custody question

kelly422

Hi, all - never been on this board, but thought I'd introduce myself before I ask a question.  DH and I have been married for 3 years. I have an 11 yo stepson who is a really great kid! DH and I just had a baby together 9 weeks ago. Life is pretty good!

Right now, DH gets his son 49% of the time and pays a little bit of child support. His ex-wife lives in the same town. We have to move for job reasons about 100 miles away, so we're going to have to redo the custody agreement.  We are planning to sit down with her to discuss next week, so I wanted to have some ideas on what we are going to propose. 

Current schedule: Wednesday through Monday one week, Wednesday through Friday the next week. They split up Christmas, Mother's Day/Father's Day, alternate Spring Breaks. 

I'm wondering how other people who live in different towns (but driving is totally doable) split up custody? We would obviously like him as much as possible.  

 

Ginlyn0

We are not long distance but we do already have build into our CO's what was the standard for our state if the NCP moves over 100 miles away.

Basically NCP has the choice of maintaining EO weekend visits or selecting 1 weekend a month. If they choose the 1 weekend a month, they have to give 90 days notice before they move. After that, they can pick any weekend during each month they want with 14 days notice.

The NCP would then get the kids every spring break (instead of EO) and they would get 42 consecutive days of summer visitation with dates of their choosing.

Christmas & Thanksgiving would stay the same. The NCP would also loose any weekday evening visits.

dmndsr4eva

If you live 100 miles away you aren't going to be able to have 50/50.  I would assume you will have to change to EOWE picking him up on Friday evening and dropping him off Sunday evening.   And then get some holidays and part of summer break. 

Also, your child support will increase most likely because usually once you get below 35% custody the child support increases.

fellesferie

I'm a custodial parent. I would not EVER agree to a time sharing arrangement where I did not get any weekends with my kid. It's completely unfair to even ask for it IMO. 

Maybe try to get EOW, half the school breaks, and half the summer. It's not as much as you have now, but you know you aren't going to get that. 

kelly422

dmndsr4eva:

If you live 100 miles away you aren't going to be able to have 50/50.  I would assume you will have to change to EOWE picking him up on Friday evening and dropping him off Sunday evening.   And then get some holidays and part of summer break. 

Also, your child support will increase most likely because usually once you get below 35% custody the child support increases.

Obviously we realize we won't be able to have him 50/50.  He has to go to school sometime in there!  We're totally fine with our child support increasing, too.

I think EOWE, a chunk of summer, and a chunk of Xmas break is reasonable with alternating other holidays.