A full season of practices, games and weekend tournaments may begin to compete with the parenting time your Michigan court order sets. Knowing how judges treat scheduling conflicts, transportation duties and missed time can help you address a dispute early.
Conflicts with the parenting schedule
Your parenting-time order controls when your child is with each parent, and a team calendar does not override it. If you enroll your child in a sport that reduces the other parent’s allotted time without an agreement, you risk a complaint about interference. That concern becomes more pressing when a standing practice or game overlaps each week.
The Michigan Parenting Time Guideline is a resource published by the state court system, but it is not binding law. It advises against deliberately planning extracurricular activities to disrupt the other parent’s time. Even if your order does not address sports, a judge reviewing a contempt claim determines whether you violated its existing terms without good cause.
Disagreements over transportation duties
The guideline generally recommends that the parent exercising parenting time handle transportation to practices and games. Your order controls if it assigns that task differently. Either approach is harder to manage when a travel team plays two hours away and you spend much of the weekend on the road.
A judge may use the order to divide both the driving and travel costs between the parents. When pickup and drop-off terms are unclear, a late exchange after a tournament may lead to a dispute over who was responsible for the delay.
Remedies for missed parenting time
In a Friend of the Court case, you may file a written complaint when the other parent’s sports scheduling denies you court-ordered time. The office may decline to act if you submit it more than 56 days after the alleged violation. If the office proceeds, its options include applying the makeup policy to replace lost time, scheduling mediation or arranging a joint meeting with both parents.
If the office determines that another authorized enforcement procedure has failed to resolve the dispute, it must begin civil contempt proceedings. A judge who finds a violation without good cause must hold the parent in contempt and may order makeup time, a fine or other sanctions. The office may also petition the court to modify the order.
Requests for clearer court orders
If your order grants only “reasonable parenting time” and you disagree over particular days, you have the right to request a specific schedule. The judge must provide clear terms but does not have to adopt every detail you propose. Those provisions give the Friend of the Court a firmer basis for enforcement.
If you instead seek a contested modification of an existing schedule, you must first show proper cause or a change of circumstances. You must then establish that your proposal serves your child’s best interests.