Rebroadcast • Splitting the Holidays
Welcome to Winter! It's that time of year we love to hunker down and reflect, taking just a few weeks to recharge and prepare for the burst of new life in the spring. We have a few episodes from the archives to share with you over these cozy weeks. First up, what was originally an episode about splitting the summer holidays comes today, just in time for winter's chill!
Winter, that time we celebrate the most cherished of all divorce traditions, that special time when you sit down and ask: how do you split the holidays?
Let’s get this out of the way early: if you have kids involved, splitting holidays is not easy. We’re not just talking about the winter holidays, mind you. What about winter break... New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, birthdays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, spring break, President's Day, three-day weekends, teacher planning days, Jewish Holidays, Non-Hallmark holidays, and believe it or not, the list goes on from there!
Luckily, after you wrap your head around the sheer number of days to calculate, you can rest easy in the comfort of the one person in your corner who can help you with all that holiday math: your lawyer. That’s right, your lawyer has likely been through this many, many times and has seen every possible permutation of the holiday split and with a little patience, can get you scheduling like a pro.
-
Pete Wright:
Hey everybody, it's Pete Wright. Welcome to a very toaster summer. We are off for a couple of weeks, so we've got a little bit of rebroadcast stuff coming your way. Some really fun episodes from the past that we are resurfacing with some important concepts, particularly as we go into these summer months. And then we have another interesting... We've told you in the past, Seth is actually getting married again, and so he's taking some time off. And so we have brought in a rotation of his colleagues at NLG Divorce and Family Law. We're so excited to get some of these voices back on the show in some cases, on the show for the first time in many cases. And so we're going to rotate through new interviews with some new people talking about their particular areas of expertise. I'm thrilled to be able to showcase these voices and introduce them to you before we get back into our regular rotation with Seth, the newlywed, weird on a divorce podcast, right? But thank you everybody for hanging out with us. Thanks for listening to the show and downloading. And here's the show. Have a great summer.
Welcome to How to Split A Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships from TruStory FM. Today we're taking on the cherished outcome of divorce, two Christmases for the kids.
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm Seth Nelson, and looking forward to talking to you today, Pete, about holidays. They're upon us.
Pete Wright:
They are. We are cresting the wave of all sorts of wonderful holidays, which means, I guess overeating and shame buying. Is that-
Seth Nelson:
Shame buying?
Pete Wright:
... Isn't that how it works?
Seth Nelson:
What does that mean?
Pete Wright:
Okay, all I remember as a youth were my kids... my kids, I was young and I had kids, were my friends whose parents were divorced. They got a lot of stuff. They would go and they would go to Christmas and then they would come and go to their mom's house and go to Christmas and they would come back and they would have a lot of stuff. And they knew as well as everybody that their parents were compensating for divorce at the holidays.
Seth Nelson:
Got you. The old double up on the gifts.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
So my son was very young when I got divorced and he was in kindergarten, and I'm talking to him on the phone and he's at mommy's house and it's Hanukkah. And he says to me, "So Dad, I'm not going to see you or be with you until the fifth night of Hanukkah." And then he paused. I think this is what you're talking about.
Pete Wright:
That kid is going to grow up and be a movie star industrialist bank robber.
Seth Nelson:
I have no idea. I think he'll like the bank robber part.
Pete Wright:
He is like a character from Oceans Eleven. Come on.
Seth Nelson:
Then he says, "So do I get five gifts?" "No." I said, "I love the math. Great math. But no, you will get one gift to celebrate the fifth day. Hanukkah is not a 16-day holiday for children of divorce. It's still an eight day holiday." But yes. How do you split a toaster? How do you split holidays?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. This gets very confusing because I mean, here we are talking about it from sort of the kids' perspective and expectations, but just managing the nuance of ceremony and tradition for people whose holidays may mean a whole lot to both of them. How do you share that? Gets back to what we started with, how do you split the unsplittable?
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. And there's actually different ways to do this. And I remember in a previous podcast we talked about, hey, what's a good day to transition kids from one house to the other? And that freaked you out.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, no, I was so wrong.
Seth Nelson:
So this is really going to be tough on you today. So I'm going to just quiz you quickly and then you'll fail the quiz and then I'll give you the answers.
