It’s Summer! June under the Texas Standard Possession Order

Hello, Chris Schmiedeke from Divorce Simplified again, for my monthly installment of the review of the Texas Standard Possession Order. But before we get into that, two burning questions that I know you all have are one, are you really an attorney? And two, when are you going to cut that hair? One, yes, I am an attorney. Two, I don’t know, but I need to because it’s getting long, for sure.

Before I get into the review of the calendar for June, I wanted to remind you of three other videos. So the April video had a lot about the notice provisions for an extended summer possession order and what rights the custodial parent had in terms of notice for their weekends. May had five really interesting points that you can take away from it. And then I put together a Q and A video that kind of answers a lot of questions from you all on, you know, how does the summer possession work in terms of weekends, et cetera, things that I see every day. So I just answered your questions, but now let’s get into June.

Here’s a visual look at the month of June. By the time you’re looking at this and you’re concerned about June, everybody should be in summer by now, but I want to make one point here before we move on to the discussion of what happens in June. So I’m making this video, as you can see here on the 26th of May. So the kid’s last day of school typically for most districts is going to be the 27th or the 28th, I suppose that some kids could roll into June, but I’m not aware of that. But I did get a question from a person the other day that said if the kid’s last day of school is the 27th of May, does the non-custodial parent get this Thursday? Because remember, you get Thursdays during the school term. And while there’s no easy answer to that in the Texas Family Code and I haven’t researched the case law on it, but look at it this way: if you look on a calendar, what’s the last day of school? The 27th. What is the first day of summer? The 28th, right? The first day of summer doesn’t start at 6:00 p.m on Thursday, that’s not how it works. So the custodial parent in this situation who does not want to give up the child says, “oh, I don’t have to give you your Thursday because it’s summertime as soon as school lets out”. While that may be technically correct, I think that is incorrect in terms of the 27th is the last day of school, which is going to put it in the school term. The first day of summer does not begin till May 28th. So that would make this Thursday visit inside the school term.

All right, so move back over to June. So you can see in June, there are a few things I want everyone to notice here. First of all, we noticed that the summer weekends continue. The first third and fifth Fridays of the month continue. Here’s a first Friday, here’s a third Friday of the month. All these other times are designated to the custodial parent. Now, there are a few ways where this could get topsy-tervied, and that is if the non-custodial parents selected any of these days in here for their extended summer possession, obviously, that’s going to overwrite the custodial parent’s possession if the non-custodial parent decided to exercise their extended summer possession in the month of June.

Remember, they get to designate by April 1st, they can do custom dates or if they don’t pick a custom date, it defaults to July 1st, to July 31st. So if you non-custodial parent, picked custom dates in here, obviously those are going to overwrite the custodial parent’s visit. If you selected some of the days in June as your extended summer possession. The other thing that could transform this is that we know the custodial parent gets to pick two weekends in the summer that would otherwise belong to the non-custodial parent. One of those weekends is inside the extended summer possession. And one of those weekends is outside of the extended summer possession.

So for instance, let’s say that the non-custodial parent did not designate their extended summer possession by April 1st. They are going to default to July 1st, to July 31st, so then the custodial parent decides, well, I want to pick a weekend in June then. So what weekend can they choose? They can choose the first or the third weekend. Typically, that’s what they would get to pick. They cannot do that this June and I’ll tell you why they can’t do that here. So if it were say August, they would be able to pick the first or the third weekend of that month and steal that away from the non-custodial parent. So why will they not be able to do it this weekend? Well, that depends on who’s the custodial parent and who is the non-custodial parent, because it is Father’s Day weekend and fathers are always going to get Father’s Day weekend.

So if the non-custodial parent is the father, then no problem, they get this weekend anyway. So they’re not only going to get this weekend normally cause it’s the third Friday, but they also get it because it’s Father’s Day, no issue. But if the non-custodial parent is the mother then that’s bad news for you, mom, non-custodial parent because the father is actually going to get this weekend. So this would turn to blue and it would be the custodial parent’s weekend. All right.

Things to note, weekends continue throughout the summer, first third, and fifth weekends. Other things to note, the Thursdays or weekday possessions disappear because we know from my prior videos, that those are only during the school term. Also, holidays overwrite any of these provisions. Father’s Day will be considered a holiday and it’s going to overwrite in certain scenarios who gets the child. For instance, if mom is the non-custodial parent, dad is going to get that weekend because it is Father’s Day.

So there you go. That is the month of June. I hope by now, if you are looking at the April video, the May video, my Q and A video, and now this video, that you are slowly but surely starting to put together how the summer possession order works. As always if you need to, you can email me at info@chrislawyer.com or you can call 214-643-8904 , or you can just go to my website www.divorcesimplified.law and put in your question on the chat feature. And in the near future, maybe I will put together another Q and A video with your questions. So until next month, July, have a great beginning to your summer.