When you create your child custody agreement as part of your divorce, you need to give special consideration to the holidays. Thanksgiving can be more challenging to deal with than most days of the year because it is often a cause for big family celebrations. There are a few different ways you can handle it.
Treat it like any other day of the year
This is more likely to work if your children spend time living with each of you. Let’s say you always get the kids on the weekends. When Thanksgiving falls on a weekend with you, the kids spend it with you. When it falls during the week, they spend it with their other parent.
Stop celebrating it
Not everyone believes Thanksgiving is a cause for celebration. For some, it is a cause for commiseration. Maybe you always celebrated it because the families you knew did. Now could be the perfect opportunity to start a different tradition that works better for you and your kids.
Spend alternate years with your kids
You can set specific rules for specific dates when creating your custody arrangement. You could agree that you get the kids for Thanksgiving in even-numbered years, and their other parent has them in odd-numbered years. (The same could work with other holidays as well.)
Split the day in two
Perhaps the kids spend the morning and lunch with you before heading to have the late afternoon and evening with their other parent.
There are so many ways to work out child custody. The important thing is that you develop arrangements that are in your kids’ best interests, even if they’re not always what you want.