The holiday season has started up for another year. In the realm of family law, this means spending days making phone calls, and writing emails, faxes and letters, all about Christmas schedules for the children.
Who gets the kids Christmas Eve and morning? Who gets them for Christmas dinner? Who has to work over the holidays? Who wants to travel or has family coming to town? What about the weekend before Christmas? What about New Year's? It's enough to make a lawyer dread the holidays.
There are a few reasons why Christmas access is such a difficult issue to work out;
First, it's a hugely sentimental time of year. For the most part, parents and grandparents get far more emotionally invested in Christmas than they do Halloween, Easter or Thanksgiving. They get more sensitive about their time and are hurt when requests are refused. No doubt a parent's first Christmas without their children is a lonely one.
Secondly, there's less flexibility. For example, with a child's birthday, no one minds celebrating the day before or the day after, or even the weekend before or after. With Christmas, if the father's entire extended family is gathered to open presents the morning of December 25th, it's just not the same for him to have the children December 26th instead.
Third, each family is different. They have different traditions on different days and not everyone has the same picture of the ideal holiday. This is especially true if one parent does not celebrate Christmas. So lawyers and Judges are left trying to figure out each family's traditions and then craft a plan is in the children's best interests. Also, some parents may be scheduled to work over the holidays, some will not. This has to be considered as well.
Fourth, it's difficult to craft a plan that will work year after year. Normally parents agree to split the children's school holidays equally, and they also agree to some sharing or alternating of Dec 24, 25 and 26th. But there's no one easy way to do that. This year, Christmas Eve and Day fall quite early in the two weeks of school holidays. So, a typical court order that says in even numbered years mom has the first week of holidays with an exchange to happen on Christmas Day would, this year, be quite unequal.
Fifth, geography creates major problems as well. Most parents try to share the children on Christmas Day in some way. Driving the children to the other parent's house at 3:00 pm on December 25th isn't a problem if the parents both live in the same city. But what if they live a few hours apart? Is it fair to the children to have a long drive (or even a flight) on a day they'd rather be playing with toys? But the other alternative is for the parents to switch off the entire holiday year to year. This means less disruption over the holidays, but one parent misses out entirely every second year.
Lastly, Christmas access is a difficult topic for lawyers and Judges. Having dozens of cases with negotiations on-going, all with different schedules and proposals, gets confusing. Calendars are a must. And there`s a definite time line. If the issue isn`t sorted out by the last day the court is open, there`s nothing the lawyers or Judges can do to help.
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