Writing a contact schedule (Umgangsplan): care models, holidays and what to settle in writing

A contact schedule (Umgangsplan) is nothing other than the answer to a single question, for every single day of the year: which parent is the child with? It sounds simple. In practice many plans fail not on the rhythm but on the gaps: at Christmas, on a bridge day, on the third day of the holidays, on the question of who actually drives. This article shows how a contact schedule is built, which care models exist, how you split holidays and public holidays without renegotiating every year, and which points are better settled once in writing than twelve times in a chat. How to live the finished plan day to day is covered in the article Organising a Wechselmodell.

A note: this article describes the law in Germany. In Austria and Switzerland the legal framework and the authorities differ, even if the practical advice carries over. For anything legal, get advice for your own case.

What a contact schedule is, and the forms it takes

The legal starting point is section 1684 of the German Civil Code (BGB). The child has a right to contact with both parents, and both parents have a right and a duty to it. The law doesn't say what that contact looks like in detail. You have to fill that in, and there are three ways with very different levels of bindingness:

• A private arrangement. You agree yourselves, in writing or verbally. This is the most common and usually the best case, as long as it holds. A private arrangement can't be enforced, though.
• Recording at the Jugendamt. The Jugendamt (the local youth welfare office) advises on drawing up a contact schedule and can record the agreement. Advice and support are free of charge for parents.
• A settlement approved by the court. If you agree during proceedings, the family court can approve the arrangement under section 156(2) of the Act on Proceedings in Family Matters (FamFG). Only then does an enforceable order come into being. For a breach to be punishable later by a fine at all, the order must contain an express warning of the consequences of non-compliance (section 89(2) FamFG).

For everyday life this means a precise plan helps in all three variants. The more precise it is, the less anyone has to enforce at all.

The care models at a glance

Residence model (Residenzmodell). The child lives mainly with one parent and the other has regular contact, classically every second weekend plus a share of the holidays. Widespread and organisationally lean, but the care load is very one-sided. A common extension: an extra afternoon or an overnight stay during the week.

2-2-3. Two days with one parent, two with the other, three at the weekend, mirrored the following week. No child is separated from a parent for more than three days, which often suits Kita children and early primary-school children. The price: many handovers, and the weekdays move around.

7/7 – the weekly swap. One week here, one week there. Few handovers, easy to remember, with the handover usually on Monday via school or Kita so the parents don't have to meet. For younger children, though, seven days is long.

14/14 – the two-week swap. For families with a long distance between homes, shift work or parents abroad. Advantage: very few changes, real everyday phases instead of a visiting feeling. Disadvantage: two weeks without the other parent is generally too long for primary-school children, and school, sports club and friends have to work in both places. A fixed video call belongs in the plan here, not left to chance.

Nesting model (Nestmodell). The children stay in the home and the parents rotate. For children this is the calmest variant: no packing, no forgotten things, one home. The price falls on the parents. It usually takes the nest home plus at least one further place to stay, and it remains a jointly run household with shared costs. That is where it mostly fails. Where it works, it is often as a transitional solution in the first months after the separation.

Which model fits depends on four sober factors: distance between the homes, the children's ages, working hours, and how well you can talk to each other. In 2017 the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) decided that a family court can order an equal-time alternating-residence arrangement (paritätisches Wechselmodell) even against one parent's will, if it best serves the child's welfare (decision of 1 February 2017, XII ZB 601/15). But it expressly named the parents' ability to cooperate and communicate as a precondition. A 50/50 plan on paper does not replace a working agreement.

