Divorce and Holiday Visitation

With the Fourth of July just around the corner the subject of holiday visitations seemed an appropriate topic for our blog. Are you happy with the visitations you have as a result of your divorce? Did you use a divorce court or did you use mediation for your divorce?

What happens when your holiday falls on the ex’s weekend? Did you work that our in advance? Who gets priority when a date conflicts with a week or weekend that normally belongs to the other parent?

Having a holiday visitation schedule can make life easier because it lays out where the children will be spending each holiday without having to continually negotiate with your ex.

While each state has its own individual visitation recommendations for holidays, parents generally rotate holidays such as Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, Easter, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. The children are usually with the mother on Mother's Day and the father on Father's Day. When the parents live far apart, the schedule needs to be adjusted to compensate for travel times.

Christmas vacation is usually split evenly between the parents. For example, one parent will have the first half of the Christmas break and the other parent will have the last half. Ideally, to be fair, this may need to alternate every year.

While the holiday visitation schedule usually takes precedence over the regular repeating schedule, so both parents need to take this into consideration when setting up their visitation schedule for the year. For example, if the non-custodial parent will miss the regular visitation time due to the other parent having that holiday, the regular schedule will resume after the holiday.

Even with a holiday schedule in place, there may still be questions that come up.

No make-up time is given for days that are missed because of the holiday schedule, and no additional time is added to placement time to account for holidays.  The holiday schedule is based solely on the holidays identified in the order. There is a good chance that a judge could miss the 4th of July, or maybe the judge considered it and decided not to add the holiday because it would interrupt the summer schedule.  Regardless of why the 4th of July is not identified, the terms of the order govern until they are modified by a subsequent court order.

An order may be modified in two ways: the two parties can agree to modify the order and submit a stipulation for the court’s approval, or one party can request a modification by filing a motion. 

At WHYmediate?, we give you the tools you need to resolve Divorce conflicts in a positive learning environment. 

WHYmediate? Mediation Services
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Tempe, AZ 85282 
(480) 777-5500
http://whymediate.solutions