March 2023 Texas Standard Possession Order

Hi everybody. Chris Schmiedeke here to talk about March under the Standard Possession Order. This is going to be a very interesting month. There are a lot of moving pieces to this one, so this one may be a little bit longer than our normal videos. A little housekeeping first. If you wouldn’t mind clicking the like button down below here and maybe subscribing to the channel. That would be fantastic. That way you’ll get updates when I provide new information that I hope is helpful to you in unraveling the Texas Standard Possession Order.

Okay, let’s see what the month of March holds for us. Here we have the March 2023 Standard Possession Order in Texas. Let’s begin this month by talking about the holidays. We have spring break this month and you can see here on the 13th of March I have put in spring break for that week. Why is that important? Well, first of all, it’s the custodial parent’s spring break because we are in an odd year, non-custodial parents, you get the even year, but when this holiday takes place in a given month is very important and I will show you why in a minute. This is a reflection of the spring break for my kids and the school that they’re in. So my daughter will be out from the 13th through the 17th. Your child may be out from the 6th through the 10th or they could be out from the 20th through the 24th. It is very important to understand which date your child has because it’s going to affect the weekend periods of possession.

So for the weekend periods of possession, typically in a month, you have the first, third, and fifth Friday of the month for the weekend. So we have the first Friday of the month as the third. The third Friday of the month is the 17th and the fifth Friday of the month is the 31st. So as I was saying, it is extremely important to know when spring break is. If the spring break falls on the 13th through the 17th, non-custodial parent, you are going to lose the third Friday of the month. That’s why this is so important. If the spring break is the 6th through the 10th, non-custodial parent, you are going to get your third Friday of the month on the 17th through the 19th. And the same goes for March 20th through March 24th. If your kids have spring break from March 20th through March 24th, non-custodial, you are going to get the 17th through the 19th. The only scenario where you’re going to lose the third Friday of the month is if your child’s spring break is from the 13th through the 17th. And you may be saying, “Chris, my kids are too young to be in school therefore they don’t have a spring break.” Well, you’re going to go by the school district where the child would go to school if they were old enough to go to school. So if you live in Lewisville, you’re going to look at the Lewisville ISD and see when their spring break is. That’s what you would use to determine when spring break is. Also, note for March, there is a fifth Friday. The 31st is a Friday, and it is the fifth Friday of the month, one, two, three, four, five as we go down the calendar. So you are going to get that Friday as well. So you could potentially have three Fridays this month or you may have two Fridays this month. It is a standard pickup at six on Friday or whenever your pickup time is, and we’ll go through Sunday at six or return to school if you have the overnights there. Also, note that the following weekend will be the first Friday of the month. So non-custodial parents, you’re going to get back-to-back weekends at the end of March. So you’ll get the last Friday of the month in March and the first Friday of the month in April.

Thursdays, you are going to get the 2nd, the 9th, the 16th, the 23rd, and the 30th minus whatever Thursday falls on spring break because we know that holidays overwrite the normal periods of possession, the Thursdays and the weekends. So whatever week your spring break falls on, you are going to lose that Thursday. I just don’t know which one it is because I don’t know when your school has spring break.

One final thought before we wrap up this month. You are coming up on April 1st and why is April 1st important? April 1st is important because it is the deadline for the non-custodial parent to pick custom extended summer possession dates. So non-custodial parent, if you want to plan out a vacation and pick custom dates for your 30 days, you have to give notice by April 1st of next month. If you do not care and you just want the default dates then you don’t have to do anything because you’re going to get July 1st to July 31st.

Wow. All right. So that’s a lot of information for one month. If you have any questions or you find any of this confusing, you can comment down below and I will do the best I can to answer your questions for you. Don’t forget again that April 1st is the deadline to select custom dates for your extended summer possession so don’t miss that date. And then next month we will get into not only that but the notice for the custodial parent if they want to steal a weekend inside the extended summer possession. So I will see you next month.