January 2021 Texas Standard Possession Order

Hi, everyone. Chris Schmiedeke from Divorce Simplified. I hope you had a very Merry Christmas and you have a happy 2021. I don’t think it could be any worse than 2020, so here’s to a much better 2021.

Today, we are going to look at the January 2021 visitation schedule. As always, a disclaimer, this is a Texas standard possession order. It’s the basic standard possession order. It’s not expanded. Always check your order and confirm. Yours may look a little bit different than mine. You may have different weekday visits than the weekday visits I talk about, but everything I’m going to discuss today is the current Texas standard possession order in Texas.

All right, this is the January 2021 calendar. I have upped my game a little bit in the color coordination, and I think I’ve got all the dates in there correctly. Blue, you are custodial parent. The yellow is the non-custodial parent or the visiting parent. And then the red is the holidays that we have in January. So January does have three Fridays. So typically there would be a first, third, and a fifth Friday of the month. However, we are ending the holiday possession for the custodial parents. So they took possession on December 28th at noon, and that would continue until the children return to school after the holidays. I don’t know exactly when that is. If your child is too young to be in school, then you just pretend that they are in school and go by the school district calendar in which they would attend school. So we will assume that the school would return on the fourth, the fifth, or the sixth of January, which would make all of that time the custodial parents anyway.

So the first possession by the non-custodial parent would be Thursday from six to eight on the 7th. And then you can see, you would have the 7th, the 14th, the 21st, and the 28th would all be the Thursday periods of possession, from six to eight. Now, you may have overnights and all of that, but those are the days. Then we have the second weekend, obviously is the custodial parents. Then we move to the third weekend, which is the 15th. So the non-custodial or visiting parent will have the 15th through the weekend. Now, we have Martin Luther King Jr Day. I believe that most school districts are out of school for that day. If they are, then per that one little paragraph in the standard possession order, your visitation is going to be extended, because Monday is a holiday. So if your school district recognizes Martin Luther King Jr Day as a holiday, then you are going to extend your visitation till Monday at 6:00 PM. So the 15th through the 18th, if Martin Luther King Jr Day is recognized on your school district’s calendar as a holiday.

Then we have the fourth weekend, fourth Friday, which is the custodial parents. And this month, we have a fifth Friday of the month, so that would give the visiting parent the 29th through the 31st. And obviously, if we rolled over to the next month that you could see, that’s not exactly highlighted, kind of shadowed at the bottom, that 5th of February is going to be the first Friday of the month. So visiting parent, you are going to get back to back weekends from January into February.

So there you have it. January 2021, the first month of the new year. Once again, I hope everyone has a fantastic New Year’s Eve tonight and a wonderful new year. And I will see you in February.