How Can You Fit A Summer Vacation Into Your Custody Schedule?

As your children’s school year in Sarasota enters its final few months, your thoughts inevitably turn to how to maximize the additional time that you will have with your kids during their long summer break. Part of that typically includes an extended family vacation, which can be difficult if you share custody with your ex-spouse. You certainly do not want to spend your time on vacation with the cloud of strife between you and your ex-spouse hanging over you. How, then, can you make a summer vacation work.

The easy answer may seem to be coordinating your vacation time with that of your ex-spouse, agreeing to give up certain days for them to be with kids in exchange for added days to accommodate your plans. This can be done, but perhaps not without difficulties. For example, both of you may want to plan the optimal time to travel, which could cause your plans to interfere with one another. Thus, one of you is left having to sacrifice the perceived ideal vacation time in order to placate the other. After many years of this happening, resentment can build and lead to unnecessary discord.

The Florida Department of Revenue may offer the ideal solution to this conundrum. In its proposed parenting plan, it recommends allotting two full weeks to one parent at the beginning of summer break. The other parent will then be given their own two week period at some later time. The following year, the schedule rotates. This allows both you and your ex-spouse the opportunity to make your vacation plans knowing when at least one of you will be traveling. This recommendation should not be viewed as legal advice, but rather a logical suggestion to assist you in maximizing your time with your kids.