Child Custody Calendar

One of the most important parts of your parenting plan or custody agreement is your child custody calendar. Your calendar contains the complete information about the custody and visitation schedule, the holiday schedule, vacation time, and special events. If you take the time to create a good calendar that works for your child and both parents then it will greatly help your custody situation. If you don't have a custody calendar all figured out, then you run the risk of having a lot of confusion over when and where the pick up and drop offs are, frustration when the schedule isn't clear, not getting enough time with your child, and tension between you and the other parent about visitation.

Fortunately, Custody X Change makes creating your child custody calendar easy. Custody X Change is custody software that lets you make a parenting plan. A big part of this is coming up with your custody schedule. The software allows you to do this simply.

To start off your calendar, you pick the repeating cycle of custody that you want. As you can see below, Custody X Change makes it simple to set up the different parts of your schedule by clicking on the tab. For the repeating cycle, you can choose from the standard schedules listed or you can create your own week, two week, three week, four week or monthly repeating schedule. Here's a 3/3/4/4 joint custody schedule that was put in by clicking the days of custody.

Now the program applies that pattern to the whole calendar starting with the date you specify. You can look at your calendar at anytime by clicking the calendar tab. You can then move on to the vacation tab. For your vacation, you can enter in exact dates when each parent has vacation time, or you can opt to have an unspecified vacation clause in your agreement.

The nice thing about the vacation tab is that you can set up a different schedule for summer or other breaks too.

Again, you can click to the calendar tab and see how the schedule looks set up in the calendar. If you look at the bottom of the screen you can see the time-share percentage that each parent has with the children. This is handy while you create your schedule because you know exactly how much time each parent has with the children. This number is also used in child support software to calculate the correct amount of support. When you are finished setting up your calendar, the software lets you print a detailed time-share and overnight percentage report.

You can then move to the holiday tab. In this tab you'll find a list of holidays that you can assign each parent custody to. You can specify the days and times that the holiday starts and ends. As you enter in the holidays, you can see how the time-share percentage is affected at the bottom of the screen.

The last thing to add to your calendar are any one-time or recurring special events where the custody changes. To do this you simply click on the day where the special event happens and the calendar changes. You can add as many events as you want.

Once you have those added, you have your complete custody calendar. You can print off the calendar or export it to Word or PDF. To finish your parenting plan, you can click on the parenting provisions tab and add any provisions you want to your agreement. You can then print off the documents for your agreement. These include a schedule of custody and child visitation (in calendar and document form), a holiday schedule, vacation information, and a time-share and overnight percentage report.

As you can see, Custody X Change makes it easy to create your child custody calendar. Because the program is so simple to use, you have the luxory of exploring different ideas for your calendar until you come up with something you like. You can also work together with the child's parent until everyone is happy with the arrangements. Download your free trial of Custody X Change and see how it can help you.