Parenting Plan: Thinking About Holidays and Vacations

How Should My Co-Parent and I Construct Our Holiday and Summer Parenting Plan?

There are numerous advantages to constructing a parenting plan in the wake of a decision to move on from your relationship with your child’s other parent. Children thrive when they feel secure. Having concrete expectations in place can help to facilitate that kind of security. In addition, formalizing your parenting expectations in a parenting plan or co-parenting agreement can help to ensure that you head many potential stressors off at the pass. After all, if you and your co-parent know what to expect from each other in re: time with your child, you will have fewer reasons to argue and fret when attempting to sort things out on the fly.

If you have either not yet constructed a parenting plan or you are interested in modifying your current arrangement, please consider scheduling a consultation with our firm. Whether you are interested in negotiating with your co-parent (with our support and legal guidance backing you up) or would prefer help with negotiations with your co-parent’s attorney, an attorney can help to ensure that your parenting plan is solid, legally enforceable, fair and serves your child’s best interests. When preparing for a consultation, you may wish to think about your parenting time priorities and your child’s needs as they concern holidays, special occasions and vacations. Many co-parenting arguments center on these times of year and planning ahead can benefit everyone affected by your parenting plan.

Parenting Plan: Thinking About Holidays and Vacations

Sharing family traditions and making memories with your child at certain times of year are important ways you can bond with your child. Your co-parent is likely similarly invested in bonding with your child at special times of the year. As a result, it is important to figure out an arrangement that serves your child’s best interests and allows your child to bond with each of you in this way. It may make sense to trade off parenting time with your child every other year for certain occasions, while other periods of time are split between you and your co-parent during any given year. Or perhaps it makes more sense to reserve a certain period of vacation or holiday for one parent or the other.

No single arrangement works for every family. It is important to figure out what works for your family. Once you have some idea of what kind of parenting time division may work for you and your co-parent, our firm can help you begin to mediate or negotiate details including transportation, cost, breakdown of dates, etc. Constructing a vacation and special occasion expectation within a parenting plan is rarely easy. But once it is complete, it will help to provide both you and your child with a foundation upon which to build priceless memories.

Parenting Plan Guidance Is Available

If you have questions about constructing, negotiating or modifying your child’s parenting plan, please do not hesitate to schedule a consultation with our firm at your earliest convenience. Parenting plans can help to reduce tensions between co-parents and keep the co-parenting relationship focused on the child’s best interests. But if such agreements are not reasonably structured, they may become a source of tension in and of themselves. For this reason, along with a host of other practical concerns, it is generally a good idea to seek experienced legal guidance any time you have questions or concerns related to your child’s formal parenting plan.

Our firm is committed to helping parents support their children’s best interests. Please consider connecting with an attorney,  at any time that you could use legal guidance or support related to your child’s parenting plan or any other aspect of child custody concerning your child’s best interests.