As your children grow up, you and your ex may need to alter the child custody plan that was put in place when you divorced. Children’s needs and desires evolve as they age, and your plan does need to reflect those changes.
After all, your children’s ages are one of the main things you want to think about when initially creating the plan. It stands to reason that you would also want to think about them when updating that plan in the future.
For instance, maybe you got divorced with one child, a daughter, who was three years old. To keep things simple, you just traded custody of her every other week. She was too young to have a say and really didn’t need to go anywhere, so it didn’t matter which home she lived. You lived about an hour from your ex.
However, when your daughter turned five, she got into school. The school is near your ex’s house, but it’s a long way from your house. Do you need to update the schedule so that your daughter lives with your ex all week, keeping her close to school? She could then come and see you on the weekends when you’d have more time to make the drive to get her since you wouldn’t have to work. Does some other aspect of your parenting plan need to change in order to make things fair?
This is just one single example of how children’s lives change as they grow up. There are many more, including a desire for more time with their friends as teens or a desire to live with a specific parent when old enough to choose. You constantly want to think about your options and how the plan can best suit your child.
