McLean, Virginia · Child Visitation & Parenting Time

Ask grown children what they remember about a parent, and it is rarely a Tuesday. It is the summer: the long, unhurried days, the road trip, the lake, the ordinary mornings with nowhere to be. If your weekends feel rushed and shallow, summer is where you get something different. Here is the answer: a summer visitation schedule gives the non-primary parent a longer block of time, often two to six weeks or a split of the break, the stretch where the real memories get made. In McLean, we build that summer on purpose.

By Corrie Sirkin, Esq. · Founding Partner, NOVA Legal Professionals

This article is one part of our larger guide to child visitation in Virginia. For the full picture, start with our cornerstone, Child Visitation and Parenting Time in Virginia. Here, I will focus on why the summer block matters so much, and how to build one that holds up.

What summer visitation looks like

A summer schedule sets aside a longer, continuous block of parenting time during the school break, separate from the regular weekly rhythm. It can be a couple of weeks, several weeks, or a true split of the summer, sometimes in two-week segments so neither parent goes too long without the child. You can read more on our summer visitation page.

The summer is where the depth is

Weekends are wonderful, but they are short, and they are often crowded with catching up, errands, and the quiet pressure to make every hour count. Summer is different. Summer gives you unhurried time, the kind where you are not performing being a parent, you are just being one. You get the slow morning, the boredom that turns into imagination, the trip that becomes a story your child tells for years. That depth is almost impossible to build two days at a time, and it is the reason the longer block matters so much for a non-primary parent.

How summer time changes the math

There is a practical side too. A meaningful summer block adds a real number of overnights, and in Virginia those overnights count. A parent with more than 90 days of custody or visitation in a year, meaning 91 or more, falls under the shared-custody child support formula. A standard school-year schedule often sits just under that line, and a solid summer block is frequently what carries a parent over it. So the summer is not only where the memories are; it can also be where the support calculation shifts. Pairing it with extended weekends during the year makes that even more likely.

How a Virginia court views summer schedules

Summer time is set, like everything else, under the best interests of the child standard in Virginia Code Section 20-124.3. Courts look at the child’s age, the distance between homes, the child’s summer activities and camps, and each parent’s ability to provide care during the block. A well-built summer plan respects the child’s friendships and programs while still giving the non-primary parent meaningful, continuous time. We help you propose a block that is generous and realistic at the same time.

Write it so next summer runs itself

A summer schedule fails when it is vague. The order should name how the block is chosen each year, the exact start and end dates or the deadline for setting them, how it interacts with the holiday schedule, and how summer overrides the regular weekly schedule. We write the summer order to settle all of that in advance, so you are planning a trip in March instead of fighting about dates in June. A McLean case would be heard in the Fairfax County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court.

How we help in McLean

We help you secure a summer block that is long enough to matter and structured enough to work, whether that is a single stretch or a two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off split. We make sure the order sets dates, segment rules, and how summer fits with holidays and the school year, and we keep an eye on how the added overnights affect support. We do this for families across McLean, Great Falls, and the Tysons area.

Frequently Asked Questions