Pete Wright:
You're leading the witness.
Seth Nelson:
Yes, here we go. Okay, you and your legalese here.
Pete Wright:
Can't wait.
Seth Nelson:
What's the best way to divide up Christmas, Pete? How would you do that? And remember, I'll give you a hint.
Pete Wright:
Give me the circumstances.
Seth Nelson:
It falls over winter break.
Pete Wright:
Yep.
Seth Nelson:
Another hint. There's also New Year's Eve and New Year's Day over winter break. There's Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I'm assuming we're celebrating Christmas and not Hanukkah. Okay? So you got winter break, you got-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, we're going to have to talk about that.
Seth Nelson:
We will. But we got winter break. We got Christmas Eve. We got Christmas day. We have New Year's Eve. We have New Year's Day. How you going to do it?
Pete Wright:
All right, for those who celebrate Christmas, I'm going to wager that the best way to do this for parents for whom Christmas is important for both, split it mid-morning Christmas day. So one parent gets Christmas Eve and they can have a Christmas Eve dinner. They can open presents on Christmas Eve, which is a perfectly rational Christmas tradition, fight me. And then they turn around the next morning and can... I'm also assuming that they're living in the same place.
Seth Nelson:
Correct.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
Okay. Same city, not house, right? Okay?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah. And then the next morning they turn around and they wake up in the morning and they maybe have some cocoa with plenty of marshmallows. And then they get in the car and they drive over to the parents' house and drop the kid off and have another Christmas.
Seth Nelson:
The kid gets a Christmas. What time are you dropping the kid off?
Pete Wright:
Man, you're such an attorney about this stuff. Okay, how about 10:00?
Seth Nelson:
Okay. I actually wrote 10:00 down on my paper because I knew, you kept saying mourning, that's what I exactly had written.
Pete Wright:
10:00 is morning. 11:00 is brunch. That's uncivilized. Nobody does that.
Seth Nelson:
Okay, so you're wrong, and here's why. There's actually no right or wrong. It's what works best for each and every family. But here's what I would point out to you if you're my client. It makes absolute sense, one year some... And I'm assuming you switched the next year, right?
Pete Wright:
Let's assume that of course that's what I was thinking. Of course it was.
Seth Nelson:
Of course. Of course. So you get Christmas Eve in even number years, your former spouse gets Christmas Eve in odd number years, and then the next day you want to switch at 10:00. Okay. How old are your children?
Pete Wright:
Well, I mean 14 and 18.
Seth Nelson:
What time do they wake up at 14 years old?
Pete Wright:
8:00.
Seth Nelson:
Oh, you're going to get them up early on Christmas at 10 o'clock? Is that really a good time? Or let's say that you don't open gifts on Christmas Eve, you open one, but in the morning you open them all. So now you have a seven-year-old who gets up early, so excited, opens all their gifts, they don't get to play with them, 10 o'clock, boom, got to go to the other parent's house.
Pete Wright:
All right.
Seth Nelson:
So I just suggest pushing that back a little bit,
Pete Wright:
Pushing back to noon, 1:00, afternoon?
Seth Nelson:
Noon, 1:00, 2:00, something like that. Okay?
Pete Wright:
And so the other parent gets the afternoon present session?
Seth Nelson:
But the next year they'll get Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. I tie those together. Okay?
Pete Wright:
Okay. All right. All right.
Seth Nelson:
You weren't too far off. I'll give you a solid B-. I
Pete Wright:
Don't accept minuses. I'm going to need a way to improve that by the end of this episode.
Seth Nelson:
So the one thing you did, which a lot of parents do, they divide Christmas day. There's nothing wrong with that. Understand though, you can no longer travel on Christmas. So if you have a history of going to your in-laws, and that's important to your former spouse to travel to the Great White North from Florida for Christmas and see snow hopefully, that is now not happening.
Pete Wright:
Okay? Not withstanding the fact that now that is not happening.
Seth Nelson:
That's right. Because of COVID, of course.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Seth Nelson:
A fair point. But think about your travel plans, and we'll get to this when we talk about how to work with your lawyer on these questions, but one way that you've defined very quickly is you can divide the day in half.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Yeah. Right, and that's what I wanted to do.
