Is it still "standard" custody for dads to have 1st & 3rd weekends and every Wed. night?

[Anonymous]

Just wondering if this is still the norm, or if it's not at all the case anymore.

[Anonymous]

I don't know, I think your custody agreement should be whatever works for you. I assume that wednesday became the standard (honestly didn't know it was) because it's in the middle of the week. It happens to be my daughter's night with her dad. He picked it and there's a good yoga class that night, so I was cool with that being my night off. We don't alternate weekends, though - we split weekends. One parent picks her up Friday and keeps her till 5 or 6 on Saturday, and the other parent has her Saturday-Sunday. Seems fair. Occasionally we trade off weekends for travel plans, etc. but I like having one day off each weekend. My friends who share custody of their young children (I know quite a few of us, actually) have similar arrangements.

I think trading weekends is normal when the kids are older, or the parents live farther away from each other. And some of the families I know with older kids tend to split custody closer to 50-50.

[Anonymous]

Our situation is this: we do every other weekend, and one parent has the child M/T and one has the child Wed/Thur nights.

We found that the fewer transitions, the better. We have a 50/50 custody agreement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our situation is this: we do every other weekend, and one parent has the child M/T and one has the child Wed/Thur nights.

We found that the fewer transitions, the better. We have a 50/50 custody agreement.

If you don't mind me asking, do you like your arrangement and are you the mom or dad? Why did you decide on 50/50? It's what my ex wants but only because he thinks it will reduce his child support to nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our situation is this: we do every other weekend, and one parent has the child M/T and one has the child Wed/Thur nights.

We found that the fewer transitions, the better. We have a 50/50 custody agreement.

If you don't mind me asking, do you like your arrangement and are you the mom or dad? Why did you decide on 50/50? It's what my ex wants but only because he thinks it will reduce his child support to nothing.

Whatever you agree on is "normal." If your ex wants 50% custody then at least in Maryland, it is highly likely he will get it - and in that case, yes, it will reduce his child support to nothing in all likelihood. In my experience, the judge will award 50% custody to the ex who wants it (even though IMO it is very bad for the kids - certainly it is for my kids).

[Anonymous]

Do the courts assume that it is best for the children to have 50/50 b/c they should spend equal time with both parents or b/c parents believe they have a right to be with their kids 50% of the time? Obviously that means a lot of transitions for the kids and I can see lots of kids having trouble with that. Do they consider this at all? Does it matter who was primary caretaker prior?

[Anonymous]

13:41 It doesn't have to be a lot of transitions if you do every other week. But that's long for a child to be away from the other parent. Which is why many folks alternate 4/3 and 3/4.

The only thing that seems to matter is what the parents want and what the parents will negotiate or litigate. Usually negotiate. Litigation is expensive.

OP, every other weekend and Wednesdays is no longer the norm. But people do all sorts of things. For instance, if one or both parents travel for work, they have to get creative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our situation is this: we do every other weekend, and one parent has the child M/T and one has the child Wed/Thur nights.

We found that the fewer transitions, the better. We have a 50/50 custody agreement.

If you don't mind me asking, do you like your arrangement and are you the mom or dad? Why did you decide on 50/50? It's what my ex wants but only because he thinks it will reduce his child support to nothing.

I'm a stepparent, actually. DH and his ex decided on 50/50 because DH was insistent that his son be with him half the time -- that started at about age 3, I think.

It won't reduce his child support to nothing if he earns more than you do. My DH pays a LOT in child support even though we have his son half the time and pay for more than half of his activities and such. If you earn roughly the same amount and your child care expenses are the same, then yes, you won't get much in child support.

We (DH and I) like the agreement -- it's very important to him to have his son half the time, and it definitely works better than us having him every Tue/Thursday, for example, because it gives my husband more flexibility to travel for work. I think his ex likes the agreement too, although I think she'd prefer we switch which weekdays we have him, but she doesn't want to change to an every-other-day sort of thing.

There are very few parent-to-parent exchanges now that he is in school -- he will leave from school from one parent's house and be picked up by the other. He does sometimes say it's hard going back and forth, back and forth, but I think that's the nature of the beast. We try to make it as easy as possible -- he has everything he needs at each house so there's no need for him to cart stuff back and forth, except for his school backpack.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

This doesn't address the OP's question but addresses the 50/50 discussion. My parents had 50/50 custody - two weeks with one and two weeks with the other. As long as the parents live near each other and both are good parents, it wasn't too much transition at all. Kids get used to stuff. But, I wonder if a shorter transition time would have been too annoying, as in every other weekend and a Weds. I would have hated the mid-week transition. In my mind, the longer span at each house, the better - unless one of the parents is total crap, of course.

[Anonymous]

15:52 Do you have your own children? Sorry but your story is so typical, it's all about the father. Insistent, important to him. 50-50 at age three is ridiculous.