Free custody schedule planner
SplitDay Team · Updated · Runs entirely in your browser
This free custody schedule planner builds a month-by-month parenting calendar in your browser. Pick one of 14 standard custody patterns — or paint your own two-week rotation — set the start date, add holidays from 12 country presets, tap any day to override it, and print the month. There is no account, no email and no upload: the calendar is drawn by JavaScript on your own device, and nothing you type is sent anywhere or saved anywhere.
Nothing is saved. This planner runs entirely in your browser, keeps your plan in memory only, and forgets it the moment you close or reload the page. Print the month before you leave — or set the same schedule up once in the SplitDay app, where it stays.
1 · Parents and pattern
Paint your own two-week pattern. Each box is one overnight. Select a box to hand that night to the other parent.
2 · Holidays
Tick a holiday to assign it. An assigned holiday overrides the regular pattern for every day of its run, the same way the SplitDay app treats holiday rules. Leave it unticked and the day just follows the pattern.
4 · This month in numbers
Overnights are counted the way courts and parenting-time guidelines count them: the night belongs to the parent who has that day. The same convention drives our parenting time calculator.
Keep this plan running in SplitDay
This planner shows one month at a time and forgets your plan when you leave the page. If you would rather not build and print every month by hand, the SplitDay app keeps the same pattern, holidays and day overrides permanently, logs every exchange with a timestamp, and works even if only one parent uses it. Free, ad-supported.
Need a blank paper version? Use the blank custody calendar. Want a ready-made colour-coded grid instead of building one? Try the colour-coded printable custody calendar.
What the custody schedule planner does
The planner turns a custody pattern into a dated, colour-coded calendar you can print. You choose a rotation (2-2-3, alternating weeks, every other weekend and eleven more, or a two-week pattern you paint yourself), a start date and who has the children first; the page then colours every day for the parent who has that overnight, marks each exchange with a ⇄, applies any holidays you assign, and lets you override single days by hand. It is free, it needs no account or email address, and it runs entirely on your device — the calendar is generated by JavaScript in the page, so no schedule, name or date is ever transmitted or stored.
It exists because the schedule-building tools most separating parents find are gated. Custody X Change, the best-known one, asks you to create an account before you see a calendar and sells its schedule and parenting-plan builder as a paid product — check custodyxchange.com for its current plans. There is a real cost to that when you are trying to sketch three options on a Tuesday night. This page is the sketching surface: open it, try a pattern, see the split, print it, close the tab.
How to build a custody schedule in four steps
- Name the parents and pick the colours. Whatever you type here is what prints in the legend and in every day cell. Use the children's usual words — "Mum" and "Dad", first names, whatever a judge or mediator will recognise.
- Choose a pattern and a start date. The start date is the first night of Parent A's first block, so moving it by a day shifts the whole rotation. The default is the next Monday. If the other parent should have the first block, switch "Who starts" to Parent B instead of nudging the date.
- Add the holidays that actually get argued about. Pick a country preset and tick the days that matter. Each one can be fixed to a parent or alternated by year, and multi-day runs (winter break, Passover, Holy Week) have an editable length in days.
- Fix the exceptions, then print. Real life is not a repeating array. Select any day to hand it to the other parent, reset it back to the pattern, or attach a note of up to 60 characters ("school play", "grandparents"). Then use Print this month — the browser's print dialog will also save it as a PDF.
Which custody pattern should I pick?
There is no universally correct answer, but two forces pull against each other and the table below is a map of that tension. Young children usually cope better with short separations, which means more exchanges; long drives, high conflict and a teenager’s own social life all argue for fewer. That is why 2-2-3 — six exchanges a fortnight — is the pattern usually suggested for under-fives, while alternating weeks, with two, is the one usually suggested for teenagers. The percentages below are exact overnight counts over one full rotation, not estimates. In our own survey of 804 co-parents (April–July 2026), 42% ended up on an even 50/50 split, and among the parents who named a standard schedule, weekend-based patterns and alternating weeks were the two biggest named groups — the full breakdown is in our custody split statistics.
| Pattern | Split (A / B) | Exchanges per 2 weeks | Best for | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2-2-3 | 50 / 50 | 6 | Under-5s who need frequent contact with both homes | 2-2-3 schedule |
| 2-2-5-5 | 50 / 50 | 4 | Fixed weekdays — the same two days with each parent every week | 2-2-5-5 schedule |
| 3-4-4-3 | 50 / 50 | 4 | School-age children; no block longer than four nights | 3-4-4-3 schedule |
| 4-3-3-4 | 50 / 50 | 4 | The same rhythm as 3-4-4-3, started on the long block | 50/50 schedules |
| 3-3-4-4 | 50 / 50 | 4 | Equal blocks first, then a longer stretch each | 50/50 schedules |
| 3/4 day swap | 50 / 50 | 8 | Parents living minutes apart who want maximum contact | 3/4 day swap |
| Alternating weeks | 50 / 50 | 2 | Teenagers, long commutes, and lower-conflict handovers | Alternating weeks |
| 4-3 | 57.1 / 42.9 | 4 | The most common near-equal unequal split | 4-3 schedule · 60/40 |
| Extended weekend | 57.1 / 42.9 | 4 | Weekday routine in one home, Friday–Sunday in the other | Extended weekend |
| Every third week | 66.7 / 33.3 | about 1.3 | Long distance; two weeks in one home, one in the other | Every third week |
| Every third day | 66.7 / 33.3 | about 9.3 | Shift workers on a rolling roster | Schedule examples |
| Every weekend | 71.4 / 28.6 | 4 | One parent covers school nights, the other every weekend | Schedule examples |
| Every other weekend | 85.7 / 14.3 | 2 | The classic default order in many US and UK cases | Every other weekend |
| 1st / 3rd / 5th weekends | 85.7 / 14.3 | 2 | Weekends fixed to the calendar month, not to a fortnight | 1st/3rd/5th weekends |
Every one of those numbers is the overnight count, which is the unit family courts and child-support guidelines almost always use. If you want to test a range of dates rather than a single rotation, the parenting time calculator does that side of the arithmetic, and custody schedule examples shows the same patterns written out as plain sentences you can paste into a parenting plan.
