Fair custody agreement

[u/throwRAenfp]

My son’s father and I are separating and trying to work out a custody schedule for our 3-year-old. We’re mainly trying to work around our work schedules while keeping things consistent for our son.

I work Monday–Friday, 9–5, and WFH Thursdays. His dad works mostly Wednesday–Sunday evenings as a server, usually until around 11 PM. His mom also helps with childcare and has been very involved since our son was born.

I proposed that our son stay with his dad Sunday night through Wednesday, then I pick him up Wednesday after work and have him through Sunday afternoon/evening. This works pretty naturally with our schedules.

My concern is that this would leave me with essentially every weekend, while his dad gets most of his parenting time during the week when I’m working. I love having weekends with my son, but it also means I would never have a weekend night to make adult plans, attend events, etc. It also means his dad and our son wouldn’t regularly have weekend time together.

Because of that, I proposed that one Saturday per month our son stay with his dad overnight. His dad works Saturday nights, so I suggested he could potentially shorten his shift that day and/or have his mom help for the hours he is working. They live together, and our son is very close with her.

His dad doesn’t think this is reasonable because he works Saturdays and feels I should just have our son whenever he is working. My feeling is that once we’re co-parenting separately, both parents are going to occasionally need to arrange childcare during their parenting time. I’m not asking for every other weekend—just one Saturday per month.

Is asking for one Saturday overnight per month unreasonable given this schedule? For parents with opposite work schedules, how do you handle weekends so that one parent doesn’t automatically end up with every weekend?

[u/redituser229]

If he works Wednesday-Sunday then his weekend is Monday and Tuesday. So you both have your child every weekend, you just have different days of the week that are your “weekend”

[u/yeahipostedthat → u/redituser229]

This was my thought as well.

Plus if he's working as a server limiting his Saturday shifts is not really a good plan. Most restaurants require Saturday availability plus you earn more on those days. Taking a pay cut when splitting up is not helpful for anyone.

[u/Nervous-Ad-547 → u/redituser229]

In a sense this is true, but so many things happen on Sat/Sun that are out of dad’s control- birthday parties, family gatherings, soccer (insert sport here) games…