Best arrangements for children aged 3 and 5?

[Iamwarrior]

DH and I will be divorcing as soon as possible. I have never truly felt loved by him, relationship has declined and he is currently in a hotel with the woman I discovered he was having an affair with 10 days ago.

I digress.

We have two DC aged 3 and 5. We both work (me only 4 days) and both take it in turns to pick up DCs during the week. I do all of the grunt work - washing, buying clothes and shoes, knowing where they are meant to be, school stuff, tidying. He is great at playing with them. I'm not sure how he will cope with having to do everything, but he may well just get on with it when he has to.

I want them to have a very positive relationship with DH going forward but also want things to be as settled as possible.

Any ideas for schedules that work well, thinking around 60:40 or 65:35 splits?

Grateful for any ideas.

Check out custody xchange, it's a program that lets you make a parenting schedule. Think they're are lots of examples on the website to.

We alternate between 2 x 2 x 3:

Mon-tues: Mom
Wed-thurs: Dad
Friday-sun: Mom

And every week it flips. So one weekend, I have my kid for 3 days, next next he's with his dad. It's hard sometimes.. we are lucky enough that we can all go out for dinner or to the park sometimes on the weekend. My son is 4.

I would do every other weekend but more like Thursday after school until Tuesday morning drop off then the following Monday overnight.

So 6 nights out of 14...

2 of my friends have done the 2 2 & 3 a pp mentioned and it works great. One friends child was 7 when they started but the other friend had children the same age as yours.

An important first step is to agree that neither of you will move more than a specified distance away from the immediate area - a workable shared care arrangement that gives the NRP real responsibility not just fun Disney-dad weekends means that it needs to be equally easy to do school stuff, Dr and dentist etc from either home. It needs to be clear that he takes a fair share of the emotional labour too, making appointments and keeping track of which clothes are grown-out-of, keeping track of school homework etc.
Agree that handover in either direction is always at eg 3:30pm (whatever normal school home time is) and a day is always a 24 hour period - no easy rides.

Neither 60:40 or 65:35 are compatible with a 7 day week - think in numbers that add up to multiples of 7. 5 days in 14 is 36%, 6 days in 14 is 42%.

Also avoid time with NRP being short visits that are over before they have properly begun. There needs to be enough time that he can't say "our time together is too short to bother with homework or hair brushing"

my suggestion would be a solid block of 5/6 days every fortnight (Thursday night to Tuesday or Wednesday night)?