When you divorce while your child or children are still minors, you must put a custody plan in place. Most weeks follow a familiar routine, but there are certain dates on the calendar, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, that require extra thought and planning.
Most parents are eager to share such dates with their kids, and the kids are eager in return. These dates are often shared with the wider family, too. It might, for instance, be one of the few times the kids travel across the country to see Grandma each year. That makes good planning especially important.
Finding ways to share holiday custody
You will need to develop a workable way to share these important days with the children without interfering with your ex’s parenting time. Here are some options:
- Alternate dates: Some divorcing parents decide one of them will have the children on Thanksgiving, while the other has them on Christmas. That can work especially well if certain dates are more important to one parent than others, which may be true if each follows a different religion.
- Alternate years: In some cases, what works best is saying the kids will be with you and your side of the family this Thanksgiving, and with your ex and their side of the family the next year.
- Accept it as it falls: Not all parents negotiate such things. Instead, they agree that the kids spend it wherever the general custody schedule has them down to be that day. If Christmas happens to fall on a Thursday, and they are with your spouse that Thursday, then so be it.
- Split the day: When parents remain living close to each other, it can be relatively easy for the children to spend the morning of a special day with one parent and the afternoon with another.
- Share the day: Just because two people no longer want to be married does not necessarily mean they don’t get on anymore. Some ex-couples still come together to share these important events. Even if one of the parents only pops in for an hour after dinner, it can show a strong sense of unity to the children.
The important thing to remember about custody arrangements is that you should put your children’s best interests first. That’s not always easy, so having experienced legal guidance during the negotiations can help you keep that at the forefront of your minds and decisions.
