Michigan Parenting Time Guidelines: Factors, Schedules, and Moves

The Michigan parenting time guidelines start from a simple premise: a child benefits from regular, meaningful contact with both parents, and the schedule should be built around the child’s best interests. The Child Custody Act at MCL 722.21 through 722.31 sets the legal framework, and each county’s Friend of the Court office publishes recommended schedules that judges use as starting points when parents cannot agree.¹ What follows is what the guidelines actually require, what a typical schedule looks like, and what to do when you need to establish, change, or enforce one.

The Best Interest Factors Behind Every Order

A Michigan judge cannot pick a schedule by feel. MCL 722.23 lists twelve best-interest factors, and the court must weigh each one before entering a custody or parenting time order.²

The love, affection, and emotional ties between each parent and the child.
Each parent’s capacity to give guidance, affection, education, and continuity.
Each parent’s ability to provide food, clothing, medical care, and a stable home.
How long the child has lived in a satisfactory environment and whether continuity matters.
The long-term viability of each proposed home as a family unit.
Each parent’s moral fitness as it bears on parenting.
Each parent’s mental and physical health.
The child’s adjustment to home, school, and community.
The child’s reasonable preference, if the court considers the child old enough to express one.
Each parent’s willingness to encourage a close relationship between the child and the other parent.
Any history of domestic violence, whether or not the child witnessed it.
Any other factor the court considers relevant.

On the child’s preference, the statute sets no age cutoff. Judges commonly start giving weight to a child’s wishes around 10 or 12, but a preference that looks coached carries little weight, and even a teenager’s stated wish is one factor among twelve.³

Extra Factors Aimed at the Schedule Itself

MCL 722.27a adds a second set of considerations focused on the shape of parenting time rather than the overall custody decision. Judges look at whether the child has special needs, whether the child is a nursing infant, the likelihood of abuse or neglect during visits, the burden travel places on the child, and whether a parent has actually exercised the parenting time they already have.¹ A parent who repeatedly skips weekends or brings the child back late is giving the judge evidence that the current schedule is not working.

Standard Schedules Under the Guidelines

Friend of the Court schedules are recommendations, not mandates, but they are the vocabulary parents and judges default to. The most common model for school-aged children is the alternating weekend schedule: the noncustodial parent has the child from 6:00 p.m. Friday to 6:00 p.m. Sunday every other weekend, with a midweek visit on a set evening.⁴

Parents who want closer to equal time often use a rotating plan like 2-2-5-5, which gives each parent two fixed weekdays plus alternating long weekends. These arrangements work best when both households are close enough to share school-morning logistics. Holidays typically alternate on a yearly rotation, so Thanksgiving falls to one parent in even years and the other in odd years. Summer schedules often carve out extended blocks of one to several weeks, with a written-notice requirement for planned vacations.

Right of First Refusal

Some Michigan orders include a right-of-first-refusal clause. If one parent cannot be with the child during their scheduled time due to a work shift, travel, or illness, they must offer that time to the other parent before arranging alternate care. If you want this term in your order, spell out the details: how many hours of absence trigger the offer, how much notice is required, and how quickly the other parent must respond. Vague language here generates conflict.

Virtual Contact

The state’s Parenting Time Guideline recognizes video calls and other virtual contact as a supplement to in-person time, though no statute requires courts to include it in every order.⁴ Virtual contact can maintain the parent-child relationship when a parent lives far away, is incarcerated, or is deployed. Parents who want this in writing should specify call times, the platform, and an agreement that neither parent will listen in or record calls without consent.

How to Request or Modify a Parenting Time Order

The State Court Administrative Office publishes Form FOC 65, “Motion Regarding Parenting Time,” for both first-time requests and modifications.⁵ It asks for your case number, the judge, both parents’ contact information, a description of the current arrangement, and a specific description of the change you want and why. Be exact about the proposed schedule: days, times, pickup and drop-off locations. Vague requests slow everything down.

Bring supporting material to file with the motion: your work schedule, the child’s school calendar, and documentation of anything you cite, such as missed visits or changed circumstances. If you are asking for supervised parenting time, bring evidence, whether that is police reports, protective orders, or records from Child Protective Services.

The filing fee is $80 under MCL 600.2529. A motion involving only child support and not custody or parenting time costs $40.⁶ If you cannot afford the fee, you can file a fee-waiver request.

After you file and serve the other parent, the Friend of the Court usually schedules mediation or a hearing before a referee. The referee tries to help you reach a voluntary agreement; when that fails, the referee issues a written recommendation. Either parent has 21 days from service to file a written objection.⁷ A timely objection sends the case to the circuit court judge for a full hearing. No objection, and the judge signs the recommendation into a binding order. Missing that 21-day window is one of the most common and costly mistakes in these cases.

