Easter, Spring Break, and Parenting Plans

Posted on March 26, 2015

When parties are getting divorced in Florida, they will come across a Florida Supreme Court Approved Family Law Form by the name of a “ Parenting Plan ”. This “plan gives parties a starting point to map out their desired time-sharing with their children either temporarily during the divorce or after the divorce is finalized. Mediators and practitioners alike like to hammer out the time-sharing piece of the divorce as soon as possible, and they start with the Parenting Plan as their guide.

Before you sign on the dotted line of the parenting plan , you need to become familiar with the terminology within the form Parenting Plans. Within the “holiday” section of the parenting plan , you will see a list of holidays in the form of a chart. One of the most common questions we get after a parenting plan is signed is “doesn’t Easter include the entire weekend?” If you did not modify the Supreme Court form, then the answer to that question is probably no—as written in the form, it appears to only consider that day.

We often tell our clients that the best way to attack ambiguity is to be proactive and make things as clear as possible. There is nothing preventing you from tailoring your parenting plan to have it mean exactly what you want it to mean. So if you want the Easter Holiday to include the entire weekend, add “weekend” to that section. Likewise if you want “Thanksgiving” to include more than just that Thursday, make sure it is clear in your parenting plan . Taking these few proactive steps will keep everyone on the same page and save you headaches down the road.