Make plans for vacation now if you have a child custody order

April 25, 2018

The summer is a time for fun and excitement. When you are ready to make vacation plans, you need to think carefully about when and where you are going. If you and your ex have children together, you will need to turn to your child custody agreement to find out what limitations and guidelines there are for vacations.

It is usually best to plan ahead for these trips. This gives you time to determine how various aspects of your custody schedule and the trip might work together. Here are some important factors to consider:

Look at the schedule

Making travel plans requires you to come up with some sort of schedule for when you want to leave. If you are planning on flying, you will have to set your times carefully because you need to ensure that you can make it through airport security. It might be a good idea to pad the schedule by a couple of hours or even a day just to take traveling challenges into account.

Alert your ex

Let your ex know your travel plans so that you can make sure that the times will work. In many cases, child custody agreements will give precedence to vacation plans over normal schedules. It is still a good idea to let your ex know your plans as early as possible so that you can ensure that no vacation dates overlap.

Focus on memories

While you are on vacation, you need to focus on the memories you are making with your children. It is easy to get caught up in wanting to take pictures, but this might mean that you have to miss out on some of the fun. You can encourage your children to write down their memories so that they can have those memories when they get home. Younger kids might be able to take memory books to show and tell and older children may enjoy showing their friends what they did.

Plan for contact

Your children will likely want to have contact with their other parent while you are on vacation. Make plans for this so that your kids can share memories that they feel are important. This might also help your ex to feel a bit better since he or she will still get to have contact with the children. You can do this by phone calls, emails or video chats.