Questions and Answers

Answer : The Parenting Time Calendar is written specifically for lawyers who practice family law, mediators, paralegals, legal assistants, parents, and judges.

Answer: Because the Parenting Time Calendar is highly customized to provide the features you need to develop custodial calendar schedules. For example the number of overnight stays and day visits are automatically counted and custodial and non-custodial percentages are automatically calculated and displayed for immediate review on your screen while you work. Using standard lists you can add weekends, alternate weekends, weekdays, alternate weekdays, in just about any combination with only a few clicks of your mouse. Need to add a holiday? A couple of mouse clicks will do it. You can even create custom lists, for example school schedules, and use them as templates for all your area schedules.   Why should you use the Parenting Time Calendar©? Because it will save you hours of time and lots of money.

Question: Help please! I just purchased your ParentingTimeCalendar and I can't figure out how to get started.

Answer: Although we've made every effort to make our program as easy to use as possible, it's often a difficult task getting started for the first time when running a new program. To quick start yourself we suggest you view our tutorials located on this website. Also don't forget to peruse our rigorous help files that are included when you install our program. If you are still in need of assistance, please send us an email (see below). We'll answer your questions within one business day and usually respond on the same day.

Question: I see how you mark overnight stays and day visits for the secondary care giver. How do you mark overnight stays and day visits for the primary care giver?

Answer: With the ParentingTimeCalendar all unmarked time goes to the primary care giver (custodial parent). Thus, when you initially create a calendar the primary care giver has all the time and there are no markings on the calendar. As you progressively mark the secondary care givers (non-custodial parent) overnight stays and day visits, the counters are decreased for the primary care giver and increased for the secondary care giver. This makes it very easy to create a calendar schedule and results in a calendar printout that is very easy to see and understand.

If associating a color with the primary care giver is important to you, use our "Preferences" form and set the custodial color to your choice.

Question: How do I mark alternating holidays? For example I want Christmas in year 2005 to go to the the custodial parent and Christmas in the year 2006 to go to the non-custodial parent.

Answer: This question and answer is similar to the previous Q and A. To emphasize, all marks belong to the non-custodial parent, so to accomplish your goal, simply mark Christmas 2006 for the non-custodial parent and do not mark Christmas in the year 2005. This approach is easy to implement and easy to understand when viewing the calendar.

Question: How many years can be included in one calendar?

Answer: With the one year standard and deluxe programs one complete year of twelve months beginning on the month of your choice. With the 2-year calendar a complete 24 month schedule beginning on the month of your choice. Calendars may be created for any year from 1000 to 2999A.D. You won't need a program update until the year 3000A.D.!

Question: Why a two year Calendar?

Answer: Several of our customers and potential customers have said that they frequently develop two year plans and that it was somewhat difficult to develop two single year plans with patterns and lists flowing smoothly from the first year to the second.   Further, they wanted Quality Time totals and percentages based on both years rather than a Quality Time summary for each year. Our 2-year calendar program address all of these issues.

Question: What do I do if I have the 2-year program but only want to create a one year schedule?

Answer: No problem!   All program outputs can be limited to either year the calendar effectively making it a one year plan. And the Quality Time calculations look for either year having no days marked; if no days are marked then the Quality Time calculations are based solely on the year that does have days marked.

Question: How many children can be included on a Parenting Time Calendar?

Answer: The Parenting Time Calendar has been written to provide a single schedule. If more than one child is involved and the visitation is the same for them all, then a single calendar would suffice. Otherwise a unique calendar must be created for each child. Different calendars may be easily distinguished by unique titles that may include a child's name. They may be further distinguished by using a different color scheme for each child.

Question: Does the Parenting Time Calendar support pick-up and drop-off times?

Answer: Yes. With the standard version of the Parenting Time Calendar pick-up and drop-off times may optionally be applied to any overnight stay or day visit and will be included on screen as you work and on all outputs (except for the single page full year output). Pick-up and drop-off times do NOT affect the overnight stay or day visit counters or percentages.

The deluxe version of the Parenting Time Calendar uses pick-up and drop-off times in a manner identical to the standard version unless you are computing quality time. For quality time calculations pick-up and drop-off times are required. You simply use default values or define global values which will apply to all days, then explicitly enter a pick-up and drop-off times only for those days with requirements that differ from the default or global values. Note that even with the deluxe version of the Parenting Time Calendar you are not required to calculate quality time so, in that sense, pick-up and drop-off times are optional.

Question: What is quality time?

Answer: Think of quality time as being the time when a parent may be in the actual company of the child to share ideas and activities. Sleep time, school time, time at day care centers, etc. subtract from quality time. The result is that Quality time gives a more meaningful indication as to how much time each parent actually has in the company of the child. Think about this:   If one parent has custody of the child all of the time, after subtracting 8 hours of sleep per night and 6 hours of time in school, the parent actually has the company of the child only 56% of the time!

Question: My state doesn't require quality time. Why should I want it?

Answer: If your state doesn't require quality time you technically do not need it however the results shown by quality time are often very surprising and might be useful for obtaining agreements.

Question: I would be using the Parenting Time Calendar in Canada. How do I enter my holidays?

Answer : The Parenting Time Calendar explicitly supports holidays for the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. (Click here to view examples). We have no plans on adding any other holidays at this time. Please note you can support any desired holidays, or vacation schedules, or break periods, with a "Custom List". (View our tutorials for further information. If you'd rather not make a custom list you can still mark any day however you want so you can manually enter any holiday desired.

Question : Must I use the parental titles "custodial" and "non-custodial"?   I'd like to use the parents names such as Mrs. Martha Angstrom and Mr. John Angstrom or maybe just Mother and Father.