Seth Nelson:
That's what you've done, the holiday in half. Here are the different options. If you divide them in half, the day, like you did, one parent gets the holiday every single year and the other parent never gets that holiday. Mother's Day. Father's Day.
Pete Wright:
Yep. Makes total sense.
Seth Nelson:
That's easy. Okay?
Pete Wright:
What about a holiday like... We've got friends in our community for whom Halloween and their kids is extraordinarily important. They love the festivities, they love the pumpkin carving, they love all of that stuff. And that's a holiday that happens just the once. And we're talking about, if you're going trick or treating, I don't know what that's even going to look like this year, but let's just say it's a non COVID year, you're going trick or treating, how do you split that?
Seth Nelson:
I would recommend you split that every other year. One parent gets it in an even numbered year. The other parent gets it in the odd numbered year. And on that holiday, I always recommend that the pickup is from either after school or specific time, call it five o'clock. Because if it's a weekend. Because it could be a Tuesday, right? It's the 31st. Until the following morning.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
You do not get to sugar up your kid and then off drop them back off. Right?
Pete Wright:
And hand them off. yeah, No, that's terrible.
Seth Nelson:
So let's have them just take them to the next morning. So every other year is one way to do it. Divide the actual day in half. One parent gets it every single year. You just ignore the holiday. Wherever it falls on your schedule, it falls on your schedule.
Pete Wright:
Oh, okay. Yeah. That's sort of laissez-faire approach. Whoever gets it, gets it.
Seth Nelson:
Veterans Day, big to some veterans. Not big to other people who aren't veterans, as in quality time. Now, there are things, also holidays, I should say, there are holidays that are not really a holiday in a religious sense. They are school breaks, spring break, winter break, summer break, up north, some people have fall break. So spring break, you can do it every year. One parent gets the whole time. Next year, other parent. You can divide it in half. You could leave the regular schedule.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Somehow, I mean, that feels so much more like the complications of travel are... Now you've soiled me because all I can think about is what about traveling?
Seth Nelson:
So here's the thing about that. I like to, especially in COVID, find plans where I have the ability to travel. I just like the sense of knowing if I want to go somewhere I can go. I don't have to get permission from my former spouse or have her trade a day or give up time or any of that. I want to go, I'm going to go. To get that, that means I can only do that every other year. Okay?
So think about Thanksgiving. A lot of people travel on Thanksgiving. So sometimes what I do on Thanksgiving is recommend is you can define when the holiday starts. If the kids are off all week, you don't have to go from the Friday before Thanksgiving till the Monday morning after. You can say, we're going to define Thanksgiving starting Tuesday right before Thanksgiving at six o'clock. Because if you're going to travel, you get the child on Tuesday night, you pack everything, you get up early and fly with the rest of the world when we're not in COVID on Wednesday. So think about how you live your life and what you like to do. Some people are like, "We never travel on Thanksgiving. Don't like the hassle." Maybe you'll split that day. But talk about how that might work.
The other thing to think about is step siblings and what happens if you are splitting up siblings. Usually kids like to stay together. I sometimes recommend that you build in time to a plan where you can actually have one-on-one time with each kid. Think about that. Sometimes when you're married, you get one-on-one time, you take one kid one way, another parent takes... Happens kind of naturally. Or sometimes you can say, "Hey, we want a daddy day or whatever, or daughter and daddy day." When you're divorced and you have the kids all the time always together, then that's something you might want to build into a plan or at least talk to your former or soon to be former spouse about, can we do something to have some one-on-one time?
Pete Wright:
Well, and I can imagine that's something that might get lost in that whole sort of post divorce relationship that because the focus is so much on scheduling, that you lose the fact that the identity of your individual relationships with each kid might suffer. And maybe you just need to take one of those kids to a movie sometime and dinner and just figure out who they are.
Seth Nelson:
That's right. And we're so tied into, and the lawyers are the worst, "Let's look at a schedule." The judges, "What's the schedule?" That's what we do, but you lose track of what do you do on this holiday? What does the child want to do?
