Many parents feel confused and overwhelmed as they begin the process of making their parenting agreement. This is understandable, because there is a lot of information about parenting agreements that parents need to process. Many states also have different requirements for the agreement, and this can make it even more confusing.
To help parents get started, here are some sample parenting agreements. We’ll look at some of the different parts of the agreements and give examples of them. Hopefully this can make things a little more clear, and give some good ideas about how to begin the agreement.
The Custody and Visitation Schedule
This is the first part of the agreement, and it can also be the trickiest part to set up. The custody and visitation schedule, also called the parenting time schedule, outlines the time that each parent has with the children. For the schedule parents can choose between a sole or joint custody arrangement. In the sole custody arrangement, the child lives primarily with one parent and visits the other parent. In a joint custody arrangement, the child spends time living with both parents (a joint arrangement doesn’t necessarily mean that each parent has fifty percent of the time with the child–parents just try to share the time more equally).
- Every Weekend: In this schedule, one parent has the child on the weekdays, and the other parent has custody every weekend.
- Alternating Weekends: One parent has the child on the weekdays and every other weekend, the other parent has them on the other weekends.
- Alternating Weekends with a weekday visit: One parent has the child weekdays and alternating weekends, the other parent has alternating weekends and an evening visit during the week.
- Alternating Weekends with an overnight visit: Same as above, only the visit is overnight.
- Extended Weekends: This can go with any of the above schedule. The parent who has weekends has extended weekends–they start early (on Thursday) and/or end Monday night or Tues. morning.
- 1st, 3rd, 5th Weekends or 2nd, 4th, 5th: A parent has visitation on these weekends.
Example Joint Custody Schedules
- Alternating Weeks: Parents alternate weeks of custody
- Multiple overnight and evening visits: The child spends significant evening and overnight time with both parents.
- 2-2-5-5: The child spends two days with the first parent, goes to the second parent for two days, returns for five days with the first parent and then spends five days with the second parent.
- 3-3-4-4: Same as above, only it’s 3 and four days.
In Part 2, we’ll look at samples of the next section of the parenting plan: custody provisions and stipulations.