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Attorney says school calendar changes could lead to child custody issues

"If we don't have the traditional school schedule, there's going to be a lot of issues with the standard possession order. They're not going to match up."

TYLER, Texas — With a strange ending of the 2019-2020 school year, school administrators are closely monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic to see how the next school year will look. One of the possible outcome is a change to the school calendar.

While most districts CBS19 reached out, including Tyler, Longview and Nacogdoches, say they are planning to keep their calendars as they are, they would are keeping options on the table.

One idea that districts have discussed having an intersessional school calendar where school would start earlier, end later and have longer spring and winter breaks.

However, the idea comes with a set of problems, particularly for children whose parents share custody.

"If the school calendar is completely changed, we're going to need some further guidance from the courts about how to interpret these," family attorney Evan Baret said. "Otherwise, yes, they will have to be these orders will have to be modified to take into account the change school schedule."

Baret says the school schedule is taken into account when determined custody and visitation. Changing the school calendar could legal problems.

"If we don't have the traditional school schedule, there's going to be a lot of issues with the standard possession order. They're not going to match up," Baret said. "And for families where there's a lot of conflict between the co-parents, that could be some cause some big problems."

The standard possession order is one parent getting full custody and the other parent spends time with their child every other weekend, during summer break and alternating holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving.

"That could be some issues for both sides and the children if they're not able to spend summertime with the parent that lives further away," Baret explained.

If the school calendar is changed, the court system would ultimately be responsible to determine new custody agreements.

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