Pete Wright:
Well, that's the question. Like I told you, I've got an 18 and a 14, my 18-year-old, she's fine. She's an adult. To me, that seems natural that she's going to choose whichever house she wants to go visit. But at what point do the kids start having some agency in this discussion and say, "You know what? I want to go to dad's for Christmas. I don't want to be picked up at 1:00."
Seth Nelson:
Here's the non-legal answer. When they're old enough and they start expressing their opinion.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
Right? When they're 14 and they're like, "I don't want to go to dad's because it's across the state, my friends are having a party that night." And if you're those parents and you're not communicating that to the other parent, like, "Look, she doesn't want to go. Not because she doesn't want to spend time with you and love you. It's because her friends are having a party."
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Seth Nelson:
Right? And it's hard as a parent when you're like, oh my God, I want to spend Christmas with my kid. Is that a line you want to draw with a 14-year-old? And let's say the parents are in total lockstep on this, even though they're not together. I'm not pinning this one parent versus the other, but you got to talk to your kid and figure out, "Okay, listen, it's really important that we spend time together. I really love it. I get your friends are having a party. Can we then at least maybe schedule a different time, the two of us?" Start treating them a little more like adults and giving them choices that they don't get when they're five, "You're coming get in the car."
Pete Wright:
And at some point, even the holidays like, well, I don't know for Christmas, I can totally see rescheduling Christmas for that sort of nuance.
Seth Nelson:
You can. I have other people, no way. Christmas is the big deal. And there's no right or wrong. I don't care about Christmas. I do not care. I'm Jewish. I'm going to eat Chinese food and see a movie and I'll be like, "Hey, Harvey, I haven't seen you since last Christmas." That's what I knew. Right? But it's important. Here's thing to think about. Traveling year on, year off, splitting and a half one parent gets all the time. But be careful, there are holidays that overlap and you want to make sure that we account for that. Easter and spring break can sometimes overlap. So if you're getting Easter that year and you're getting all of spring break, make sure it lines up. You don't want to have Easter for dad, spring break for mom and have them overlap and now what do we do?
Pete Wright:
Okay. Gets very confusing.
Seth Nelson:
Summer. How do you do summer? Some people just keep the regular schedule and they say, okay, we each get to take one or two weeks consecutive or not, and come up with a plan on when you get to go. But Father's Day is in June, and that's going to be part of the summer. So you want to exclude Father's Day from mom being able to say, that's part of my two weeks.
Pete Wright:
Okay. So constraints. Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Okay. Here's the big one. Birthdays.
Pete Wright:
Well see now, growing up, my memory is that I didn't have any former spouses as friends' parents who had a divorce that was so contentious they didn't just do the birthdays together. So it was always, you'd always have, "Oh yeah, my mom and dad are both here right now. We're celebrating my birthday. One of them's going to leave. The one that doesn't live here is going to leave at the end of the day."
Seth Nelson:
Right. Right. Not always easy to do for the parent.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Seth Nelson:
So my suggestion on birthdays, first off, the parents' birthdays, some parents are like, "I want to have my kid for my birthday." First off, I think that's the worst gift. Take the day off.
Pete Wright:
It's a parental bye day, come on.
Seth Nelson:
Right. Take the day off. But some people want it so you build it in. But for the child's birthday, this is just a recommendation, if the child wakes up at one parent's house on the regular schedule and is going to go to sleep at the other parent's house, it's a transition day, you just leave it, feed your kid cake and ice cream in the morning. They get off school and they go to their other parent's-
Pete Wright:
Feed them more cake and ice cream at night.
Seth Nelson:
... More cake. Your kid loves it. Right? If it's a weekend and it's a non transition day, let's say, whoever's not typically scheduled to have the child gets them for a few hours.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Seth Nelson:
The afternoon, evening, kind of it's easy. And I think birthdays are important because the child, I think, does want that attention on their birthday. We can talk to the psychologist when they're on the show later and ask them what they think. So that's one. What happens when a birthday falls on a holiday?
Pete Wright:
Oh, I didn't even think about that.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. Oh, born on Christmas Eve.
Pete Wright:
What a hot mess.
Seth Nelson:
Yep. Got to take that into consideration.
Pete Wright:
All right. I'm sorry. We've got to change the birthday.
