a great bed time” only to realize that while it may be best for the kids, they also want to enjoy their kids.. What this looks like for you is you get the kids on your time and they are an absolute mess. Then one of them tells you that they stayed up late to watch the diving competitions because “mom wanted to”.

It’s the parent version of “The kid will go to daycare tomorrow, I won’t have to deal with him, sure Billy stay up with me”. This is even more fun when you and the kid really do like whatever it is you’re doing. Then you get the minset of “I already miss half the time with the kids, I’m not about to miss this diving competition”.

Good luck, op. If my husband tried to pull the fact finding mission before “making the divorce a sure thing” I’d have no reason to play nice. I’d fight like an alley cat with the goal that his parenting time fell on the least pleasant part of his days, his interests, his schedule. I wouldn’t kid myself that I’d get what I wanted, but I’d sure spend resources trying anything I could legally do. I’d stay away from the “no girlfriend overnights” but oh boy would I want his custody time happening on the days/times that I know will make him stressed. And no, this doesn’t make me a nice person, but nobody has to be nice once the marriage is over, especially if one person feels blindsided. Remember, your ex (and you too for that matter) do not have to be “mature” which is another way of saying “I am unwilling to do what the other guy wants”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:12 & 14, been separated / divorced for 3 years. In theory it’s every other week, but Ex H has rarely made it through a full week. Also I think it’s too much back and forth for one of my children in particular, who has moderate ADHD & related anxiety and executive function issues. Ex refuses to relinquish any of his time even though he rarely takes it all. I think 50/50 sucks for kids, too much back and forth. I would prefer the classic every other weekend even if it meant I had less time with me ie I was the weekend parent. Idk, divorce sucks. It’s only better than the alternative of an utterly intolerable marriage.

Thank you this is a really important consideration. Our son has moderate ADHD (medicated) and some sensory-ish slash behavioral challenges at times. The ADHD meds help a lot but I do wonder what impact frequent transitions would have on him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wait, op, you said this isn’t a “sure thing yet” in response to someone suggesting you and your ex talk. Does your ex know he/she is about to be an ex?

While it’s true that the two of you can set up whatever custody plan you want in the sense that the court doesn’t care, what nobody has told you yet is that your ex doesn’t have to do what you ask. For example, if your kid plays drums and every Tuesday they are learning how to play American Revolutionary War cadences, and you just love this type of drumming, your ex can say “This activity is for the kid, I want the Tuesdays where she does the Revolutionary War cadences, if you like it so much go find a drum class” when what you love is seeing how your kid plays those cadences, you don’t want to do it yourself. This is the sort of thing you can’t solve on paper because of the emotions involved, and your ex has no reason to care about your feelings.

Know too that many parents will start out saying “8:30 is a great bed time” only to realize that while it may be best for the kids, they also want to enjoy their kids.. What this looks like for you is you get the kids on your time and they are an absolute mess. Then one of them tells you that they stayed up late to watch the diving competitions because “mom wanted to”.

It’s the parent version of “The kid will go to daycare tomorrow, I won’t have to deal with him, sure Billy stay up with me”. This is even more fun when you and the kid really do like whatever it is you’re doing. Then you get the minset of “I already miss half the time with the kids, I’m not about to miss this diving competition”.

Good luck, op. If my husband tried to pull the fact finding mission before “making the divorce a sure thing” I’d have no reason to play nice. I’d fight like an alley cat with the goal that his parenting time fell on the least pleasant part of his days, his interests, his schedule. I wouldn’t kid myself that I’d get what I wanted, but I’d sure spend resources trying anything I could legally do. I’d stay away from the “no girlfriend overnights” but oh boy would I want his custody time happening on the days/times that I know will make him stressed. And no, this doesn’t make me a nice person, but nobody has to be nice once the marriage is over, especially if one person feels blindsided. Remember, your ex (and you too for that matter) do not have to be “mature” which is another way of saying “I am unwilling to do what the other guy wants”.

OP here. Thank you very much for this point of view. It is a weird place we are in — we have been working through many issues the last year, and as part of that we have discussed divorce and what it might look like financially, custódialos, logistically (who lives where etc). We are trying to work through things but we have doubts and are not sure staying together is our best path. It’s complicated of course, but we are also the type if people who get comfort from planning and understanding the vision of what something could be, so the details help.

So it is not anywhere near certain, and as certain as it is (not), my spouse is aware and we are in the same place.