I picked these three criteria because these are top three questions asked when people want to know how they affect the custody visitation schedule of an order. You may be surprised to find out that what you once accepted as well know facts may not be facts at all.

Court criteria for deciding visitation schedules has changed through the years. 100+ years ago children were considered property of the father. So fathers got custody of all the property that was theirs. Once the women’s rights movement was born things began to change in the favor of women. Since men were deemed the bread winners and women the child raisers, courts began to give property to men and children to women with men ordered to pay support or alimony. Then society evolved and fewer men and women married but still had children until approximately 45% of all children are now born to unwed couples.

Now the tide has changed again. Since women now dominate the workplace (by a slight percentage), both married and unmarried men now have a near equal chance of gaining a 50% time share. The reason I say that is that the court focuses on the best interest of the child. They do not focus on the parents. That isn’t to say that they don’t look at how the parent is good for the child, but more that they focus on how the child I best served.

If the child is a newborn or an infant and still nursing, the mother would obviously have a huge biological advantage. The older the child is and the more involved each parent is, the more likely the time will be split equally. If one parent travels frequently for their work, an equal schedule simply wouldn’t make sense no matter what the parents gender.

What you should be seeing form here is the vision that courts today are more likely to look at practical solutions and not schedules based on gender, marriage, other criteria that do not affect the child. So infants would need more of a consistent schedule than a teenager.

Start  with the premise that courts want to see 50-50 schedules and work backwards from that. If you plan your strategy right, you can build in adjustments for your child based on maturation, a job you know will change, and those sorts of things. Planning ahead will prevent you from returning to court.

I hope that you see that while there are some standard schedules like week-on, week-off, extended weekends, one weekday over-night, Tuesday-Thursday 3:00-7:30, and so on, that there really are no accepted schedules based on a parents age, marital, or work status. What it really comes down to is create a schedule that will work in your child's best interest and the court will likely go along with it.