Long-Distance Visitation

CowboysWife04

Does anyone have a long distance visitation schedule? X has pretty much admitted defeat in the divorce and is telling me I can have what I want which means primary custody.  This means I get primary custody and the girls and I can move from IA to TX.  My attorney is asking me what to suggest for visitation, and I'm not sure where to even begin.  If you do have a long-distance visitation arrangement, can you please tell me what it is so I can have a place to start my suggestions? TIA!

tamararachel2

I do! Even though I really dislike my X, we spent 7 years together and so I was willing to make our own arrangements without a judge or whatever telling us what was going to happen. I live in VA and he lives in FL and this is what we agreed on: We have joint legal custody, but I have primary physical custody. Since our son is now the age of going to school his visitation cannot interfere with his school schedule. In that case, he will visit his father for 2 months in the summer and the major holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) we will rotate...example I get Thanksgiving this year and his father gets Christmas. We agreed to meet at a halfway point between my city and his, but we've also discussed each of us taking a flight so that we won't be doing a lot of driving just to exchange. Now, I can't exactly tell you how this has worked out as his father hasn't had him yet. We split last year and his father came to visit him once for two days and hasn't had him on his own. We've been legally separated, but our divorce is in process and won't be finalized until the middle of summer so it puts a damper on his father's visitation. I did talk with a friend of mine who deals with custody and stuff like this for a living and she said our agreement is pretty much the norm for long-distance parents. We do have a clause that if his father wants to visit, he has to give a 2 week notice but he's never done that. I don't think his child is that much of a priority, but he also doesn't want to look like a POS. GL with planning out yours! I couldn't think of anything else with us being so far apart!

littlelovelolo

tifanico:

This is the way it works for us right now. We are VERY  long distance as I live in a different country.

He has 9 weeks/year of visitation divided into 3 visitation periods. Depending on my travel plans, I usually let him have her a few days more so it totals closer to the 10 weeks. We alternate Christmas and her Bday.  

He flies in to come to pick her up and I do the same when its time for her to come home. He has always taken his visitation so I always know what to expect. We also try to facilitate the process and provide each other housing during the trips. Its more important for him since he doesn't know anyone here whereas I lived in his area and have plenty of places to stay.  

We do Skype and have a set schedule for that too. 

Same here. US/South Africa. But how do you afford that?! BD and I are poor as f*ck and he can't come back to the US anyway, so we're proposing a parenting plan that says that he can see her once a year with more opportunities if we can afford to get DD over there. We Skype as well, although if I don't ask him about it, he'll ignore her for weeks at a time.