The loud clock on the courtroom wall said, “8:55 a.m.,” which was five minutes before the custody trial was set to begin. Judge Claven had not yet taken the bench. His law clerk picked up the telephone and said, “We’re ready.” He listened for a second and then announced, “The judge wants to see counsel in chambers.”

The clerk led the lawyers to the judge’s office behind the courtroom. “This case ought to be settled,” the judge said. “What’s the problem?”

“Your Honor, we are very close.” said Michael Sloan, the father’s lawyer.

“How close?” asked the judge, raising his bushy white eyebrows.

“We only differ on where the child spends one day out of the whole year, Judge.” said Julie Bomgarten, the mother’s attorney.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” said Judge Claven. “Why don’t you just go out in the hall and flip a coin?”

The parties eventually settled by alternating spending the extra day with their child every other year and splitting leap years equally.

This shows how important time with their children is to parents and to what lengths they will go to fight for it.

Traditionally, when one parent has physical custody, the other parent has visitation. Visitation means time the children spend with the noncustodial parent. However, the word visitation carries with it an emotional connotation. It doesn’t sound right that you have to visit with your own children. So, modern lawyers and judges use words like “access” and “timesharing” in place of visitation.

Abbreviated Custody

When the noncustodial parent has a joint agreement for timesharing, the children are in that parent’s control or custody for a brief time. So, timesharing is, essentially, abbreviated custody.

Tanya Seals won physical custody of her two daughters, Kim, 14, and Sue, 12, in her divorce. She objected when her ex, Sam Seals, sometimes left them in the care of his new wife during his scheduled timesharing.

Tanya complained to her lawyer, who wrote to Sam and requested that Tanya be the preferred caretaker when Sam was not available for timesharing with the children.

Sam’s lawyer wrote back that when it was Sam's turn for timesharing, he had care and custody of the children. It was Sam’s choice whom he selected as a third-party caretaker and that Tanya was overreaching by trying to control the children and Sam when they were in his custody.

Timesharing Schedules

Some parents are able to agree on parenting issues and scheduling. It is possible to agree on a timesharing provision that says the noncustodial parent will have timesharing on a reasonable and liberal basis. They manage to do fine with that language. If they do run into difficulties, they can add a more detailed schedule later on or ask the court to establish one for them if they cannot agree on one.

Others, however, need more detail in their timesharing schedules. Or both can be combined, with a provision that provides for liberal timesharing but involving not less than the following of a detailed schedule.

In preparing a schedule, first you need to look at the basic routine weekly schedule. Here are some options:

• One common arrangement is timesharing where the noncustodial parent gets to see the child every other weekend and for Wednesday dinner. The Wednesday dinner is so the child and parent don’t have to go two weeks without seeing one another. The reason that the noncustodial does not get every weekend is that it allows each parent to get to have some weekend time with the children. This is sometimes called a “standard” schedule, but there is no such thing. The schedule can be as varied as your imagination. Each case is unique and people have different work schedules and social schedules to coordinate with the timesharing schedule.
• Another popular weekly schedule is week-on/week-off timesharing. The children spend one week with Mom and the next week with Dad. You can also insert a Wednesday dinner with the other parent into this schedule if you want. The great thing about this schedule is that it maximizes the amount of time the children get to spend with each parent and minimizes the number of transfers.
• Alternatively, the parties could alternate weekends where they spend from Friday night to Monday morning with the children, and the kids would also be with one parent every Monday and Tuesday and with the other parent every Wednesday and Thursday.
• Or one week the father could have Monday and Tuesday and the mother could have Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The second week it would reverse. Weekends would alternate.
• Another schedule gives the father timesharing every fourth week of the month from Friday to the second Sunday following and a weekend in between.
• In some cases, one parent wants to have the children primarily during the school year and the other parent prefers spending more time with them in the summer. In that case, you could have one parent with custody all the weekdays during the school year and the other parent with timesharing every other weekend. Then, during the summer, physical custody would switch and the other parent would get every other weekend.

Other details to consider and include are specific pickup and drop-off times and places, and who will do the transportation to school and extracurricular events. Travel expenses should be considered. It helps to be a little flexible, because in real life there are emergencies and work schedules to contend with.

Holidays

Clay Walker sent his ex an e-mail: “I will pick up Darian at 7:00 a.m. on Thanksgiving."

Sheila Walker wrote back, “Oh, no, you had him last year, so it is my turn this year. The agreement says we alternate holidays.”

