I will finish up my series on the Texas Standard Possession order with a discussion on the holiday visits.  These holidays typically include Spring Break, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Other “holidays” can include Father’s day, Mother’s day, children’s birthdays, Halloween, 4th of July, etc…  However, the standard is the first three.

I do not typically run into many issues with Holiday visits in my practice as they are pretty self explanatory.  They typically begin at the time the child is dismissed from school and end at 6:00 p.m. on the day before school and follow an odd and even year pattern.

I sometimes get asked why the possessions end at 6:00 p.m. and not on the following Monday morning as a standard weekend may end.  The only answer I can provide is that it is designed for the child to be able to unwind after the holiday and get back into the school routine prior to returning to school.  This is not to say that your order cannot say something different, this is just the standard language in Texas.

The pickup time “when the child is dismissed from school” used to be a source of controversy, especially around Thanksgiving.  Many schools would let out for the week of Thanksgiving which is easy to follow, but they would also schedule a teacher day or in-service day the Friday before the holiday week.  The confusion arose over whether this was actually the beginning of the holiday or not.  The Texas legislature recently fixed that problem by confirming that the in-service day was indeed the beginning of the “holiday”.

That is about all I have on the Texas standard possession order and holidays.  If my readers have some general comments or questions, I would be happy to answer them under the comments section.