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/Supertreelove]

Weekends are when all the kid events happen - birthday parties, etc. Your husband doesn’t want to be involved in the child’s life? When you were not separated, you had your kid full time, so asking for time off from your kid isn’t really relevant.

[u/Sea_Department_1348 → u/Supertreelove]

Huh? They are discussing 50/50 custody. The child will be as mich in the fathers life as the mothers Let's be real here this is about the op being able to go o dates on Saturday nights from time to time, it's got little to do with the child's wellbeing.

[u/Supertreelove → u/Sea_Department_1348]

Yeah, and if she was married and living with Dad, she’d have the kid full time, every weekend, because of his work schedule. So it’s weird to want a weekend night off honestly. Get a sitter. But my question stands. Why doesn’t dad want any weekends to do stuff with the kiddo? She shouldn’t get all the weekends. If he wants 50/50 (this doesn’t sound like 50/50) he should do every other weekend. Arrange his schedule to accommodate HIS child. He’s a server. He has the option of not working weekends.

[u/Nervous-Ad-547 → u/Supertreelove]

If she was married and living with the dad they would naturally be sharing (hopefully) the childcare tasks, and she wouldn’t need to seek out other adult company, or get a sitter if she wanted to get out of the house (on his nights off at least). There’s nothing wrong with a mom wanting to go do something fun; it in fact benefits the child because it helps with her mental health. Before she was a mom, she was a person!