Setting Up Your Child Custody Calendar

You may have agreed on a child custody schedule in court, but getting it implemented correctly can be a challenge for some families. Using tools like the OurFamilyWizard website can make this easier by creating a shared repository that both parents can work from. Simple mistakes and miscommunications can be very stressful for both parents and children. 

In years past, parents would sit down with a calendar and some markers and draw out the parenting responsibilities on paper. With tools like the Our Family Wizard website setting your custody calendar can be much easier, shared and flexible. Most schedules are based on a repeating cycle that is then expanded out to the rest of the year. The majority of repeating schedules are on a 2-week pattern. However, by using a tool like the OurFamilyWizard website to manage your custody schedule you can setup and share schedules that can repeat on a 1 week basis all the way up to an 8 week basis. 

For some parents like pilots, creating a regular parenting schedule that repeats isn't ideal because they get their flight assignments 1 month at a time. In this case, the 4-week option for setting up your custody schedule will allow you to easily work with one month at a time.

Having the ability to look at your schedule in different frames of reference can be very helpful. Using the yearly view of the calendar, you can quickly spot inconsistencies or mistakes that are harder to see from a weekly view. It can also help you to keep the amount of time you are getting with the kids in perspective.

 

Once you have your base parenting time schedule setup. You can begin to customize your schedule by setting up the holidays. The Our Family Wizard website comes with some standard holidays already created, all you have to do is assign them appropriately. Additionally, you have the ability to setup custom holidays to represent special events like spring break to a wedding. You can setup holidays to be a specific time frame on a single day or you can set it up to extend over several days or more.

One of the things that can be very hard for parents to overcome is change to the parenting schedule. Changes can confuse the historical record and misunderstandings may not be discovered until it is too late. The OurFamilyWizard website has a special tool that allows parents to trade or give up days to the other parent. The change requests are all documented and nothing is finalized without the other parent's approval. This document trail makes it very easy to see what requests were made, which were approved and which were denied.

 

Lastly, on yet another layer you have the ability to setup and share important dates and events without messing up your pretty parenting time schedule. Events can be assigned to specific children and parents. You can quickly see whom the pick up and drop off parents are as well as other important details.

This may seem like a lot, but keeping this information well organized and documented can help you to avoid a lot of headaches. Having a clear picture of custody calendar and parenting time schedules in one place can make things easier on everyone. Keeping your family informed without putting your kids in the middle.