Seth Nelson:
Right, exactly. Or change Christmas Eve. So these are the type of things to think about. The other thing to think about, are there any holidays, I call them non hallmark holidays.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Arbor Day? Where are you going with this?
Seth Nelson:
This is where I'm going. Do you have any family traditions, Pete, that are really special to you that fall on a certain day or a series of days throughout the year that you kind of do something fun with your kids?
Pete Wright:
Well, now I feel like a terrible parent because I'm in full on vapor lock.
Seth Nelson:
I'll give you a chance to think about it. Let me explain what I mean.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I don't know what you mean.
Seth Nelson:
Now, I will tell you, as you know, I am divorced. I am a divorce lawyer. I mediate divorces, and we'll talk about mediations later. You would think I know where my parenting plan is and what it says. I do not.
Pete Wright:
Can't even find it. No, it's a cobbler's kid situation. I get it.
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. But I do know there's this one provision in there that I am entitled once a year in the springtime to take my child out of school for a hooky day.
Pete Wright:
Okay. All right.
Seth Nelson:
In hooky day in my family, which has been tradition for many years, decades, we all take off school and work and go to a spring training baseball game.
Pete Wright:
Oh, that's lovely.
Seth Nelson:
That was really important to me, and so in the parenting plan, I wanted to make sure that that wasn't going to be an issue. And it wasn't. It was like, "Yeah, of course. You don't even have to have it in the plan. Of course I'm, going to let you do it."
Pete Wright:
Yeah, just do it.
Seth Nelson:
Now that you have the concept, do you ever do anything [inaudible 00:21:05]?
Pete Wright:
Well, I can tell you, I absolutely do. And this started when I was a kid, my dad, every time there... It was very important days. And there were several of them throughout the year usually. Anytime a new Star Wars, Star Trek or James Bond movie was released, I got a sick day and we went to the first show. And so my kids don't care as much about those three particular franchises. But we do have days that are so important that somebody might deliver a cough, a non temperature related wee cough that might include some time off.
Seth Nelson:
That will probably get helped with the symptoms-
Pete Wright:
Well, it's a sad.
Seth Nelson:
... by eating popcorn in a dark environment.
Pete Wright:
It's what I call a concessionary environment. You have a strict concessionary environment. So there will be a time when we go back to that. Right now we're not quite there. No, so I totally get what you mean. So hooky day, we'll call that a holiday. Can I ask you a question that's unrelated to the kids?
Seth Nelson:
Sure.
Pete Wright:
This might be a very, very easy answer. But I'm sitting here, we're thinking about holidays. How do you handle holidays? How do you handle tradition? Are there any circumstances where couple gets divorced and they still have to somehow navigate holidays together that is somehow structurally challenging and they don't have kids? I mean, there isn't really, right?
Seth Nelson:
I'm not aware of any court that would require you to spend holidays with your former spouse.
Pete Wright:
Well, I just mean, is there a circumstance, some circle that would bring them together that I'm missing? Every time I think of something, you think of some way to see around that corner, so I'm just wondering,
Seth Nelson:
Well, you're a movie buff, so you're thinking of when the guy drops the kids off on Christmas and it's the end of the show and they reunite and they live happily ever after.
Pete Wright:
Well, I guess.
Seth Nelson:
Is that what you're thinking?
Pete Wright:
Well, I just mean there are no kids involved. Maybe they just never had kids, what is going to bring them back together? Navigating holidays.
Seth Nelson:
Gotcha. So we're talking now switching gears on how do we deal with a holiday if you have no children and you're splitting up?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. You just don't hang out together is what I'm hearing. There's [inaudible 00:23:20]-
Seth Nelson:
It goes back to our episode of being alone.
Pete Wright:
... Yeah. So here's something, don't call your spouse. How about that?
Seth Nelson:
Back to the texting.
Pete Wright:
If you're lonely, don't call your spouse.
Seth Nelson:
It goes back to being alone. And I don't want to say there are positives in divorce. Some people do say that there are silver linings, let's call them. You don't ever have to go over to your in-laws again. Done. You get to do what you want to do on that holiday. But holidays are tough, especially the first ones. The first holidays when you don't have the kids or you're going through the divorce or you've split up, reach out to your friends and your family and make plans and take care of yourself because they are hard.
