Navigating Custody During School Breaks: What Parents Need to Know

Jonathan Breeden: [00:00:00] On this week’s episode of the Best of Johnstonon County Podcast, we have a special edition episode that we call Ask Jonathan Breeden Anything. And in this podcast, our social media coordinator, Rayna Birch, asked me, Jonathan Breeden about child custody during the school breaks from school. We discuss what happens during track out and traditional school calendars in the summers, along with fall break, spring break, and Easter, and how that often falls in custody cases.

If you’re interested in how your custody case may end up, or how custody cases are handled outside of the holidays, listen in. I think you’ll find it interesting and fascinating and maybe it’ll help you make a better decision in your own situation.

Hello and welcome to another edition of the best of Johnston County podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden. And on today’s episode, we have a special edition episode. We like to call Ask Jonathan Breeden Anything. And in these special edition episodes, our social media coordinator, Raena Burch, ask me, Jonathan Breeden, family law questions and today’s questions are going to relate to [00:01:00] child custody during the school year, and child custody that is not related to the holidays, go back and listen to one of our previous episodes where we talked about child custody during the holidays. Today we’re gonna talk about child custody during the school year. As you know, our normal format for this podcast is for me, Jonathan Breeden, to interview interesting people in and around Johnstonton County, community leaders, business, small business owners and stuff like that.

But every once in a while we do these special edition episodes. Which is what we’re doing today where I talk about family law, which is what we do here at the Breeden Law Office. But before we get to that, I would like to ask you to like, follow and subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re seeing it, whether it be on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, or X now was Twitter and so you’ll be aware of future episodes of the best Johnston County podcast. The best Johnston County podcast comes out every single Monday and has now for well over 18 months. So you go back and listen to some of our previous episodes. We’ve had almost all of the county commissioners on our [00:02:00] podcast, Congressman Brad Knott, along with lots of small business owners.

And if you love Johnston County as much as I do this is the podcast for you. Ready Raena? 

Raena: I’m ready. Are you ready? 

Jonathan Breeden: I am ready. 

Raena: All right. So the first question, pretty basic one, but I mean it’s always good to have an answer to it. So everybody’s sort of the traditional school calendar in long summer, few weeks off for like winter or spring break.

But what about year round schools becoming like, those are becoming more and more common. So how does that impact custody? 

Jonathan Breeden: Right. So you know, you think about a traditional school calendar, there’s gonna be 10 to 12 weeks in the summer consecutively off. 

Raena: Yes. 

Jonathan Breeden: School will get out, you know, in Johnstonton County, you know, later part of May. In Wake County, middle of June 10th, June 12th, somewhere like that. Yep, and then it’s gonna go back around August the 25th. There’s been some debate about whether that’s gonna get moved up, to maybe a week earlier or two weeks earlier as we move forward. But right [00:03:00] now. Most traditional calendar schools start the closest Monday to August 25th.’cause that’s what the statute says. And so if you have a traditional calendar, you know, most of the time if you live near each other and you’re doing some sort of shared custody, you know, if you’re doing a shared custody week on, week off, nothing changes. Okay. If you are a parent that’s getting less than week on, week off, then normally in the summer and you live contiguous or near the other parent. Yeah. You would then almost always in a court get week on, week off in the summer. We should allow you five or six weeks depending on how long the traditional summer is to travel with the child, go wherever you want to go, stuff like that. Usually it’s Sunday at six to Sunday at six, and that’s how it would go.

If you’re dealing in a situation where you have one parent that lives far away and they’re not able to get regular visitation in the summer, then that parent is usually gonna get. Six to eight weeks of that 10 to 12 week summer. So they get some of the time, they don’t get during the school year with the child, as well.

And then the parent that lives farther away [00:04:00] if they’re not able to get every other weekend or any kind of shared visitation. They’re also gonna get every spring break from school out to the day of school. School resumes, depending on how far they are, they may get fall break as well. And then of course we talked about earlier. They’re gonna get at least one week of Christmas one year, and they’re probably gonna get two weeks of Christmas the next, to make up for some of the time they don’t get during the school year. During the school year.

Yeah. But as it comes to year round schools, which I guess was your original question.

