Glossary

Parenting time percentage

The share of a year's overnights spent with each parent, expressed as a percentage.

The figure is overnights divided by nights in the year. What makes it slippery is that a real parenting order layers holidays, school breaks and summer on top of a base rotation, and those blocks can move the annual total by a week or more in either direction. A base rotation percentage is therefore a starting figure. The standard equal rotations — two-two-three, two-two-five-five, three-four-four-three and alternating weeks — all land within a night or two of fifty percent before exceptions are written in. They differ mainly in how often a child changes homes, which ranges from about one handover a week to nearly three.

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