A question that comes up among parents getting divorced in West Virginia sometimes is what should they do when it comes to a holiday schedule? Generally, parents will try to reach some kind of agreement about the holiday schedule, but when it comes to a West Virginia divorce, if they can’t reach an agreement, then the judge is going to decide. Now, if we’re talking about years and years ago, there used to be a standard schedule that was found in the West Virginia code and the courts would go by that if there was no agreement. There was a schedule known as schedule A or schedule B back in the past in West Virginia, but that doesn’t apply anymore. There is no standard holiday schedule.
What the courts will do in many instances is the individual judges will have their own schedule that they come up with. Based on these schedules, it’ll clearly specify what days each parent is going to have the children. Sometimes what the courts will do is they will automatically go with that schedule in the event that there is a disagreement and sometimes they’ll deviate from that as well. The judge might go with one person’s schedule or the judge might come up with their own schedule. It’s very common for the judges to have it all outlined as to what the holiday schedule is going to be.
If one doesn’t want it to be decided by the judge, then the parents need to try to work that out. The days that are going to be covered in a holiday schedule typically are going to be Christmas, Thanksgiving, Spring Break and then some of the minor holidays like Labor Day and Memorial Day oftentimes will be covered. Those are actually listed on the standard form as well. Same thing with Father’s Day, 4th of July, Mother’s Day and the children’s birthdays.
Oftentimes, who had the kids on holidays has to do with where the kids typically resided in the past. For example, on Christmas morning, are they usually with mom? Are they usually with dad? Are they at mom’s house? Are they at dad’s family’s house? It’s really important that no matter what you think, the schedule is going to be in the child’s best interest and that’s exactly what the court’s going to be looking at.