But notice how you talk about them a little differently than I do. You're like, oh, but what about the kids and this and that? And I do. I'm very kid focused, but I immediately get into the mechanics of it. And the reason I get into the mechanics is if you don't have it clear on when to pick up and drop off, and who's picking up and who's dropping off and where, and what time that holiday is now ripe for conflict. And we don't want to have conflict on Christmas. So for example, if it's my day to pick up at two o'clock on Christmas or to get the children at 2:00, in the plan, it might say, "The exchange will take place at mother's house." Whoever is beginning their time-sharing will do the traveling, the driving. Because then it's not like you're dropping them off and dad's not ready or dad's not home. When you're ready to get the kids, come over, pick them up. It's a two o'clock. I'll have them ready to go.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right. Okay. Let's define a term.
Seth Nelson:
This week's word is deposition. A witness's out of court testimony that is reduced to writing for later use in court or for discovery purposes? Deposition. Well, what does that mean? This is actually fairly easy for everyone because you see it in TV shows all the time. This is where a lawyer will sit down across the table from a witness. It could be a party, could be a witness, the mother, the father, the husband, the wife, anybody else that you see in the movies. Like the car accident, the witness was the light, red or green. So it's just a person, a witness that will be asked questions under oath, a court reporter, a stenographer, will take down every question and every answer, and that is deemed recorded.
And then the lawyer may or may not use that deposition testimony, that transcript later in court. So if a witness says one thing in a deposition and then says the exact opposite at trial, the lawyer might use that to show that either they're lying at the deposition or they're lying now, or to impeach them or to just show their character's not true, whatever it may be. The lawyer might use it just to gather information about the case. Maybe they never call that witness that they took the deposition of at trial, but they find out some other information or some other people that they then go take their deposition and use those other people at trial. But for your purposes, a deposition is simply being asked questions under oath by a lawyer that may or may not be used later at trial. Deposition.
Pete Wright:
All right, Seth, we're talking about now, pivoting here, working with your lawyer on the holidays. So hopefully your communication, you're exercising all your communication muscles and you're able to communicate and build a safe and same schedule for your whole family as you navigate the uncertain waters of divorce. But now you bring the lawyer into it.
Seth Nelson:
Always blame the lawyer.
Pete Wright:
Always blame, ABL. So what are the sort of conditions? What are you looking for as a lawyer in terms of helping a couple become a former couple around the holidays?
Seth Nelson:
Well, regarding holidays, I recommend you simply go through the exercise on your own before you talk to your lawyer about what we just did at the front end of the podcast, so to speak. List out the holidays that are important to you. Make a list. You know me and list, make a list. What holidays are important to you? Which ones are important to your spouse that you believe are? How do you typically spend those holidays? What would you like to do? Now that you have a framework on different ways to divide it, do you want even years or odd years? Is there something special that's happened? If you've been separated for a while, you might have just managed this on your own without the lawyers, who had the holiday last year? Is that one you're going to do every other year? So make a list of the holidays that are important. Think about how you would like to spend them. And then think about how to make those divisions. And here's the key. Would you accept that plan, that holiday plan if it was reversed?
Pete Wright:
Oh, interesting. Why does that become a question?
Seth Nelson:
Because if you write down that you get every single holiday, would you accept that your spouse gets every single holiday?
Pete Wright:
Spouse gets every single holiday. Of course not. Right.
Seth Nelson:
No. So this one, I'm not saying there are holidays that you might get every year that you might want to argue about, but it's kind of what's good for the goose is good for the gander when it comes to holidays, in my mind.
Pete Wright:
Well, and that gets to the big question, I think, for working with your lawyer, is what happens when you can't figure out a plan? At what point does the lawyer/mediator step in to help? At what point does the court take a role in determining the schedule?
Seth Nelson:
The lawyer will step in right away talking to you about, hey, this is how courts in this jurisdiction typically handle holidays. Okay? That's one. If you're at mediation, which is a third party that you go to that's neutral, they'll talk about, hey, there's different ways to do holidays. Everything we just talked about. Okay? Maybe you swap Thanksgiving for Christmas, or you get Thanksgiving this year, she gets Christmas this year, and then next year it switches. The judge will step in, the court, when you can't agree, and the judge has to make the decision and you're going to go to trial over holidays. So let me explain how this works.
