Tips for Navigating Split Holidays After Divorce

When you’re married, the holidays are a family affair. After divorce, however, things change, especially if you’re committed to co-parenting your children. 

Often, divorcing parents agree to split holidays in the parenting plan. The court-approved document accounts for each parent’s schedules, values, and other needs while prioritizing the children’s best interests. 

Parenting plans are standard in Colorado divorce cases, but these arrangements are unique to families.  Sharing holidays with your ex-spouse will be an adjustment, but thoughtful planning will ease the transition and protect these special occasions for your children. 

Bottom Line:

The parenting plan entered into your final divorce decree should include holiday-specific provisions to ensure your child’s best interests remain central. 

In this Article:

• What Colorado Says About Split Holidays

• What to Consider When Proposing Provisions

• Eight Ways to Split Holidays Between Divorced Parents

Split holidays are hard, even when the arrangement is by all accounts “fair.” One parent’s holiday with the kids may feel like it’s happening at the other’s expense, especially in the beginning, even if that’s not really the case.

Fortunately, Colorado law provides a way for divorcing parents to establish how they’ll handle holidays and important dates. 

This is your parenting plan. 

Parenting plans are court-approved agreements created by divorcing parents that outline how they will raise their children after the split. Generally speaking, parenting plans consist of provisions that detail how parenting time and decision-making responsibilities are shared between the parties. The more detailed the plan, the better.

Above all else, parenting plans aim to reflect the best interests of a child. Divorces can be extremely disruptive to a child’s upbringing if not handled correctly. That’s why Colorado law strives to award parents joint decision-making responsibilities and parenting time whenever possible. Thus, the courts are guided by the belief that children benefit from both parents’ involvement in their lives. C.R.S. 14-10-124

A good parenting plan will include provisions that clearly outline each co-parent’s responsibilities to their children during holidays and school vacations. These provisions might include scheduling procedures, drop-off and pick-up procedures, or travel expense responsibilities, among other considerations important to your circumstances. 

Excluding Holiday Provisions From Parenting Plans is Risky

Think of your parenting plan as a legal safety net. If your child’s other parent becomes uncooperative about any of its provisions, including holiday schedules, you can ask the court to enforce the order.  

If the court finds your former spouse violated the parenting plan, you could be awarded extra parenting time to compensate for the lost holiday hours. Learn more about enforcing family court orders. 

In most cases, there are ways to divide special occasions between households that are fair to everyone. It just requires a little legwork from each of you. Review the following considerations to determine what you may need to effectively navigate split holidays. 

Some families celebrate traditions they value around certain times of the year. Birthdays and end-of-the-year holidays often come to mind when I think about annual traditions, though each family is different.

Consider what traditions you want to continue to honor, what traditions you can live without, and if they require any modifications. If your children are old enough, ask them for input. What traditions do they enjoy celebrating, and which ones have they outgrown? 

Family traditions can offer stability to children whose parents have recently separated or divorced, so it can be good to involve older children and teens in the discussion. 

In Colorado, children are only in school for 160 days each year. There are breaks every season – the longest for most children occurring in the summer months. It’s important to discuss how you intend to spend these longer periods of time with your children and whether you are well-resourced to accommodate their extended stay. 

If your child lives a long distance from you or your former spouse, transportation costs will be a factor. Traditionally, the parent responsible for transportation costs would be the one the child is traveling to see. 

However, this can be modified in the agreement if, say, one parent is in a better financial position to pay for travel. This could also be modified if one parent moves away from the other with the child. Under these circumstances, the other parent could be asked to pay for travel expenses. 

Regardless, you should explicitly state who pays for travel and under what circumstances in your written separation or divorce agreement. 

Budget For Age

If your children need to travel to another state to stay with you or the other parent, remember to consider the costs of travel for each child – especially if flying. 

Airlines have different policies for unaccompanied minors, but children under 5 are prohibited from flying without an adult. Thus, you and your co-parent will have to anticipate who will pay for an extra round-trip ticket.

Now that you have an idea of some key factors you may want to take into account when planning for the holidays, let’s get into how you can equitably divide holidays and vacations. 

There are a number of ways co-parents can fairly divide vacations and holidays with their children amongst each other after a divorce. The following are eight of the most common ways our team has seen divorced parents approach split holidays with success. 

1. Half Days - Some co-parents arrange for their children to spend the morning with one parent and the afternoon with the other. 

2. Alternate Holidays - Co-parents rotate main holidays within a calendar year and flip the rotation between odd- and even-numbered years.

3. Family Affair - Co-parents on good terms may opt to continue celebrating holidays together, although this option is not for everyone. 

4. Two Celebrations - Each co-parent celebrates the holiday with their children, one on the calendar day and the other on another date that comes before or after

5. Split or Alternate School Breaks - Co-parents alternate longer breaks or weeks in each break 

6. Normalize Smaller Holidays - Co-parents elect to treat smaller holidays the same as any other day, in terms of the parenting time schedule 

7. Assign Parent Holidays to Parents - Holidays like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and the parent’s birthday will appeal to one parent and not the other 

8. Digital Celebrations - We live in a time of advanced digital communications. Making an agreement with your former spouse to FaceTime your child on split holidays can help. 

Robinson & Henry’s family law attorneys can help take the stress out of the holidays by working with you to create a fair holiday schedule. Call (720) 844-8337 now to begin your case assessment.