What Should a Parenting Plan Include?

The custody order decides who has legal and physical custody. The parenting plan decides how your family actually functions. A vague plan hands future conflicts back to a judge. A detailed one answers hard questions before they become disputes, and keeps control with you.

This article outlines what a comprehensive parenting plan should cover and why each element matters.

The Regular Parenting Schedule

The most fundamental component: where the children sleep on which nights during a normal week. Common structures for North Shore families include:

• School-week / weekend split: Children with one parent during the school week, the other on weekends (typically Friday afternoon through Sunday evening). Simple to administer, but the non-primary parent gets limited weekday involvement.
• 2-2-3 rotation: Children alternate between parents on a 2-day/2-day/3-day rotating cycle. Minimizes the longest stretch either parent goes without the children, but requires more frequent transitions.
• Week-on/week-off: Children alternate full weeks. Simple in structure, fewer transitions, but each parent goes a full week without the children. Works better for older children with more capacity to manage the gap.
• 5-2-2-5: A hybrid, one parent has Monday and Tuesday, the other has Wednesday and Thursday, and weekends alternate. Provides each parent with regular weekday and weekend time.

The right schedule depends on the children's ages, the parents' work schedules, the geographic distance between homes, and what the family has found manageable in practice. There is no universally correct schedule, there is the schedule that works best for this family's children.

Holidays and Special Days

The regular schedule is typically suspended during holidays, which follow their own rules. A parenting plan should address every holiday that matters to the family, not just the major ones. What is "obvious" to one parent is often not shared by the other, and omissions create annual conflicts.

Holiday provisions typically specify that the holiday schedule supersedes the regular schedule, so if Christmas falls on a day the child would otherwise be with the other parent, the holiday designation controls. The plan should also address what happens if a holiday provision conflicts with another provision.

Summer and School Vacation

Summer is typically addressed separately from the regular schedule. Common approaches include:

• Each parent has a defined block of consecutive summer vacation time (two or three weeks)
• Summer follows a modified version of the regular schedule
• Summer is divided equally between parents

The plan should specify advance notice requirements for selecting summer vacation periods, typically 60 to 90 days, so both parents can coordinate their own schedules. It should also address summer activities: who enrolls the children in programs, who pays, and what happens when summer programs conflict with the other parent's time.

Transportation and Exchange

Where and how transitions happen matters more than many parents anticipate at the drafting stage. A parenting plan should specify:

• The designated exchange location (school, a neutral location, one parent's home)
• Which parent drives which direction, or whether both parents drive their own legs
• The expected exchange time and a reasonable grace period
• What happens if a parent is significantly late
• Transportation for school, who picks up and drops off on which days
• Travel protocols when children will be transported outside the state or by air

Using school as the exchange location (one parent drops off in the morning, the other picks up in the afternoon) reduces direct parental contact during transitions and is often easier on children, particularly when parental conflict is high.

Decision-Making Under Joint Legal Custody

If the parents share joint legal custody, the plan should define how decisions are made and what happens when they disagree. Questions to address:

• What categories of decisions require joint agreement (education, medical, extracurricular)?
• What is the process when parents cannot agree, a defined discussion period, mediation, or a specific tiebreaker mechanism?
• Which routine decisions can each parent make independently without consultation?
• What notice is required for significant decisions (changing schools, elective medical procedures, travel abroad)?

Communication Between Parents

The parenting plan should address how the parents communicate about the children, and set realistic expectations for response times. Commonly specified provisions include:

• Primary communication method (text, email, a co-parenting app)
• Expected response time for routine messages
• How to escalate urgent matters that require a faster response
• Protocols for communicating about schedule changes, school issues, and medical matters

Co-parenting apps like OurFamilyWizard or TalkingParents are increasingly used by higher-conflict families because they maintain a time-stamped record of all communication, useful if disputes later arise about what was said and when.

Communication Between Parent and Child

The plan should protect each parent's right to communicate with the children when they are with the other parent. A reasonable provision might specify that each parent may contact the children by phone or video call once per day at a defined time, and that the other parent will facilitate that contact. Neither parent should interfere with the children's access to the other parent.

Relocation

What happens if one parent wants to move, to another city, another state, or abroad? Massachusetts law requires court approval before a parent can relocate out of state with a child subject to a custody order, and the standard for approval is demanding. The parenting plan should address advance notice requirements for any proposed relocation, typically 60 to 90 days, and what process the parents will follow if one wants to move.

Right of First Refusal

Many parenting plans include a "right of first refusal" provision: if the parent who has the children needs childcare for more than a defined period (often four hours), they must offer the other parent the opportunity to care for the children before arranging third-party care. This ensures children spend maximum time with a parent rather than a babysitter or other caregiver when the other parent is available.

Right of first refusal sounds appealing in theory but can become operationally burdensome in practice, particularly for a parent who works irregular hours or travels frequently. Whether to include it, and how to define it, requires careful thought.

The time you invest getting the parenting plan right now is time you save, in conflict, in legal fees, and in stress, every year that follows.

Review and Modification

Children's needs change. A schedule that works for a five-year-old doesn't necessarily work for a fifteen-year-old. A parenting plan should contemplate a periodic review process, some families build in an annual review conversation, so the arrangement can evolve with the children without requiring formal court proceedings for every adjustment.

If you are working through the terms of a parenting plan, whether in collaborative divorce, mediation, or litigation, contact Brigantine Law. A well-drafted parenting plan prevents years of future conflict. We work with North Shore families to get the details right from the start.