Your Parenting Plan and the Holidays

Your Parenting Plan and the Holidays

The holiday season is a great time for most of us. Time with the children, family events, outdoor fun. For some, this time of the year is complicated by conflicts over when the children will be with which parent. The holiday season can be stressful, and, if there is no agreement on visitation, can be nearly beyond your ability to cope.

The best advance planning involves taking a good hard look at your Parenting Plan. Plot out the regular visitation, holiday visitation, and winter vacation visitation on your calendar. If you are able to talk to the other parent, try to get an agreement that your work accurately reflects his or her understanding of the Parenting Plan. If you both agree, visits and exchanges during this season can be much less stressful.

If you and the other parent do not agree, there is still time to get the conflict resolved by attorney and/or court intervention. It generally takes two weeks to get in front of a court on this kind of conflict, but, in emergency situations, the time line can be accelerated. What rarely works is to wait to the last minute and then discover that your plans are not in accord with the other parent’s interpretation of the court order.

Putting your thoughts in writing, and documenting your delivery of these notes to the other parent can go a long ways toward creating a paper trail that can be most useful if the issue needs to go to court. If you expect a conflict, or have had prior problems enforcing the Parenting Plan, you need to take early action to ensure you have a happy and appropriate holiday visitation schedule.