Emergency Orders Are the Exception, Not the Route

When a child faces immediate danger, Michigan Court Rule 3.207 allows a parent to request an ex parte order issued without the other parent present. The bar is high: a verified pleading or affidavit must show specific facts that waiting for normal notice would cause “irreparable injury, loss, or damage.”⁸ Situations that meet the standard include credible evidence of abuse or neglect, a risk of parental abduction, or active substance abuse that endangers the child. If granted, the order must be served on the other parent and the Friend of the Court within three days, and the court holds an evidentiary hearing within 21 days to decide whether the order stays, changes, or dissolves. Routine scheduling disputes do not qualify.

Supervised Visits and Other Conditions

Under MCL 722.27a(9)(f), a court can require that visits happen in the presence of a third person or agency when safety concerns exist but total denial would not serve the child.¹ The supervisor might be a professional at a visitation center, a social worker, or a trusted family member the court approves. Judges use this tool when there is a reasonable likelihood of abuse or neglect, a history of domestic violence, serious substance abuse, or when a parent and child are essentially strangers and need to rebuild a relationship gradually. Most supervised orders include a path back to unsupervised contact, such as completing a treatment program or a series of incident-free visits.

MCL 722.27a(9) also lets courts attach practical conditions to any order: dividing transportation costs, requiring the child to be ready at a specific time, restricting who is present during visits, requiring a bond to guarantee compliance, and requiring reasonable notice when a parent will miss scheduled time. “Any other reasonable condition” is the catch-all, and it is where drug testing, alcohol monitoring, and geographic travel limits typically appear.¹

When the Other Parent Ignores the Order

A parenting time order is a court order. When one parent blocks or interferes with scheduled time, the Friend of the Court can apply a makeup parenting time policy, initiate a show-cause action for contempt, file a motion to modify the parenting time provisions, schedule mediation, or arrange a joint meeting with both parents.⁹

Enforcement starts with a written complaint that describes specific facts, not a general grievance. The Friend of the Court can decline to act if the violation happened more than 56 days before the complaint, if the complainant has a pattern of filing unwarranted complaints, or if the order lacks an enforceable parenting time provision.⁹

The most serious remedy is contempt. At a show-cause hearing, the violating parent must explain why the court should not hold them in contempt; failing to appear can trigger a bench warrant. Courts can also order makeup parenting time under MCL 722.27a to compensate the denied parent, and persistent violations can lead the judge to restructure the schedule entirely.¹

The 100-Mile Rule If You Want to Move

MCL 722.31 restricts a custodial parent from moving the child’s legal residence more than 100 miles from the current location without the other parent’s consent or court permission. Any out-of-state move requires consent or court approval, regardless of distance.¹⁰

Court approval is not required if:

The move is less than 100 miles from the child’s current legal residence.
The other parent consents.
The custody order gives sole legal custody to the moving parent.
The parents’ homes were already more than 100 miles apart when the case began.
The move brings the residences closer together.

When approval is needed, the relocating parent files a motion, and the judge weighs factors similar to the best-interest analysis: whether the move improves the child’s quality of life, whether it is motivated by a desire to interfere with the other parent’s time, and whether an adjusted schedule can preserve the relationship. Moving without required permission can result in contempt and reversal of the move.¹⁰

How Parenting Time Affects Taxes

The way overnights are split affects who claims the child as a dependent. The IRS treats the custodial parent, defined as the parent with whom the child spent the greater number of nights during the year, as the parent entitled to claim the child.¹¹ If overnights are split exactly evenly, the custodial parent is whoever has the higher adjusted gross income.

The child tax credit is up to $2,200 per qualifying child for 2026, so the designation matters.¹² If both parents agree that the noncustodial parent should claim the child, the custodial parent must sign IRS Form 8332 releasing the claim, and the noncustodial parent must attach the form to their return each year they claim it.¹³ For agreements that took effect after 2008, Form 8332 is the only accepted method; attaching pages from a divorce decree does not work. A custodial parent who signed Form 8332 can revoke it, but the revocation takes effect no earlier than the tax year after the noncustodial parent receives notice.

If your parenting plan alternates the tax benefit year by year, put the arrangement in writing and require Form 8332 to be signed annually. The IRS follows its own rules on overnights and signed releases, and it will not enforce your divorce judgment for you.

1
Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 722.27a – Parenting Time
2
Michigan Courts. Michigan Custody Guideline
3
Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 722.23 – Best Interests of the Child
4
Michigan Courts. Michigan Parenting Time Guideline
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Michigan Courts. Motion Regarding Parenting Time
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Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 600.2529 – Fees Paid to Clerk of Circuit Court
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Michigan Legal Help. Friend of the Court Overview
8
Michigan Courts. Order Amending MCR 3.207 and 3.210
9
Michigan Legislature. A Guide to Custody, Parenting Time and Support
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Michigan Courts. Changing Child’s Legal Residence 100-Mile Rule Checklist
11
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 504 – Divorced or Separated Individuals
12
Congress.gov. The Child Tax Credit: How It Works and Who Receives It
13
Internal Revenue Service. Release/Revocation of Release of Claim to Exemption for Child by Custodial Parent