Navigating Holiday Visitation in Blended Families
Are you in the process of blending or do you have a blended family and you’re not sure how that’s going to play into holiday visitation? I’m Tulsa family law attorney Carl Birkhead with Wirth Law Office in Oklahoma. I’ve been practicing family and criminal law for about seven years now, and I want to help make law easy by talking about how blended families can work into holiday visitation schedules.
Managing Holiday Schedules in Blended Families
So I’m blending a family right now. I’ve got a beautiful wife, amazing stepkids, and I also have a biological son. Trying to coordinate between my biological child, my wife’s biological children, their father, and my son’s mother, trying to coordinate and communicate these schedules to make sure that not only do we know when we’re going to have our kids but also making sure that our kids get to be around each other at the same time can get a little dicey.
Not many court orders that I’ve seen take this into account as a proactive measure. I don’t see many divorce decrees that say if you should remarry and have stepchildren or children with your new spouse and your child has half-siblings, this is what you should do. Most court orders don’t get that in-depth.
Effective Communication and Coordination
The best thing you can do is try to use a lot of grace when coordinating with your co-parent about when and how to see the kids. It usually, hopefully, can be done just with a phone call. Hey, this is what we’re looking at, school is letting out this day, and it resumes this day. I’d like to have the child for this block of time because it looks like we’re going to be having the other children for this block of time. We’d like to be able to make sure that they’re together.
I tell all my clients, that you want to try to make this conversation and let it be something that you guys enter into an agreement with instead of just strict adherence to whatever the visitation schedule might be. For example, the visitation schedule might say parent A gets child A for the first half of the winter break, but parent B’s visitation schedule with child B gives them the child for the second half of the winter break. You want to try to work out something to where those kids are going to be able to see each other and you’ll have the kids at the same time.
Working Together for the Children’s Best Holiday
Either see if parent B’s co-parent is willing to switch or if parent A’s co-parent is willing to switch. Ultimately, and I cannot stress this enough, you’ve got to think about the kids. The holidays are a time for family time. It’s a time for togetherness. It’s a time for children to experience awe and wonder and believe in magic for a little bit.
Don’t ruin that by just bickering with your co-parent and not working with them. I’m not saying that you need to just completely let the co-parent run the show, but do everything that you can to coordinate with your co-parent so that way the kids can have the best holiday that they can. I can guarantee you if the kids have a good holiday, you’re going to also.
Schedule a Low-Cost Initial Strategy Session
If you have questions about this or you’re not sure exactly when and how to coordinate these exchanges or you just have some trouble understanding the terms of your visitation agreement, please go ahead and give us a call. I’m Tulsa family lawyer Carl Birkhead with Wirth Law Office, and I want to help make law easy. Call us at 918-879-1681 to schedule your low-cost initial strategy session.
