09/02/2014
Although it is just September 2 the holidays will be on us before you know it. For parties involved in dissolutions or other types of litigated family disputes it is never too early to try to resolve holiday scheduling issues.
Each family is unique and each observes the holidays in their own way. However, families trying to resolve these issues are going to need to consider a variety of possible solutions.
Some will try to resolve this through celebrating major holidays twice, once with each parent.
Others may want to divide a particular day and spend the morning with one and the afternoon / evening with the other. That ensures that each parent sees children on major holidays. This works best for parties that are geographically close. The downside being that there can otherwise be a great deal of travel time eating up the day.
In some cases a parent has particular traditions where the setting of a fixed holiday each year could work best. Although this can be done with any holiday Mother's Day for moms and Father's day for dads are clear examples of that choice.
By far the most common way of dividing up holidays is by alternating them with one party getting a holiday, such as Thanksgiving Day, on even years and the other on odd years. If geography allows the party not having Thanksgiving Day that year often gets the Friday after since it is a school holiday. Similarly, one party normally gets Christmas Day in even years and Christmas Eve in odd years with the other party getting the opposite.
To avoid future problems, once such a schedule has been established, it is typically incorporated into the custody and visitation documents rather than relying on any verbal agreements. By clearly establishing the rights and responsibilities of each of the parties many future visitation issues can be easily resolved before they have begun.