Yeah. what and Wake County is the only school system in, in our area that has a year round. Calendar and they have, 

Raena: and like 90% of their schools are year round. 

Jonathan Breeden: Well the elementary schools, 

Raena: the elementary and middle schools. 

Jonathan Breeden: Right. There’s a lot of ‘EM. Schools, I think it might be less than 50, 50 half.

Yeah. But the majority of the elementary schools are. Yeah. So what happens when year round is you go for nine weeks and then you get three weeks off. And you go in for nine weeks, you get three weeks off, but everybody gets the week of July 4th off and everybody gets the two weeks into at Christmas and that doesn’t count.

So that kind of, it messes up this general [00:05:00] rule. Yeah. Depending on if there’s a holiday around your normal time. So the most common track in Wake County is track four. Yes. And so with track four, you end up getting the two weeks of Christmas and then you also get the first three weeks of January.

Off. So you end up with a five week period now in most custody orders. The two weeks around Christmas is gonna be governed by one provision. The three weeks of track out Yep. Is gonna be governed by a different provision in the order. 

Raena: So, because one month’s holiday time and one of them. 

Jonathan Breeden: Correct.

And so depending on how it’s written, it may not go exactly like this, but the majority of the time on a track out, it’s divided in half and one side will get the first. 11 or 12 days and the other side will get the second 11 or 12 days. There’s usually three weekends in a track out. Yeah. And so you put 15 days plus three weekends, you got another 6 [00:06:00] 21.

So there’s usually at least 21 days, 22 days in a track out if there’s not a holiday in it. And so. You would often exchange on the Wednesday in the middle. Got it. So if it starts on a Friday, you go a week and a half, and then that Wednesday it goes the other. Now if it’s your time during track out, you’re responsible for the track out camp.

Yep. 

And that means you may have to split the cost if there’s a week where the child’s half yours, their week, half the other parent during the week. Yep. But you know, it’s the same thing with summer. You might have to put ’em in summer camp, you may have to put ’em in track out camp, you know, but it’s your responsibility to provide childcare for the child during the track out periods. 

Raena: Yep. And if you’re gonna split costs or anything like that, then you’ve gotta agree with your co-parent on which camp they’re going to and how much that’s gonna cost. And all that takes pre-planning. So start doing that now, like not two weeks before, try 2, 3, 4 months before that starts happening.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. I agree. 

Raena: All right, so next question. So do [00:07:00] you need a completely different custody plan for year-round schools? So just in case your kid switches to a year round school or your base school changes and it changes to a year round school with all these new schools that they’re building, 

Jonathan Breeden: most judges are not going to put in A and or clause. 

Raena: Okay. 

Jonathan Breeden: If they’re not already in year round school. Okay. They’re gonna address it where it is. Yep. Rarely will you see a judge say, but in Wayne County, sometimes they will because of it’s so many year round schools. But usually if the child, when you start the custody case, if they’re in a year round school, they say in around school.

’cause usually parents stay in the same general school district, you know. But my experience has been they often don’t do. Either or, right? They say, okay, this is what we’re gonna do. And then you can either then reach an agreement with the other parent as to what you’re going to do if you end up in a year-round situation or you go back to court and the court will give you a year-round visitation schedule, custody schedule.

Raena: Yep. Based on [00:08:00] year round. Hopefully in the vast majority of cases, particularly if you’re already sharing the summers. You could just do this. Continue a very simple amendment. We’re gonna split the track outs. 

Yep. 

Jonathan Breeden: You know, on that Wednesday, it’s usually a Wednesday, you know, and move forward from there. Again, it’s all about communication and trying to be fair to both sides. 

Raena: Yep. And for any parents listening, I track four is the reason it’s why it’s so popular is because it is the closest one to the traditional calendar schools. 

Jonathan Breeden: Correct. Because they get July all Yes. So they get right. They get July. They also get. Part of October into early November. They then get the two or three weeks at the beginning of January. Yeah. And then they also get April. 

Raena: Yeah, I think just track four. Just went back in as we’re recording This just went back into December. 

Jonathan Breeden: Right. And this is at the end of April.

