There are two types of custody and visitation schedules. The types of schedule that you come up with depends on many factors.
A lot depends on the child’ age. Babies, toddlers, and young children should spend frequent time with each parent to facilitated bonding and to prevent the child from losing touch with each parent. Therefore, you should consider a schedule with shorter visitation times, but more frequent time for each parent. A good example may be a “2-2-3″day schedule. This is where the young child is with one parent for two days and the other parent for two days with an alternating weekend schedule. This allows for each parent to spend as much time with the child. On the other hand, a much older child may not thrive with a schedule that turns him into a ping pong ball with frequent and shorter visitation times. Older children may prefer a schedule that gives longer visitation times with one parent and fewer transitions between parents. An example of this type of schedule could be one week with one parent and the next week with the other parent. The benefit of this schedule is that there are fewer transitions between homes. The child can settle into one home for a while and not have to drag books and clothes between houses every other weekday. The drawback is that the child goes one week without seeing the other parent. This can be rectified by the non-custodial parent being given a mid-week “dinner date, ” such as every Wednesday from after school until 8:00 p.m.
