Short answer
On an every other weekend schedule, the children live mainly with one parent and spend every second weekend with the other, usually from Friday after school until Sunday afternoon or Monday morning. That works out at two or three nights in every fourteen, so many families add a midweek evening or split the school holidays to give both parents more time.
How an every other weekend schedule works
The pattern repeats every two weeks. The children spend their school week, and one weekend in two, at their main home. On the other weekend, they're with the other parent.
That's my arrangement with my two sons. I collect them from school on a Friday, they spend the whole weekend with us, and I take them back to their mum's on Sunday afternoon. The next weekend they're with her, and the fortnight starts again.
Most of the detail is in the handovers. In our case, the weekend starts at the school gate on Friday and ends when I drop them home on Sunday. Agreeing those times, and who's doing each handover, matters more than the name of the schedule, which is something I wrote about in what co-parenting means day to day.
How much time it adds up to
People often ask what share of the time this schedule gives each parent. Counting nights is the simplest way to work it out, because that's how most parenting plans describe time. The parenting time calculator does the sum for your own pattern, with holiday nights added on top.
A standard every other weekend, with Friday and Saturday nights away, is 2 nights out of every 14, or about 14%. If the weekend runs until school on Monday morning, or there's a midweek overnight in the week between, it's 3 nights, about 21%. Adding a midweek overnight every week takes a Friday to Sunday weekend to 4 nights out of 14, about 29%, which is roughly what US websites call a 70/30 split.
Nights don't tell the whole story, though. Two evenings and a full Saturday cover a lot of the hours when children aren't at school or asleep, which is part of why the pattern can feel like more time than the percentage suggests.
The common variations
Every other weekend is a starting point, and most families adjust it. (For how it compares with the other patterns UK families use, see my guide to typical child contact arrangements.) The usual changes are:
- Extending the weekend to Monday. The children go straight to school from the second parent's home on Monday morning. It adds a night and removes a Sunday evening handover.
- Adding a midweek evening. Dinner, or a visit after school, on a weekday in the week between weekends, so the gap is never more than a week.
- Adding a midweek overnight. The same, but staying over and going to school from that home the next morning.
- Sharing the school holidays separately. The weekend pattern runs in term time, and the holidays are split on their own terms, often half each.
For the first few years after I separated, I had the boys every other weekend plus the Thursday night in the week between, when they'd stay over and go to school from mine on the Friday. That Thursday meant I was never more than a week without seeing them. As they got older, though, an hour's drive each way on a school night, and back to school the next morning, stopped suiting them, so their mum and I dropped it and kept the fortnightly weekend. It's only been a few years since we made that change.
Bank holidays and school holidays
A fixed fortnightly pattern runs into trouble as soon as a bank holiday Monday, an inset day or a school holiday turns up. In our family, their mum and I talk about who has the boys on bank holidays depending on where they fall in the schedule, and we normally plan any extra or different days months in advance.
Put the whole school year in the plan at the start.
Add bank holidays, inset days and the school holidays to the shared calendar as soon as the term dates come out, and agree who has each one then. It's much easier to sort out in September than the week before.
Christmas, summer and half terms usually need their own arrangement on top of the weekend pattern, so they don't simply fall to whoever's weekend it happens to be.
Making the most of the weekends
When you only have the children every other weekend, it's tempting to fill every minute. We've settled into a rhythm that works for us. On Friday evening we often have a nice meal together with all of us, Saturday is usually for doing something fun, and on Sunday there's most likely a roast before I take them back.
It's a lot different from life in a nuclear family, and I won't pretend it was easy to get used to. But it's become my new normal, and I've grown to enjoy it. We always try to make the most of the time we spend together.
It's now my new normal, and I can't wait to see my boys every other Friday.
George Pritchard
Staying in touch in between
Twelve days is a long time not to see your children, so the time in between matters too. I have a WhatsApp group with my boys, which a few other family members are in as well, and we speak on the phone. Sometimes we play games together remotely.
None of that replaces a weekend together, but it means the boys don't go almost two weeks without hearing from me, and it keeps me up to date with what's going on in their lives.
What lives at each house
Most of what the boys need is here, at my house, so they don't have to pack much. There's a bit of clothes swapping back and forth. One of my children has additional needs, so a few things have to be arranged to come with them, but we've kept that to the essentials.
If you're setting up a second home for the first time, it's worth buying duplicates of the everyday things early. A child who has to remember a toothbrush and a phone charger every other Friday will forget one of them sooner or later, and a weekend shouldn't start with a trip back across town.
The weekends without them
The other side of every other weekend is the weekend when the children aren't with you. That took me a long time to get used to.
There are benefits I didn't expect. Every other weekend I have time to do things with my wife and friends, and then I can look forward to seeing the boys the next week. What helped most was consistency. I've stuck to every single weekend I'm due to have them, and we keep good communication going in between. That has helped a lot.
Consistency, always sticking to every weekend I'm due to have my boys, and good communication in between have helped a lot.
George Pritchard
When the pattern needs to change
The arrangement that suits young children won't always suit them as they get older. Ours changed when the boys started finding the midweek travel too much, and it was the right decision even though losing that Thursday was hard for me.
Signs it might be time to look at the plan again:
- the children are tired or unsettled by the travel, especially on school nights
- weekend clubs, sport or part-time jobs keep clashing with the schedule
- one of you has moved further away, or work hours have changed
- the children say, or show, that something isn't working
When that happens, talk about it with the other parent first, and with the children if they're old enough to have a view. Any change should be agreed and written down before it starts.
Is it the right schedule for your family?
Overnight stays with the other parent are the norm for separated families. In the Department for Work and Pensions' Survey of Separated Parents, 83% of parents with care who had arrangements for the children's time said those arrangements included overnight stays with the other parent.
You don't need a court to set one up. GOV.UK's guide to making child arrangements if you divorce or separate explains that you can agree where the children live and how much time they spend with each parent between yourselves, and use mediation if you can't.
My view is that any schedule can work if it suits the children and everyone sticks to it. For children at school, having the week in one place, at one home, really helps them. If you can, talk it through with the other parent, make sure it's something the children would like, and go with what works best for everyone.
Whatever pattern you agree, put it somewhere you both can see it. In Two Front Doors, you set the every other weekend pattern once, with its handover times, and both homes see the same calendar.
