How to design a good holiday and vacation parenting plan
The term “Parenting Plan” is widely used for a number of different purposes in Nevada’s Family Courts. It usually refers to a specific schedule proposed or finalized in a custody order which controls the amount of time each parents have with their children. If a judge imposes it, it is often called a custody schedule. If the parties agree to it in advance of the court’s adoption as an order, it is usually called a Parenting Plan or Custody Agreement. In any case, it refers to a formal schedule by which the parents share their time with their children.
Parenting Plans as Regular Schedules
Most Parenting Plans are straight forward as to the custody timeshare. Whether it is a “week-on/week-off” schedule (where the parents alternate weeks going forward) or a “2-2-5” schedule (where one parent has two consecutive days, then the other parent has two consecutive days, then the parties alternate the next three days which are typically the weekend), or another arrangement, this is usually the easiest part of the plan to follow. It is often what the parties spend most of their time and attention working through since this is where the bulk of their world will now be spent. But too often, parents spend little or essentially no time working through how they will exercise parenting time on holidays and vacations, events that are fraught with emotional ties good and bad. This causes significant friction points if the parties’ attitudes toward certain holidays conflict. This is particularly true in “high conflict” cases where the parties are willing to sustain ongoing litigation over the smallest of issues.
Holiday Plans
High-conflict custody expert and Hearing Master Margaret Pickard spent years working with high-conflict parties in crafting and enforcing Parenting Plans. She worked with parents in her UNLV classroom and trained the Family Court judges on how to reduce conflict and adopt standardized holiday and vacation plans when parties could not agree. Margaret developed a standard holiday and vacation schedule for the courts, which is still in use in some form today.
For a copy of Margaret’s standard Holiday and Vacation Schedule, click HERE.
The basic premises for the plan are these:
Be clear and concise so that neither party can misunderstand the expectations;
Cover all of the major holidays, then pare them down to the needs of the parents (e.g. if you adhere to a particular religion, delete those holidays that don’t apply to you);
Set priority over the inevitable overlaps or conflicts (e.g. birthdays on spring break, or holidays that occur during someone’s vacation plans, etc.);
Alternate major holidays each year so that both parents get each holiday once every two years; and
Allow vacations, but make them subject to holidays to avoid someone taking a vacation to rob the other of a holiday.
The key to all of this is, of course, clarity. A Parenting Plan with loopholes or ambiguity is impossible to enforce and invites mischief. Expectations of the parents need to be bright lines where everyone knows what is expected. Another important point Margaret recognized was the need to avoid having parents exchange the children on the holiday. Margaret would often call this the “McDonalds Effect.” McDonalds is said to have created the Happy Meal™ and PlayPlace™ not to provide relief for tired parents (though that is a great secondary benefit), but to associate in the young impressionable mind a happy experience with going to McDonalds – and thus develop customers for life. Well, the opposite, too, is true. The best way to teach a child to hate a holiday is to put a highly-stressful custodial exchange on the holiday.
Vacation Plans
One of the ways high-conflict litigants mess with each other is by being “creative” with vacation plans. Many custody orders give parents a certain number of days of vacation without limiting how they can be used. So, the difficult parent will take two days here, and two days there, in an effort to eliminate the other parent’s weekend visits. Instead, the Parenting Plan should account for this. In Margaret’s plan, one parent gets to choose their vacation dates for the upcoming year by a given day, then the other gets to choose second so as to avoid the dates chosen by the first. Then the other parent gets first choice the next year. This covers most needs.
Another way to avoid the conflicting schedules is to allow “up to” a specific number of days in a given block so that if they are not taken, they are forfeited. For example, if the schedule were to allow 14 days of vacation time, parents could adopt a rule that they could take “up to seven days at a time” so they could take two vacations per year, but they can’t take two or three days here, then another two or three days there. If they schedule a 4-day vacation, then they’ve forfeited the other three. Of course, parents could agree to anything they think would work. But again, clarity is key.
Of course, the key to success of any plan is the willingness of the parties to follow it. That’s not to say the parties cannot agree to make exceptions or modification to suit their needs, but that should be done as much as possible at the time of the original drafting of the Parenting Plan. That way only “one-off” situations can be handled without completely destroying the plan.
The attorneys at Nevada Family Law Group are experts at developing parenting plans for parties, especially in high-conflict custody matters. If you have difficulty with your parenting plan, or you are approaching a custody award and want to craft a plan that works, call our office and set up an appointment. Good planning up front can avoid years and thousands of dollars in litigation later.
