December 2023 Texas Standard Possession Order

INTRO

Hello everyone, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, Today we are going to review the Texas Standard Possession Order for December 2023. You may want to watch the video to follow along. The custodial parent is in blue, non-custodial parent, is in yellow.

WEEKEND PERIODS OF POSSESSION FOR DECEMBER

Let’s start with the weekend periods of possession. There is a 1st and 3rd Friday this month. There is also a 5th Friday this month, but we’ll get to that in a minute. The 1st Friday of the month is going to be December 1st, and the 3rd Friday of the month will be December 15th. Those will belong to the non-custodial parent. The 8th of December is the custodial parent’s weekend. We will discuss the weekend of the 22nd below (4th Friday).

THURSDAY PERIODS OF POSSESSION FOR DECEMBER

In terms of the Thursday periods of possession, non-custodial, you’re going to get the 7th, the 14th, and the 21st, and you’re going to get a portion of the 28th, but that is going to fall under the holiday periods of possession which we will discuss below.

HOLIDAY PERIODS OF POSSESSION FOR DECEMBER

This month we have Christmas. As I do every year with any kind of holiday like this, I’m just making assumptions about when the kids get out of school. I’m going to assume that your child will be dismissed from school on the 22nd of December and return on the 8th of January. Under this scenario, the holiday possession for Christmas would go all the way through the 7th of January, and return to school on the 8th.

It is the custodial parent’s Christmas, so they would pick up after school on the 22nd, and they’re going to have the child till December 28th at noon, in which case the non-custodial parent would pick up December 28th at noon and have them until they return to school on January 8th.

If any of these dates do not meet your calendar, then simply apply your calendar. For instance, let’s say the kids were dismissed here on December 21st (a Thursday) for the Christmas holiday, then this Thursday period of possession for the non-custodial parent on the 21st would disappear. The custodial parent’s possession would begin on December 21st when the child is dismissed from school. And you can do the same thing on the tail end, where the non-custodial parent, if for some reason the child’s not going to be returned to school, say maybe until the 9th, then non-custodial parent, your possession is going to extend through the 8th or potentially the 9th depending upon your provisions in your order on when you return after the Christmas holiday.

HOLIDAYS OVERWRITE WEEKEND AND THURSDAY PERIODS OF POSSESSION

Let’s talk about the Thursday period of possession on the 28th of December and this 5th Friday of the month on the 29th. I get a lot of questions about this, and I want to make it very clear that holidays overwrite the normal Thursdays and weekend periods of possession, so they no longer exist, they’re not even put on the calendar. As you can see from the calendar in the video, I didn’t even put a break here to delineate a 5th Friday for that weekend of the 29th, 30th, and 31st. It doesn’t exist, it’s not a weekend period of possession. It is simply a holiday period of possession.

The same holds true for the 28th, which is the Thursday. It is overwritten by the custodial parent returning, and then a non-custodial parent picking up at noon. There is no Thursday on that day. I hope that makes sense. Holidays overwrite the Thursdays and the weekends, so you would not even put them on the calendar. You just put on the holiday period of possession. I hope that’s clear.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, and I look forward to making more videos for you all in the new year.