Shared Custody During the Holiday Season

One of the most emotionally charged issues in custody cases is time-sharing during the holiday season.

Regardless of whether parents have just separated or have a long-standing custody agreement, the holidays can prove a tenuous time.

Newly Separated Parents

For newly separated parents, shared custody is new territory.

Parents may agree they want to share time with their children around the holidays, but what will this look like in practice?  This can be complicated when parents have different ideas of what shared custody means, and there is no written agreement or controlling Court Order. For example,

• Does equal time-sharing mean the children spend winter break with one parent in even-numbered years and with the other parent in odd-numbered years? Or does it mean the winter break is equally divided each year? And in the case of the latter, which parent has the children for the first half of the winter break, and which for the second half?
• If the winter break is an odd number of days, when is the transition?
• What if one parent wants to travel with the children?

These are the nuanced issues that should ultimately be resolved in a detailed custody agreement or parenting plan, ideally before parents separate, to avoid last-minute conflict around the holidays.  The last place parents want to find themselves on Christmas Eve is the courthouse (where Judges aren’t generally pleased to have to referee these types of disputes).

Complications for “Custody Veterans”

It’s not just the newly separated parents who need help around the holidays.

A custody agreement reached many years ago may lack specificity to account for changes in circumstances. Or it might just be outdated. Common issues include the following:

• As children get older, they may have their own preferences for holidays.
• When parents become accustomed to living separate and apart and may even re-marry, new traditions are made, and children might have different opportunities around their winter break than they did when their parents first separated.

Custody agreements often need to be modified to accommodate these changes, but for many reasons, parents might delay formal modification of these agreements. The risk, however, is that both parties agree the existing document is no longer appropriate, but without a superseding custody agreement to provide the parents a new roadmap, conflict abounds.

Strategies and Best Practices to Avoid Complications

The best way to avoid last-minute conflict around holiday time-sharing is to begin the discussion early—and follow up often.

Meet with a mediator to negotiate a custody time-sharing agreement before you separate, including a detailed agreement for time-sharing around holidays.

If either parent believes an existing custody agreement is out-of-date or ambiguous, he/she should raise the concern to the other parent as soon as possible. If it appears you’re not in lock step, meet with a neutral third party, such as a mediator, to try to bridge that gap.

Work to negotiate changes to your agreements when you need them. Many think of mediation as a tool only to resolve the custody case as a whole, but it can also be used to assist in the interpretation and modification of a custody agreement over time.

Meg Rosan, Esq. is a shareholder at Bulman, Dunie, Burke & Feld, Chtd. She manages the firm’s Family Law and Mediation Practice Groups, and regularly mediates disputes between parents regarding holiday time-sharing.  Contact Meg at (301) 656-1177 or mrosan@bulmandunie.com if you could benefit from assistance navigating shared custody during the holidays or anytime.