Split-Week Custody and Visitation Schedule Examples

The split-week schedule is a 50/50 child custody schedule. It places your child with one parent for three-and-a-half days of the week, then the other parent for the rest.

You can customize this with Custody X Change.

Split-week schedule examples

You'll have two exchanges per week, and you can pick which days and times you want. If they're exactly three-and-a half days apart, one will be in the early AM and the other in the late PM. You can adjust the hours for convenience. Exchanges should be workable for your child as well as for both parents.

If you need to achieve exactly equal time over the course of a year, remember you can approach a 50/50 split by carefully allocating holidays and school breaks.

Change the start day

Choose any start day and time for your schedule. Here, the split-week pattern has exchanges at Monday 3 p.m. and Friday 9 a.m. One parent gets every weekend. The logistics may require the weekend parent to bring the child home from school at the end of the week and bring them back to school to start the new week.

You can customize this with Custody X Change.

Split the weekend

If you exchange on a Wednesday each week, you'll also split the weekend, meaning that both parents will have some weekend time. Your exchanges could be early Wednesday and late Saturday, or late Wednesday and early Sunday.

You can customize this with Custody X Change.

Use third-party time

In the Custody X Change app, you can mark third-party time to show when your child is with a caregiver, like a babysitter, grandparent or teacher. You can also do this to indicate when the child is likely sleeping. By removing time that would have been allocated to one parent or the other, you change the parenting timeshare.

Here's the same schedule that was shown above, but with overnight hours removed, revealing that the split is closer to 50/50 when it considers only when the child is awake.

You can customize this with Custody X Change.

Calculate your time

Adjust your hours as needed. As you customize your schedule, use a parenting timeshare calculator to ensure the proposed schedule is giving each of you equal time with your child.

You can customize this with Custody X Change.

Pros and cons of the split-week schedule

With a split-week approach, each parent has the child during the same days every week. For example, one parent might have Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning, while the other gets Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Pros

Some parents appreciate consistent parenting days. They know that, for example, they always take their child to Monday night sports practice while Thursday nights are for dinner with colleagues. It makes it easier to plan the week.

As long as you stick to the schedule, you know you're sharing near-equal time. Proving your parenting time is close to equal is often relevant for child support hearings.

Cons

Maybe you'd rather vary your parenting days, e.g., on any given Monday, the child could be with you or their other parent. If so, the split-week schedule isn't right for you.

As the split-week schedule always has a midweek exchange, consider whether it will disrupt your child's school week. If one parent lives far away from the child's school, it'll probably be hard for you to share a split-week schedule during the school year.

Other co-parenting schedules to consider

The 4-3 schedule gives you the same days every week. The time split is about 60/40.

You can customize this with Custody X Change.

You can do it on an every-other-week rotation so the days are reversed on the second week, and it evens out to a 50/50 time split. This is a 3-4-4-3 schedule.

You can customize this with Custody X Change.

Similarly, every extended weekend gives you the same days every week with an overall 60/40 split.

You can customize this with Custody X Change.

The easiest way to make a split-week schedule

There's a lot to think about when you build a parenting time schedule. You'll want it to address holidays and school breaks, give the right amount of time to each parent, and work for years to come.

The Custody X Change app makes it easy. Just follow the steps to make a custody schedule.

On Step 2, select "custom repeating rate." Hit "next" and choose a repeating rate of one week.

On Step 3, give one parent a period of three-and-a-half days. The other half of the week will be automatically assigned to the other parent.

You can customize this with Custody X Change.

To make a custody schedule quickly and affordably, turn to Custody X Change. You'll get a written schedule and a visual calendar that meet your family's needs, as well as court standards.