5 Lessons From the May Standard Possession Order in Texas

Hi, Chris Schmiedeke from Divorce Simplified again for my monthly installment of the Texas standard possession order. This will be for May. As expected, the questions have been rolling in on the summer possession. It seems to be a real problem for people. I had made the April video, which kind of laid out the notice requirements for the extended summer possession, and then I did another video where I tried to simplify the summer possession as much as possible. You may want to watch both of those if you are watching this and are confused about the summer extended visitation of the non-custodial parent. For the month of May, there were quite a few learning lessons in there so let’s get to it.

Let’s start by looking at the weekend possessions for lesson number one. So, we understand that the weekend possessions in a standard possession order are the first, third, and fifth Friday of the month. If you will look at the calendar I have here, you can see that we go back into April. This is the last week of April up here at the top. And we can see that April 30th is a non-custodial parent weekend. Why is that? Because it is the fifth Friday of the month. It is the fifth Friday of April. Therefore, it belongs to the non-custodial parent.

Now, normally, the very next weekend would be the first Friday of the month and therefore the non-custodial parent would have back-to-back weekends. They would have the fifth Friday, they would have the first Friday, and then you can see here on the 21st, they would have the third Friday of the month, okay? Now, that’s lesson number one. There’s a caveat to that- and I’ll get to that in a second, for this month only.

Thursdays. You can see the 29th is a Thursday so the non-custodial parent would get the Thursdays the 29th of April, the 6th, 13th, 20th, and the 27th of May. But you will see the first week of June down here and there is no non-custodial parent visit on Thursday, June 3rd. Why is that? Well, because my kids- and I’m using my kids’ school calendar- get out of school on May 28th this year so June 3rd would be in the summer and we do not get Thursday possessions under a standard possession order in the summer. That is lesson number two.

Also, you will notice that this is the first Friday of June, the 4th right here, and that belongs to the non-custodial parent. Why? Because we all remember that the weekend possessions extend through the summer- they go all year-’round. It’s the Thursday periods of possession that are only during the school term. So, that’s lesson number two. Or are we in lesson number three? I’ve lost count.

In either case, there is one caveat to this. I said that the non-custodial parent gets the fifth Friday. They also get the first Friday of the month. They also do that in a normal month but we have Mother’s Day. So, if the non-custodial parent is the mother, then that’s no problem; it is going to be that weekend, the first Friday, and it’s going to coincide with Mother’s Day. If the custodial parent is the mother, then guess what. Non-custodial parent, you are giving up this weekend. That weekend is going to belong to the mother because it is Mother’s Day and Mother’s Day overrides your weekend periods of possession. So, that is lesson number four or possibly lesson number five- I’ve lost count. Other than that, it is a pretty standard month where you’re going to get into June and the summer next month.

Finally, let’s do one more lesson here for you. You say, “My kids are too young; they’re not in school yet.” That doesn’t matter. You are going to use the school district in which you live, custodial parent, with your child even if they are not in school. “They are only three years old, they are not in school”, doesn’t matter. Look at your school district calendar for the date that those kids, if your child was in school, get out of school for the summer. That is what you’re going to use to fill in here to determine when the last day of school is and what Thursdays continue.

If your child’s last day of school, or if they were in school, their last day of school is June 4th, then this Thursday is going to count for the noncustodial parent as their Thursday because it is still during the school term.

A lot of lessons here. I hope that’s clear. If not, obviously, comment or fire me some questions. I know that’s a lot of information and hopefully, you could follow along there, but it turned out that the month of May, actually as it ends in April and as we roll into June, the month of May has a lot of lessons in there, a lot of things you can learn from that. Very common questions that I get all the time. Hopefully, that was straightforward enough for you to understand. Thank you for watching and I will talk to you in June.