What belongs in the plan

A good contact schedule answers more than "who, when". In our experience these building blocks are missing most often:

• Start date and changeover day with a time. Not "weekly" but: changeover on Mondays after school, starting Monday 17 August. Without an anchor date, a rhythm can't be calculated back.
• Handover place and driving rule. Who brings, who collects? A common solution is the bring principle: whoever receives the child collects them, so each does half of the journeys. Neutral places like school or Kita spare you a direct meeting.
• Grace period for lateness. Fifteen minutes is not a breach of contract. Write in a tolerance and how you notify each other if it takes longer.
• The holiday arrangement (see below), kept separate from the weekly rhythm.
• Public holidays and special days. Christmas, New Year's Eve, Easter, Whitsun, the child's birthday, the parents' birthdays, Mother's Day and Father's Day.
• Flexible days off and school-free days. Each school sets these itself, often only during the school year. Agree in advance by what principle they are assigned, otherwise each one becomes an individual case.
• Illness. Does the child stay where they are, or is there a switch? Is lost time made up?
• Communication channel and reply deadline. One channel for practical matters, plus a realistic deadline, such as 48 hours for non-urgent questions.
• Care by third parties. If a parent is prevented during their time: offer it to the other first, or choose grandparents and babysitters freely? Both are defensible, but it should be settled beforehand.
• A review clause. For example: once a year, and at the latest on the move to secondary school. Children change, and plans have to change with them.

Holidays and public holidays: the procedure matters more than the split

Holidays are argued over so often because, first, they are scarce and, second, unequally attractive. Summer holidays are not the same as autumn holidays, and 24 December is not the same as the 27th. In practice a combination of three rules has worked well:

1. Halves as the starting principle. The holiday weeks are shared. For the summer holidays this usually means one half per parent, with a changeover day in the middle.

2. A choice right that alternates each year instead of fixed halves. If the same parent always has the first half of the summer holidays, the other never gets the start of the holidays. Cleaner: in even years parent A chooses first, in odd years parent B. The same principle for Christmas: one year Christmas Eve until midday on 25 December, the next year the second half.

3. Fixed lead times. This is the rule that prevents most conflicts. For example: summer holidays are fixed bindingly by 31 March, all other holidays at the latest eight weeks beforehand. Whoever has reported nothing by then loses the first choice. Many families sit down once in January and plan the whole year, with the holiday calendar of the relevant state in front of them.

Two details that regularly get lost. The weekly rhythm pauses in the holidays and doesn't run on in parallel, otherwise changeovers happen in the middle of a holiday trip. And trips abroad should be expressly settled: who tells whom how early, which documents are needed, how the child can be reached on holiday.

The points of dispute to settle in advance

Spontaneous swaps. They will come, and they are good, as they show that you are flexible. Only the form becomes critical. Agree: every swap is confirmed in writing and entered in the calendar straight away, with date and compensation. What is documented never has to be remembered again.

"Lost" time. A child is ill, a parent is away on business, the weekend falls through. Is it made up or not? A workable line: time lost for reasons on the child's side is not made up, time lost for reasons on a parent's side is, within eight weeks.

Who decides what. Everyday matters are decided by the parent the child is with at that moment: food, bedtime, meeting friends. Anything with longer-lasting effect (changing school, treatments, joining a club, a passport) must be decided jointly under joint custody. Write down the line, otherwise it runs differently for each person.

New partners. A contact schedule can't regulate whom someone meets. But it can record that both parents are informed before a new person becomes a regular part of the children's daily life. That is often enough to defuse the biggest flashpoint.

Duties to inform. School reports, parents' evenings, medical findings, class trips: who learns what, and how fast? And more important: both parents should be listed as contacts at school and at the doctor's. That removes a whole category of conflict, because nobody then depends on the other to pass things on.

Children are not messengers. This sentence belongs in every plan, and in every head. Practical matters run between adults, on the agreed channel.

From paper into everyday life

A contact schedule that exists only as a PDF isn't read after four weeks. It becomes useful when it exists as a calendar: visible for every day, with the holidays and public holidays in it, the same for both households, and viewable by the child when old enough. That is what the parenting schedule (Wechselplan) in patchio is for. The rhythm is set up once, the shared calendar then shows for every day which parent the children are with, and you enter deviations directly on the day without blowing up the rhythm. How you organise handovers, checklists and arrangements around it is covered in detail in the article Organising a Wechselmodell. And if the contracts still need sorting out after the separation, there is a separate article for that.