Pete Wright:
Please.
Seth Nelson:
I thought I was a brilliant lawyer in court. The other party in trial was saying they wanted Columbus Day.
Pete Wright:
We didn't even talk about Columbus Day.
Seth Nelson:
I know. And I asked the question, what month is Columbus Day celebrated? Do you know?
Pete Wright:
February?
Seth Nelson:
I don't know. And they tell you in law school-
Pete Wright:
That's good because we're not supposed to think about Columbus Day anymore. It's Indigenous People's Day. And I still haven't gotten used to that, but it's fine.
Seth Nelson:
... Exactly. But in trial, they teach you in law school, never ask a question you don't know the answer to. I didn't need to know the answer. And when I actually told my mom about my great day at trial about this, she goes, "You don't know what month." And I'm like, "Yeah, but it doesn't matter, either did he."
Pete Wright:
Because the worst part is what if he comes back? Because Columbus Day is October 12th.
Seth Nelson:
Right. You looked it up?
Pete Wright:
I totally just looked it up. Cause I was exactly the opposite end of the calendar. Really, really, no, I whiffed that one completely.
Seth Nelson:
I thought I was brilliant because he said, "I don't know. Have you ever celebrated Columbus Day?" No. "Have you ever done anything special on Columbus Day?" No. I walk out of there, I'm like, he's never getting Columbus Day. Every other year he got Columbus Day.
Pete Wright:
Why? Well, A, why did he want... He just was messing?
Seth Nelson:
No, it's just, And I get it, if you're off work or it's a holiday and you might be off work and you want to spend time with your kids. I get it.
Pete Wright:
Totally rational reason. Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
My view is the less holidays the better because it all comes out in the wash at the end, and it's less changing in the schedule, which means there's less potential for conflict. So I just say, pick the holidays that you're interested in. But that's why when you go to court, you'll never know what will happen. Your lawyer will say, this is how holidays typically work in our jurisdiction. The judges usually split them. They do X, they do Y. This is how they typically handle Mother's Day and Father's Day. They'll give you these parameters. It doesn't mean that's actually going to happen. Because anybody listening to that would've thought, oh, he's not getting Columbus Day. Didn't know the month, never celebrated it. What's the big deal? No. He got.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Well, and for a fine reason, right? I get it, it is a fine reason, spend time with your kid.
Seth Nelson:
I'm not saying he shouldn't have gotten it. I was doing my job. We were trying to limit the number of holidays because we didn't want all the back and forth, and we had good reasons to limit holidays, but that's the way it went down.
Pete Wright:
Okay. All right. At what point, when you think about the complexities of, again, navigating the legal system, do you start having to think about when one spouse says, "Hey, I'm leaving the state. I'm moving. We're moving across the country." Is it just that we're applying the same concept? If you can't figure it out yourself, we're going to inject ourselves into this and just the brakes get a little longer?
Seth Nelson:
You got it.
Pete Wright:
Oh, that was easy.
Seth Nelson:
Judges are there to decide disputes. If there's no dispute in a family law case, there's very little for the judge to do. They have to make sure in Florida that they have the power to hear the case, jurisdiction. They might have to review the agreement and make sure that it complies with Florida law. There's some other things that they'll have to do procedurally, and we'll talk about that stuff later. It's very simple though. It's very simple. Judges are there to solve disputes. So if you're going to argue over Christmas, they're going to make that decision.
Pete Wright:
That seems easy. Anything else we need to cover on this one? Did we answer all the questions? Did we solve all the problems?
Seth Nelson:
Pete, as my grandfather used to say, "Seth, you think you know all the answers, but you don't even know the questions." Bam.
Pete Wright:
We, it's to the heart, and twist. Thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show. We appreciate your time and your attention and your diligent notes that I know you're taking on every word Seth says, it's just there's little gems. On behalf of Seth Nelson, I'm Pete Wright, we'll catch you next week right here on How to Split A Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Speaker 3:
Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce and Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce and Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