Holidays: fixed or alternating
Holidays are where parenting plans get specific, and this custody schedule planner offers exactly the two arrangements that appear in most court orders and mediated plans. Fixed means one parent has that holiday every year — common for Mother's Day and Father's Day. Alternating means the holiday flips by year parity: choose "Parent A in even years" and Parent A has Christmas Day 2026, Parent B has it 2027, Parent A again in 2028. Orders use the even/odd rule because it needs no negotiation and no calendar: anyone can work out whose turn it is from the year on the wall.
The 12 country presets — Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom, United States — are the same lists the SplitDay app ships, with the same dates computed the same way: fixed dates for Christmas, nth-weekday rules for US Thanksgiving (the fourth Thursday of November, so 26 November 2026), the Gregorian computus for Easter and everything anchored to it, and a fixed table of Hebrew-calendar dates taken from Hebcal (Israel scheme) that runs to 2036. Past that horizon the planner says date unavailable and the day quietly follows the regular pattern, rather than showing you a guess. School breaks are flagged because their real dates come from your school district, not from a national list — set the length yourself. For how holidays interact with a running rotation, see our holiday custody schedule guide and the Christmas custody schedule walkthrough.
Printing the plan — and what this planner deliberately will not do
The planner has no save button, no share link and no export, and that is on purpose. Nothing you type is written to a server, to a URL or to your browser's storage, so there is nothing to leak, nothing to subpoena and nothing to accidentally send to the wrong person. The flip side is blunt: reload the page and your plan is gone. Print each month while you have it — the print layout drops the site navigation, the panels and this article, and prints the grid with both parents' names in the legend, which is enough to hand to a mediator or attach to a draft parenting plan. Every browser's print dialog can "Save as PDF" instead of printing on paper.
If you want the plan to persist, that is what the app is for. SplitDay stores the same pattern, the same holiday assignments and the same day-by-day overrides permanently, logs each exchange with a timestamp as it happens, keeps a running scoreboard of the real split against the plan, and exports the full custody history as CSV for your lawyer or mediator. It works when only one parent uses it — the other does not have to install anything. The free tier is ad-supported and includes the calendar, every pattern, the scoreboard, exchange logging, CSV export and all 12 holiday presets; Pro adds cloud sync across devices, a kid-friendly calendar PDF and household sharing. If you would rather write your plan out in words first, start from the parenting plan template.
Frequently asked questions
Is the custody schedule planner free?
Yes — completely free, with no paid tier, no upgrade prompt inside the tool and no usage limit. Every pattern, all 12 country holiday presets, unlimited day overrides and printing are available to everyone. Competing schedule builders such as Custody X Change gate the equivalent features behind a subscription; this page does not.
Do I need an account?
No. There is no signup, no login, no email field and no verification step anywhere on the page. Open it and start building. You do not need to give an email address to print your calendar.
Is my schedule saved anywhere?
No. Nothing leaves your browser and nothing is stored — not on our servers, not in a share link, not in local storage. The plan lives in memory for as long as the tab is open and disappears when you reload or close it. Print the month before you leave. If you want the schedule to become permanent, that is what the SplitDay app is for.
Can I add my state's holidays?
Partly. The planner ships national presets for 12 countries (AU, BR, CA, DE, ES, FR, GB, IL, IT, MX, NL, US), which cover the days most parenting plans name. A state, provincial or school-district day that is not on the list can still be put on the calendar: select that day in the grid and give it to a parent as an override, and add a short note so the printed calendar explains why.
How is parenting time percentage calculated?
By overnights. Each night is credited to the parent who has that day, and the percentage is that parent's overnights divided by the total nights in the period, which is how family courts and child-support guidelines almost always count it. Over a 14-day rotation, 2-2-3 gives exactly 50.0% each; every other weekend gives 85.7% / 14.3%. The numbers panel applies the same rule to whichever month you are viewing, including any holidays and overrides you have set.
Is this the same as the SplitDay app?
No — the planner is a drawing surface; the app is where a schedule is actually lived. SplitDay adds exchange logging with timestamps, a scoreboard built from the exchanges that really happened rather than the ones that were planned, reminders and notifications, shared expenses with receipt scanning, CSV export of the full custody history, a chat transcript PDF, and cloud sync across devices on Pro. It runs on iOS 15.6+ and Android 7+ in 65 languages, and one parent can use it alone. The planner has none of that: it draws one month and forgets it.
This planner produces a proposal, not a court document. It is general information, not legal advice — custody rules differ by state and country, so check any schedule you build here with a family-law professional before you rely on it.
Turn the sketch into a schedule that runs itself
Set the pattern once in SplitDay and it keeps going — holidays, overrides, exchange reminders and a scoreboard built from what actually happened. Free, ad-supported, and it works even if only one parent uses it.