So yeah. So that’s, so that, that part is nice. And not all the year round schools in Wake County are multi-track. The majority of ’em are single track year round, which is track four. Because it looks the [00:09:00] most like. The traditional calendar. 

Raena: Yep. And so, you know, if they’re in track four then you might not need as many amendments or as many, you know, it might line up better, but 

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

Another problem you run into is when you have a child that’s not on, on a year round calendar, ’cause they’re in a middle school or high school has no year round, none, or middle school, that becomes a real problem because all of a sudden, even if it is track four, you’re talking about one or two weeks that overlap.

Yep. Total. Yep. And so it becomes very important that however, there’s very few weeks where they overlap, that those particular weeks also get divided equally. So that each side can possibly take a vacation particularly. Yeah. ’cause really if you’re on track four and your kids in high school, you’ve got basically those weeks in July.

That’s it. Everybody gets the week of July 4th off. Yep. Regardless of what school, you are year round, whatever. You come back after July 4th, you’re in your new school year. That’s when your new school year starts. [00:10:00] You’re promoted, get a new teacher, all that. But that’s where it gets to be. 

But literally, if you’re, if it’s, you really have July 4th and like one or two weeks thereafter and that’s it.

Yeah. Where the, where both kids were outta school. At the same time outside of the holidays. Throughout the entire year. 

Raena: Yeah. No, and that, that’s exactly it. Because I have a high schooler who’s obviously in a high school that’s not year round ’cause they don’t exist. And then, but I also have an elementary, like an elementary schooler who is in a year round school and on track for, and I can tell you from personal experience, the only summer vacation that lines up is usually June 28th to July 28th.

That’s it. Yep. And you have to factor in holiday time for July 4th. And then, you know, my oldest has a birthday, so that’s different than vacation time. And both parents are entitled to see their kids on their birthday and whatnot. So it can definitely be a little wonky sometimes. And it definitely wanna address it in your agreement for sure.

right. As far as you know, what track they get into. ’cause track four isn’t always [00:11:00] available, so. Right. 

All right. Next question. 

Can you travel with your child during these breaks, summer vacation, track out, however you know, whatever breaks they are. 

Jonathan Breeden: Yes, you can absolutely travel with your child. Depending on what your court order says. Most court orders say if you’re gonna take a child outta state, that you should notify the other parent as to where you’re going, where you’re gonna be staying. A waited for the child to be communicated with, whether they have a phone, you have a phone or whatever. And when you’re coming back, that’s just a common courtesy, that people should do. In the high conflict cases, judges are gonna put that into the order that you have to let them know at least 7 to 21 days in advance if you’re gonna take the child outta the state. Kind of let ’em know where you’re going because if something happens, they need to know where they’d be able to find their child.

Raena: Yes. And 

Jonathan Breeden: And I think that’s important. You know, in the non-high conflict cases, you’re probably gonna do that anyway. In the high conflict cases, sometimes you have to get a court order that says you have to do these. 

Raena: Yes. 

Jonathan Breeden: So that everybody’s on the same page as to where the child is located.

And now [00:12:00] some in the high conflict cases, you know, we start leaving the country and the passports, you know, if there’s some concern there, you may need to get the judge when you get your custody order, if you think you’re gonna have a problem to address who’s gonna possess the passports, where the children can travel using that passport and stuff like that. If you have a parenting coordinator, because it’s a really high conflict case where the parenting coordinator is making a lot of decisions on behalf of the judge, often the parenting coordinator will keep the passport, oh, I did not know that. And give it to the parent the week before. They leave the country with the child and then they will keep the passport back.

So, you know, that is something to consider. Interesting. If you think you’re in a high conflict case or you are you know, address, what is the child gonna get a passport and what happens to the passport? Who hasn’t? Yeah. How do you access the passport to take the child on vacation? And stuff like that 

Raena: because it’s not like a birth ticket or social security card.

You can’t get a copy of that. Correct. You’re only allowed to have one, so, correct. I did not know that. That’s interesting. 

All right, so next question. So how, in your, like in your experience working [00:13:00] with obviously a ton of parents in custody cases and whatnot, how do you see parents splitting school breaks fairly? Like either in state or outta state. In the same town. How do you think that school breaks generally are split fairly? 

