Custody Agreements and Halloween
Chances are, in planning your custody agreement, the holidays garnered significant attention. You have them all perfectly mapped out in excruciating detail. You feel totally prepared and though possibly a little heartsick, ready. But as the year enters the fourth quarter, with the holidays looming, something catches you off guard. Halloween. You frantically scan your custody agreement and discover that the holiday was left off the list. Now what?
Navigating Halloween and your custody agreement
Typically, the couples establish their custody agreements based on a list of holidays they map out in collaboration with each other and their attorneys. That list traditionally includes Federal holidays such as:
New Year’s Day
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday
Washington’s Birthday
Memorial Day
Independence Day
Labor Day
Columbus Day
Veteran’s Day
Thanksgiving Day
Christmas Day
The list also includes any relevant state holidays that usually involve a three-day weekend and any religious holidays celebrated by either parent such as Easter, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and Christmas.
You also likely considered other important dates like birthdays, family reunions and school breaks.
But Halloween can accidentally slip through the cracks. It’s not a Federal, state or religious holiday, and it isn’t usually accompanied by a school break. So now that it’s approaching, you’re wondering how exactly to handle it.
How to handle Halloween
Since Halloween falls on a different day each year, it’s tough to slot it into a cookie-cutter custody agreement. So it’s imperative, if it’s an event that’s important to you and/or your ex-spouse, that you coordinate accordingly.
Under a normal schedule, the right to Halloween would typically fall to whoever would exercise custody on that given day. If you decide you want to do something different, here are a few tips.
Plan Ahead
Like with all things custody, a detailed plan helps keep things (and emotions) neat and tidy. If you take the time to create a comprehensive plan for the day, it will spare you (and your child(ren)) from a lot of unnecessary stress in the future. Last-minute arrangements almost always lead to disappointment in some way.
Consider the options
You know your co-parenting relationship better than anyone else. Consider the options that feel realistic and comfortable for you, your ex-spouse, and your child. If the split is amicable, maybe you all could plan to go trick-or-treating together. If you’d prefer to keep things separate, perhaps you and your co-parent could split the trick-or-treating event in shifts. Prefer to keep things separate altogether? Establish an alternating annual schedule that feels comfortable for all parties involved.
Establish new traditions
While trick-or-treating is traditionally practiced on the evening of October 31st, there are many new ways to experience the holiday that are separate from that established date. Research your area to determine if there are any new traditions you can adopt such as a trunk or treat event hosted on an alternate date that falls within your standard custody agreement.