There is no official list of Florida time-sharing schedules. The statute requires your parenting plan to specify the time your child spends with each parent, then leaves the shape of that schedule to the two of you, or to a judge if you cannot agree. In practice, a small number of rotations turn up again and again in Tampa cases, because they are the ones that hold together over a school year.
What follows is a plain description of those schedules, and of how holidays and summers sit on top of them. The legal framework underneath, what a parenting plan must contain and what the 2023 equal time-sharing presumption does and does not do, is covered on our parenting plans and time-sharing page.
A schedule is built in layers
The parenting plan form used for family mediation in Hillsborough County, an adaptation of the Florida Supreme Court approved plan, asks parents to fill in the layers one at a time: the weekday and weekend schedule, then holidays, winter break, spring break, and summer break, then transportation and exchanges, travel notice, and the school registration address. The form states that the holiday schedule takes priority over the regular weekday, weekend, and summer schedules, so the ordinary rotation runs the year except where a more specific layer overrides it. When a schedule stops working, the problem is usually sitting in a layer nobody filled in.
Schedules that divide the time equally
Week on, week off. The child spends a full week with each parent, with the exchange on a fixed day, often Friday after school or Sunday evening. It has the fewest handoffs of any equal schedule. The tradeoff is a full week away from each parent, which many older children handle well and many younger children do not. A midweek dinner or overnight softens it.
2-2-3. One parent has Monday and Tuesday, the other has Wednesday and Thursday, and they alternate the Friday through Sunday block, so the pattern flips the following week. No one goes more than three days without seeing the child. The cost is frequent exchanges and a weekday pattern that changes week to week.
2-2-5-5. One parent always has Monday and Tuesday, the other always has Wednesday and Thursday, and the weekends alternate. Every Monday looks the same all year, which helps with school routines and practices, and the longest stretch away from either parent is five days.
Schedules where the school week sits mostly in one home
Alternating weekends with a midweek contact. The child is with one parent during the school week and with the other every other weekend, usually with a midweek dinner or overnight added. This is the schedule most people picture when they hear the word custody, and it still appears where the homes are far apart or a work schedule rules out weekday mornings.
The extended alternating weekend. The same idea with a longer block, often Thursday after school until Monday morning, which cuts handoffs and gives that parent two ordinary school mornings rather than none.
Overnights carry a financial consequence. Under Florida's child support guidelines, when each parent exercises time-sharing at least 20 percent of the overnights of the year, which works out to 73 overnights, a different calculation applies. That is not a reason to bargain for nights you do not want, but it is a reason to work out your schedule and your child support numbers together.
When the parents live far apart
Once the homes are more than a comfortable drive apart, a weekly rotation stops being possible and the plan shifts its weight onto school breaks: most or all of the summer with one parent, winter break split or alternated, spring break every year or in alternating years, and long weekends where the travel is realistic. Set out how and when the child and the distant parent talk, because scheduled calls and video are the real schedule most of the year. Write down who pays for travel and who does the driving or meets the flight.
Be careful about the move itself. Under Florida's relocation statute, changing the child's principal residence to a place at least 50 miles away for at least 60 consecutive days requires either a written agreement signed by both parents and ratified by the court, or a petition to relocate, and the other parent has 20 days from service to object in writing. Moving first and papering it afterward is the version that goes badly.
How holidays and summers are usually handled
Holidays are typically alternated by odd and even years, split within the day or the break, or fixed every year to one parent where that makes obvious sense, as with Mother's Day and Father's Day. The local form lists a long menu, from Thanksgiving and Independence Day to Halloween, Passover, and the children's birthdays, and asks for a begin and end time for each. Fill in the ones your family actually observes, with real times, and let the rest follow the regular schedule.
Winter break is usually alternated in full or divided at a set date and time, with the halves switching each year. Spring break is often alternated whole, or split so each half follows whichever parent's weekend it touches. For summer, the choices are to run the regular schedule straight through, to give one parent an extended block, or to divide the break into halves that alternate year to year, with defined contact for the other parent during the long stretch.
One detail worth borrowing from the form: when a holiday lands beside an alternating weekend, one parent can end up with three weekends in a row. The plan can provide that the following weekend swaps, so the pattern resets.
Matching the schedule to your child's age and your real week
Florida law does not assign schedules by age, and no rotation is correct in the abstract. Some patterns are worth knowing. Very young children generally do better with shorter intervals and more frequent contact than with long blocks in either home, and plans for infants and toddlers often step up on a stated date or milestone, such as starting kindergarten, rather than leaving that change to a later negotiation. Elementary-age children do well with a predictable weekday pattern, which is the argument for 2-2-5-5 over 2-2-3. Teenagers want fewer transitions and more say, and their jobs and friendships shape the plan whether or not it acknowledges them.
Then look at the logistics honestly. How far apart are the two homes, and how far is each from the school. Who can do a 7 a.m. drop-off. Who travels for work. A schedule that asks both parents to behave differently than either ever has is the one most likely to be back before a judge.
The terms that decide whether a schedule survives the year
- Exchange location and exact times, since using the school as the handoff point removes a great deal of friction
- Who provides transportation, and how the costs are shared
- Right of first refusal, if you want one, with the length of absence that triggers it and the notice required, rather than the bare phrase
- Written notice and an itinerary before out-of-state or foreign travel
- Make-up time when a block is missed, and how a schedule change is requested and how far in advance
- The address designated for school boundary and registration, and the majority-time designation other state and federal programs call for, which does not change either parent's rights under the plan
Changing a plan later requires a substantial and material change in circumstances plus a showing that the change serves the child's best interests. Build a schedule that fits the year you are in and names the date it steps into the next one.
Where to start
Before you pick a schedule by name, write out two ordinary weeks of your real calendar: work hours, school, practices, who does the pickups now, who stays home when a child is sick. Most Tampa parents settle their schedule at mediation rather than at trial, and mediation goes better when you arrive with that calendar. The mediator is neutral and does not represent either of you; your attorney is the one advising you. Our divorce page covers how the children's issues sit inside the rest of the case.
To talk through your situation with Rechel & Associates, P.A., serving Tampa Bay families since 1992, call (813) 931-8111.