Jonathan Breeden: Well, I mean, the easiest way is just do week on, week off. Particularly in the summers. And look, you could even do week on week golf with track out where one, one track out, you get two weeks and one, and you get and then the next track checkout you get one.

Yeah. That still equalizes it? Yeah. I think the key is, it’s important even if the custodial schedule during the school year is not 50 50. That the vacations, if you’re in the area and you’re getting visits during the year Yeah. And you don’t live in California, be as equal as possible. Right. I mean, that’s the time it’s unstructured time trying to be somewhere else.

Time to take a trip, you know? I love to travel. You love to travel, you know, take a cruise, go to Disney World. Yeah. You know, all that fun stuff. You know, the things that you actually have memories of when you become an [00:14:00] adult from your childhood, you know, the experiences that people have, stuff like that.

So I think it’s important to try to divide that time. In an equal manner so that everybody has a chance to take vacation child or spend unstructured time with the child. Yes. When they’re in school, they’re in school eight or nine hours a day. So they don’t, even if you didn’t go anywhere 

Raena: and then after school, there’s usually after school activities and, 

Jonathan Breeden: right, right. Even if you don’t go anywhere, just have to be able to take ’em to Marvels Kids Museum or Topgolf, or. Pot Pott, or, I mean, 

Raena: the new park that’s gonna open up in Raleigh, that’s the, like the largest park 

Jonathan Breeden: Well, the Dick’s Park. It is gonna take it, gonna take a while to build up. It’s gonna be a nice park.

Yeah. 

Raena: But all these new parks that are opening up all around 

Jonathan Breeden: Frank is fun. Park adventure landing. I mean, there’s tons of places you know, that you might not have time during a, 

during when they’re in school, maybe they’re more crowded. Yeah. You know, the bounce house places or the, oh. The trampoline parts defy gravity.

I mean, you know, like that kind of stuff. So everybody wants to do that. Yeah. And 

you know, everybody should have the opportunity to be able to do that. Go see grandma. There you go. I mean, go see [00:15:00] grandma. Like everybody, you know, grandma might not live right here. Go see grandma, go see your cousins. 

Raena: So, but what about the breaks that ’cause obviously.

Fall break is gonna always be during the weekend or the week of Thanksgiving. That’s a given, and Christmas break is gonna be during Christmas, but spring break is often not the exact same week every year. Sometimes it’s the week before Easter. Sometimes it’s the week after. Sometimes it’s not related at all.

Jonathan Breeden: Right? Well correct you. Most school systems now do a Monday, Tuesday, fall break in October. Usually about the end of the first grading period, they will have a Monday, Tuesday. One will be up where the kids are out, so you end up getting a long weekend Oh, okay. In the middle of October. Usually, 

Raena: like, it’s usually your workday deal.

Jonathan Breeden: Usually, usually around it’s President’s Day. I don’t know if it’s in October, but whatever, sometime around that. And then you have Thanksgiving break, which in North Carolina schools don’t go to school on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday of Thanksgiving. That is pretty much universal in North Carolina.

Yeah. and so, what you would do is what you, what the way most court orders are written with spring break is it’s a day school’s out for the break. [00:16:00] Until the day before school resumes. Yeah. So the day school out at 6:00 PM to the day school before school resumes at 6:00 PM Yeah. And that way, even if Easter is at the front or if it’s at the back, you’re gonna get that weekend the week, because the break, right?

North Carolina, they don’t go to school on Good Friday. No. ’cause Good Friday’s a state holiday. It’s not a federal holiday, it’s a state holiday. So you know if they’re gonna do it the week after Christmas. They’re gonna start on Thursday. They’re not gonna go to school on a good Friday. And then if that’s your time, then that’s your time to have every other Easter.

Yes. If Easter’s important to you, you wanna go to church? Yep. Dress up Easter egg, Easter egg hunts, whatever you wanna do. 

Raena: Yeah, no, I and if you have a week on, week off schedule already during the school year and maybe one year spring break falls on dad’s time, and then the next year, because of how the school calendar worked out and maybe how your calendar worked out.

