Best arrangement for 50/50 custody

[withaclearhead]

My partner and I are separating and have agreed to a 50/50 custody arrangement for our 2 DC. But we are unsure how to make the arrangement work best for everyone?

The children are 5 and 7 and we don't want to do a week on, week off at this stage. Are having set days the best option? Or changing things weekly maybe.

All I know is that I am going to really miss them 🙁

Maybe 4 or 5 days at yours one week and then the next week 4-5 days at Dad’s.

Who decided on 50/50? Was it for benefit of children or adults?

Honestly, 50/50 at their age isn’t in the nest interests of the children. You can get close to it, but swapping and changing constantly is really unsettling.

I separated when my DD was 5. I moved out, initially to my parents. We had a week on week off arrangement from the start, change over was Friday from childminder after school.
We did alternate birthdays and Christmas, DD was with me on Mother's Day, him on Father's Day. Christmas was with one parent from Christmas Eve til Boxing Day morning. For holidays if she was with one parent for 2 weeks she would be with the other for the following 2 weeks. She stayed in the same school and with the same childminder, and went to a secondary school she could get to from both our houses.

It worked very well for us, and actually continued until she left uni! She now says that if she ever for divorced she'd do exactly the same as she had the best of both worlds and felt like she had 2 homes, not just somewhere she would go to every few days. We both remarried and had another child

We think it's the best arrangement for all. The children are very close to us both.

A friend of ours does Wed-Wed. It’s works great for them, kids are a similar age

I have 50/50 and work it so they are with one parent Friday to Friday. They go to the other parent on a Monday night, so they have 3 nights parent a, 1 night parent b, 3 nights parent a. We did it this way so during term time they are never longer than 3 days without seeing both parents.

Holidays we alternate and do in full weeks. So parent a has may half term and b February half term, then the opposite the following year. Longer holidays we have a week each.

We plan each year out so we know exactly when we will have them. Do this in August when term dates / inset come out.

Works for my kids who are 11 and 7. We’ve been divorced just over 2 years.

I assume 'nesting' isn't a possibility where the kids stay put and the parents move between houses?

We started off doing 50/50 but all the tooing and froing wasn't any good for my child. We are now on an 80/20 split.

Are you both going to be close by?

DH husbands child is 8yrs old. Since he was 18mnths old it's been court ruled 50:50.
It has honestly cause him so much trouble as he has got older. All the moving around all the time unsettled him beyond belief. Finds it hard to fit in with peers and is just unsettled everywhere. The routine has liked I said been like it since 18months old. He has never got used to it even though he knows no different he wishes he had one home and visited the other parent. But my DH and DSS mother will not agree on anything like what DSS wants. So sad.

Yes we will both live close to each other. Now I'm wondering if this is best 🙁

I’m not a fan of 50:50 as I don’t think it works that well for children but if you are set on doing it then you definitely need set days each week so the children know what they’re doing and aren’t at school wondering where they are staying each night. I would avoid changing them to suit your commitments for the same reason.

I have heard of families doing 5:2:2:5, ie every Mon & Tues parent A, every Weds & Thurs parent B, alternating Fri-Sun.

However we started off with 60:40 and even that was far too much. Now one dinner after school each week and EOW.

I think we started of 50/50 as we thought it would be fair for everyone but really it's not the case. My child was exhausted from all of the moving around. It was slightly different for us as her dad moved away so school run was horrible for her.

Anyway, she eventually decided that she didn't want to carry on like that so she asked me to talk to her dad about going down to 1 night in week and every other weekened. We tried that for a small while but even that was too much for her. So now we are EOW with a couple of visits for clubs etc. I felt so bad having that conversation with my ex but the child comes first so needs must.

Btw my daughter is 9.

Like any parenting between divorced parents 50/50 works best where the parents focus on the needs of the children. So both living near each other, communications about what is happening in an open and supportive way, being organised so the kids don’t have to carry stuff between houses and being respectful of the other parent. You also need to recognise that the children need both parents and one isn’t less important than the other, which is inevitably what happens in arrangements that aren’t 50/50.
If you can do those things then you can have a 50/50 arrangement that works for your children and shows them that they are the most important thing to both of you by co-parenting in a way that is focused on them.

We did alternating 2-2-3, 2-2-3 for two years until XH upped sticks and moved 120 miles away. DD was 6 when we separated and she did find the to-and-fro tough, although that could also have been due to the transition period. XH now sees DD EOW and half holidays and she is much more settled.

I divorced when my boys were 3 and 1. We did EOW and wed overnight in the week. This worked well. As they got older it became just EOW ( and split holidays). They liked having a base. I personally think this is better than 50/50.
If you are going50/50 I think actually that 5/2/2/5 sounds better, so Mon and Tues at one parent Wed , Thurs at the other and then alternate weekends. Then if the children have activities it's always with the same parent, you know what day is what and also it's not so long between seeing each parent.

We do 70/30 and honestly the kids hate it. It was the least that ex would agree to. He wanted 50/50. The older they’ve got the worse it is. Teens just want a “base”, there’s always stuff they’ve forgot at the other house, constant driving to pick stuff up, I hate it

Living close is ideal OP...
My DSS does Thurs, fri, sat, sun nights with us and mon tues wed and his mum, so 4 nights us 3 hers. (Her choice) He is 16 now and this has been in place since 13.

When he was a bit younger it was more 50/50 but was a bizarre rota over a three week period so sometimes he couldn’t remember where he was going. But we lived 5 min walk from his mums so was easy for him to go between houses.
When he was out with his friends playing out it also meant he could just pop into either house to say hi.

We did every Wednesday and the Thu/Fri one week and Sat/Sun the next. It worked really well for us and was only
Slightly less than 50:50.

We live very close to DSS mother. But it is so hard for the child. If they would agree I would love him to live with us and visit him mum at weekends or the other way round whatever DSS wanted. However neither parents will give up any time. I don't think 50:50 works that's just my personal opinion. I think it's nice for a child to have just one permanent base. Split houses, completely different rules half the time too much moving around to suit the parents does not work well and I'm 7 years down the line.

But I hope it works out for you. That's just my experience xx

I’m a few months down the line from you but we agreed to a 60:40 split (over a 2 week period), which works out them being with ex every Sun and Mon night, and with me every Tues, Wed and Thurs, then we alternate weekends. It’s early days but seems to be working well for the DC so far.

Like someone else said up thread, you have to be committed to doing what’s best for the DC not for either parent. We have had an amicable split and both agree that the most important thing in all of this is the DC so continue to coparent and communicate well. There have been a few occasions when the DC have had to come back to me early because of ex’s work commitments and they haven’t liked this as they feel they want to spend as much time as they can with their dad, they already see that they don’t spend half their time with him. It would possibly work best for my DC to do a week on week off type arrangement but we just can’t make that work right now.

I know some people don’t agree and there are some posters giving you worst case scenarios, but you are the only one here who knows your DC and knows what’s best for them. Work with your ex to figure that out and I’m sure everything will fall into place eventually.

Worked fine for us. Wednesday split. As long as you commit to it properly and don’t expect them to live out of a suitcase. So you have two sets of everything apart from school uniform that they would be wearing. Everything else is doubled up. It makes it a little more expensive but you need less of it so I think it evens out. And they need there own room(s) in both places with their own stuff so that they can pick up where they left off. My DS was very happy with it - why wouldn’t any child want to spend the same time with each parent? He adored his dad who was an equal parent in everything. It would break my heart to only see my DS EOW so why would it have worked for my exh?