80/20 Custody Schedules, Benefits, and Examples

Do you have a custody situation where one parent needs to spend significantly more time on childrearing than the co-parent? If so, you may be considering an 80/20 parenting plan, and you may be confused by the amount of math that seems to be involved in figuring out the differences between “alternating weekends” and “every other weekend.”

This article defines an 80/20 schedule, gives examples of visitation dates for the 2024 calendar year according to the traditional joint custody plans, and includes sample legal language and considerations in choosing the arrangement that works best for your family.

What Is an 80/20 Custody Schedule?

An 80/20 schedule means that one parent has the child for 80% of the time, and the other parent has the child for 20% of the time. This traditionally takes the form of a 1st, 3rd and 5th weekend arrangement, where one parent has custody of the child every other weekend or on alternating weekends (and also the 5th weekend of a month), as calculated below.

The benefits of an 80/20 schedule are the routine and structure that this schedule gives to the child. It is easier for all parties to understand and remember the rules regarding their weekend and thus simpler to schedule social life for both the parents and the child. Due to the long stretch of time between weekend overnights, the parent with 20% custody is able to work longer hours and is able to live further away from the child’s home base, even more so than in a 70/30 custody arrangement.

The drawbacks for this schedule are that one parent has inherently more time with the child than the other, which can affect the ability of this parent to stay involved in the child’s development. In the ideal situation, you and your co-parent will work together in the best interest of your child to actively advocate for phone calls or dinners during the week for the parent with 20% custody. 

For any custody arrangement to work in the long term, the best interests of the child must be the guiding principle in discussions around schedules. If you and your co-parent are able to keep the interests of the child as the focus of the discussion, you should be able to negotiate times that are reasonable for your unique family dynamic and that allow meaningful involvement of both parents.

Determining What Amount of Time Makes Up 20% Custody

Don’t be confused by online calendar subscriptions and their overcomplications. The math for 20% of joint custody for a two-week period is as follows: 

Because there are 336 hours in a two-week period, a 20% custody parent is entitled to 67.2 hours of time. (7 days x 24 hours x 2 weeks = 336 total hours. 336 X 0.2 = 67.2 hours). This is a bit more than 2 full days, and less than 3 full days. 

How you take this time depends on your family circumstances, and some scenarios are discussed below.

Note that there is an alternative to these traditional calculations regarding “third-party” time. Third-party time is time that the child is in school, sleeping, with a grandparent, or otherwise not directly participating with a parent. If third-party time is used in your parenting plan, you would exclude those hours when the child is with a third-party from your calculations of the amount of total hours that the child is available for parenting, which dramatically changes the traditional time calculations.

How Many Overnights Is “Every Other Weekend”?

This is a trick question because it depends on how you negotiate your parenting schedule. As demonstrated above, a parent with 20% custody has a right to about 67.2 hours every 2 weeks. This breaks down to either:

• 2 overnights every alternating weekend (around 48 hours taken), and either
  • the 5th weekend of the month (which occurs 4 times in the year 2024) aka the 1st, 3rd, and 5th weekend schedule OR 
  • additional X hours during the week (where X is the amount of time remaining after subtracting your weekend hours) aka the alternating weekends schedule, OR 
• 3 overnights every other weekend (67.2 hours taken Friday through Monday)

Example 1st, 3rd, and 5th Weekend Schedule Scenarios

There are 4 months in the year 2024 where there is a 5th weekend: March, June, August, and November. In a 1st, 3rd, and 5th weekend schedule, the parent with 20% custodial time would have the child on these additional weekends, meaning some of those weekends are back-to-back and this parent will have the child for two weekends in a row.

For example, in May, June, and July of 2024, the family on the 1st, 3rd and 5th weekend schedule would have pickups scheduled for these Fridays:

• May: May 3, May 17, May 31
• June: June 7, June 21 (note that the May 31 and June 7 weekends are back-to-back)
• July: July 5, July 19

In at least one case with a 1st, 3rd, and 5th weekend schedule (James N. v. Elizabeth M.), the Court ordered additional visits on Tuesdays and Thursdays from after school until 8:30 pm and set the pickup time for weekend visits from after school on Friday until Sunday at 8 pm.

Example Alternating Weekends Schedule Scenarios

If your family prefers the stability of an alternating weekend schedule, you will not need to worry about back-to-back weekends. An alternate weekend for the same months as above could have Friday pickups on the following days in 2024:

May: May 3, May 17, May 31

June: June 14, June 28

July: July 12, July 26

Sample legal language for an 80/20 Custody Plan

The parents have agreed to an 80/20 split of their custody rights, whereby 80% of the parenting time is awarded to the custodial parent, X, and 20% of the parenting time is awarded to the non-custodial parent, Y. 

[Describe your selected schedule here, example provided here is alternate weekends and one weekday overnight - make sure to do your own calculations of the 80/20 math for your family]

The parents commit the child will live with X and be visited by Y on [alternating weekends or the 1st, 3rd, and 5th weekends], from school pickup time on Friday and continuing until Sunday evening at 10pm. Y is responsible for picking the child up and returning her according to the stated schedules. X agrees to be respectful of allowing privacy and meaningful time for Y and the child to bond. Nothing in this section prevents Y’s ability to attend the child’s sporting events and competitions, and it is understood that any such attendance is only considered custodial time if it occurs during the visitation schedule as described in this section.

[Best practice would include listing the specific dates and times for pickup and drop-off, along with agreed terms for visitation or scheduled calls during the week.]

Finalizing an 80/20 Custody Schedule

Remember that regardless of the overnight weekend schedule chosen, the parent with 20% custody rights likely has a right to additional time during the week and it is traditional to make special arrangements for holidays and school breaks. This right depends on the exact pick-up and drop-off times for the overnights. 

In a typical New York custody case involving a 1st, 3rd, and 5th weekend schedule, the court specified pickup and drop off times of school time and 8:30 pm, respectively. Thus, to determine whether you have this right and whether it is practicable for your family, you should first consider the child’s school schedule and bedtime routine, then determine the schedule of the parent with 20% custody time. 

If the parent is unable to make weekly commitments due to conflicting work schedules or living a long distance away, you can instead agree on scheduling longer overnights, later drop-off times, or additional supplemental time during the child’s school breaks. Additionally, you should be respectful of the child’s desire to attend specific social, religious, and cultural events that may fall during your parenting time. 

In James N. v. Elizabeth M., for example, a family court in New York ordered that the children be permitted to attend the worship service of their choice and that the mother provide transportation to the religious establishment during her weekend, even when the mother was not of the same faith. There, the Court specifically warned the parents, “as the subject of extracurricular activities has been the source of much fighting between Mother and Father, the children shall have the right to meaningfully participate in such activities even if the activity meets on the other parent’s weekend or during the other parent’s ‘time’”. Given the ages of these children their interest in being permitted to freely engage in such positive activities as a dance group or a baseball team outweighs the right of either parent to insist on their ‘time’.”