Texas Parenting Plan

It is the statutory default schedule for a child three years of age or older, built around the first, third and fifth weekends of each month, a Thursday period during the school year, and specified holiday and summer arrangements. Since September 2021, where the possessory conservator lives 50 miles or less from the child's home the court orders the expanded version unless that parent declines it or the court finds it is not in the child's interest, which turns the Thursday into an overnight and runs weekends to Monday morning, so count your overnights against the expanded schedule. Parents who live more than 100 miles apart get a different set of periods, and for a child under three the court sets a schedule to fit the circumstances and orders the standard schedule to start on the child's third birthday. (Rewritten to remove the em dashes in the proposed version.)

Not for the arrangement itself. Texas appoints conservators, usually joint managing conservators, and sets out possession and access. The word still turns up in the Family Code's jurisdiction chapter and on the UCCJEA affidavit filed with your case, but the operative terms in your order are conservatorship, possession and access. (Rewritten to remove the em dash and to replace the existing trailing sentence, 'The concepts map onto legal and physical custody, but the words differ', which becomes redundant.) The concepts map onto legal and physical custody, but the words differ.

Yes. Parents can agree to any workable schedule, including a 50/50 arrangement, and courts routinely approve agreed orders that depart from the standard schedule.

Texas refers to it as a possession order, filed in the District Court. The state uses "conservatorship" for decision-making authority and "possession and access" for the time each parent spends with the children. Check the current forms published by the Texas judiciary before filing, as forms and local rules change.

Whatever your schedule actually produces, and the plan should state it precisely. In most states the overnight count feeds into the child-support formula and into how the arrangement is classified, though a few states, Texas among them, set guideline support from income alone. The calculator on this page gives you the exact annual figure for the schedule you choose.

Parents routinely prepare and file their own agreed plans. Where Texas publishes a mandatory or preferred form, work the schedule and figures out first and then transfer them onto that form. Having an attorney review the plan before you sign is advisable, particularly if the two of you disagree on anything substantive.