If you switch weeks every year, like. Kind of right. I think that spring break should be its own thing because agree. It does not on [00:17:00] a week on week off. Automatically reverse because spring break is often connected to the Easter now. Wake County does not connect Spring break to Easter. Wake County runs spring Break as its own.

Separate thing. Johnstonton and Hornet, I believe both connect Spring break to Easter every year. We just finished the, I think this is about the latest Easter you can have of April 18th or 19th 20 like that. You know, Easter really can’t get later than that. 

and so it does move around. But Wake County this year in 2025, reported to this, had spring break two weeks prior to Easter.

And it often does, particularly when Easter is later in the year. Yeah. So always, I mean, I would say. Look at the school calendars when they come out. ’cause they come out a year ahead of time. Correct. Like you can look at the 20 20, 25, 26 school calendar right now. Correct. And work that out. Or, you know, work out the days and the holidays and the breaks to see Okay.

You know, dad had spring break last year, so mom should have spring break the coming year. Right, right. And the order should say that. Yes. And then, you know, work accordingly. Exactly. [00:18:00] All right, so last question. What happens if parents disagree about. The school calendar and what to do during hol or during school breaks and Well, I mean, if you don’t have a court order and you disagree, you can file a custody action and go to court and have the court decide what the custody schedule’s gonna be and what’s gonna happen during the summers and the holidays and all of that. I mean, you always have the option to go to a judge Yeah. And get a judge to decide what it’s gonna be.

if you cannot agree, even if you agree that it’s gonna be 50 50. And it’s gonna be whatever, but you can’t agree on the holidays or you can’t agree on summers or whatever. You can go to court and say, judge, all right, we already agree. We’re doing the school year. We need you to make a decision on the summers of the holidays ’cause we can’t agree on that.

and the court will make whatever decision you ask him to. Now the judge doesn’t know you, your children, your situation or anything. And he’s gonna have maybe 10 or 15 other cases he’s dealing with that day. But if you can’t [00:19:00] agree. He or she elected Judge will make the decision and then that will become the law, and then you’ll have to follow.

Yep. And how soon would you recommend somebody do that before whatever break that they’re talking about is coming up? Oh, at least six months. Okay. 

because it’ll take you Yeah, up to six months to get a temporary custody hearing, particularly in Wake County, usually in Johnstonon Harnett, you probably have a temporary custody hearing.

In two or three months, but it can easily take six months in wake. So yes, you need to be thinking about it a lot sooner than you thinking about the break. Yes. And then, so, and you mentioned temporary custody hearing. How long does temporary custody last for? Well, I mean, a temporary custody hearing is usually limited to one hour.

and the court will make a decision and then that order will hold until it’s replaced by a permanent custody order. Oh, okay. And if it’s never replaced by a permanent custody order. The temporary order after one year will become permanent and it’ll just hold until it’s modified by another court order.

So basically, once you get a court order signed by a judge, [00:20:00] that order holds until the court enters another order. Okay. Or the year. And then you can petition, I guess, to have it. To be made a permanent one. Well, it sort of becomes that automatically if you don’t try to review it. And a lot of people don’t.

They just start living with it. They see that it’s working for ’em, and they just let it, they just let it go. Let it happen. Save a lot of money that way. That’s very true. It’s expensive to go to court. Extremely. All right. That’s all. That’s all we have. Well, cool. Thanks. I’d like to thank Reina for coming on and helping us with this episode of.

What to do for custody during this, during the breaks, during the year, separate from the holidays. As we’d like to ask you, go back and listen to the one where we talked specifically about the holidays that ran a few weeks ago. If you have any questions about custody during the holidays or you can also reach out to us here at the Breeden Law Office, you give us a call at nine one nine 6 6 1 4 9 7 0 or reach out to us@breedandfirm.com. We’ll be glad to answer any of your custody questions that you may have. Also, as we reminded you earlier, please like, follow, subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re seeing it. Tag us in your Instagram stories, best of Johnstonton [00:21:00] County, and leave us a five star review downward real blow because it will help.

Great. Will help increase our visibility. I’m talking too fast. Until next time, I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden. Okay. That’s cool. Yeah, that was good. Yeah, it was like 22, 23. Yep. That’s all we needed.