“I didn’t have him last year,” replied Clay.

“Yes, you did.”

Sheila kept Darian at her house until 5 p.m., when she allowed him to go to Clay’s house. Clay had to reschedule his Thanksgiving meal with relatives and guests from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Clay filed a petition for contempt with the court, and the parties finally settled by putting their timesharing dates down on a multiyear calendar. The parties could have avoided this dispute with a little careful drafting of their alternating holiday schedule so there would be not mistakes or confusion.

Timesharing and Child Support

A lot of states make the time a child spends with each parent part of the child support calculation. After all, the more time the child spends with you, the more it costs in food, clothes, haircuts, transportation and the like. So a dispute over timesharing may actually be a dispute over child support.

However, you cannot stop paying child support because the other parent is denying you timesharing with the children. Likewise, you cannot legally deny timesharing to a parent because they are not paying child support. The court views timesharing and child support as two separate and independent issues although the parties may view them as interconnected.

When a Child Does Not Want Timesharing with a Parent

It is up to the adults to comply with the timesharing schedule and not the children. But children can make things difficult. Trying to pull a reluctant child out of the car for visitation is no picnic, and it can lead to resentment and even charges of child abuse.

As one judge put it, “I can’t order a crane to pick up the child from one house and deliver him to the other house.”

Counseling may be the only way to deal with this situation. It will help identify the problem and find a solution. But that requires time, patience and money.

Third-Party Timesharing

Gordon Fox had made a fortune when he sold his software company. He loved his granddaughters, ages 9 and 13, more than anything. He loved picking them up in the morning and talking with them as he drove them to school.

But when Gordon’s son divorced, the son’s ex-wife said she would start driving the girls to school. In addition, the girls could not go on their annual vacation to Gordon’s country estate with horses and a lake. And Gordon had arranged for them to ride in the town parade as princesses on a float but their mother would not let them go.

Gordon called his lawyer immediately. His lawyer told him that the courts will grant timesharing to a third party like a stepparent or a grandparent. But the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a parent’s suggested timesharing schedule is presumed to be whatever is in the best interests of the child. And in the case of a conflict between the parent’s schedule and the grandparent’s schedule, the parent usually wins. You can try to rebut the presumption, but it’s an uphill battle. Your chances improve if the mother is refusing any timesharing.

Supervised Timesharing

In most cases, timesharing will include spending the day and night with the noncustodial parent and it will be unsupervised. Sometimes timesharing might not include overnights—for example, if a child has not seen a parent for a while, there may be an adjustment period without overnights to start. Or perhaps one parent does not yet have suitable living space to have overnights. In cases where a parent may harm or neglect a child, the parties can agree upon, or the court may order, supervised visitation and require a third party to be present at all times during timesharing with that parent.

Changes in Timesharing

You can try to anticipate some foreseeable events and build some changes into your timesharing schedule. When children are very young, they need regular and consistent schedules. Then, they enter the school system with its schedules and activities. Teens usually want to spend more time with their friends and have more activities outside of the home.

Or in the event of a relocation, the timesharing schedule may no longer work. You can provide an alternative schedule in your parenting plan for that eventuality or you may decide that you will revise your plan in the future if there is a relocation.

Because work, social, and educational schedules often conflict, it is a good idea to build in some flexibility to timesharing schedules with plenty of notice to the other parent and makeup time.

Introducing the Children to Others

After the divorce, chances are good that both parents will have a social and dating life. Third parties should be introduced to children on a gradual basis. The children and both parents will need to be comfortable with the concept before a new person is introduced into their lives. You may want to include some provisions in your parenting plan about how that will be done.

Other Timesharing Provisions

Timesharing covers a lot of ground. Here are some other decisions you’ll need to consider:

• In addition to actual timesharing, you will want to make sure your parenting agreement includes the ability to send mail to the child and that the other parent will not open or censor it.
• You will want to be able to speak with the child by telephone when the child is with the other parent.
• You will want to be able to receive notice of your child’s extracurricular events and be able to participate in them.
• You are entitled to receive your child’s school and medical records and prompt notice of hospitalization and major illness.
• If a parent leaves the state with the child, the other parent should be given an itinerary and contact information.
• Finally, it doesn’t hurt to have a provision that neither parent will speak ill of the other in front of the child.

Summary

We have covered legal custody, physical custody, and timesharing. Now, it’s time to explore child support.