The 2-2-3 Custody Schedule
2-2-3 is the schedule families choose when the children are small and the gap between visits matters more than the number of handovers.
Two days with one parent, two with the other, three with the first — then it flips, so each parent gets the long weekend every other week.
The pattern
A fourteen-day cycle.
Week one: Parent A takes Monday and Tuesday. Parent B takes Wednesday and Thursday. Parent A takes Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Week two: the reverse. B takes Monday and Tuesday, A takes Wednesday and Thursday, B takes the weekend.
Split: 50/50. Seven overnights each per fortnight, and — the point of the whole thing — no gap longer than three days.
Who it suits
Young children. This is the schedule's reason for existing. For toddlers and preschoolers, a two-day gap is manageable and a seven-day one often is not. If you are choosing a 50/50 schedule for a three-year-old, this is usually the one.
Parents who live very close. Ideally the same school catchment, within a short drive.
Parents who both want substantial midweek involvement rather than one weekday parent and one weekend parent.
Newly separated families who want to keep both parents present while everyone adjusts.
Who it does not suit
Anyone with a long drive. More than a hundred exchanges a year makes distance punishing, for the adults and the children.
Older children. By ten or eleven, most children want their belongings, their friends and their homework in fewer places. Teenagers frequently ask to move off it.
Parents who cannot communicate. This schedule requires a handover every two or three days. If each one is an opportunity for conflict, you have built a machine for producing conflict.
Anyone who struggles with logistics. The kit, the homework, the sports gear, the retainer — all of it moves more often here than under any other common pattern.
What people underestimate
The number of exchanges. Week on, week off has twenty-six a year. 2-2-3 has more than a hundred and fifty.
That is not an argument against it — for a four-year-old it is exactly the right trade. But it is the thing families most often fail to price in, and the reason many move to 2-2-5-5 or week-on-week-off once the children are older.
Plan for the transition rather than discovering it. Writing a review point into the plan — "the parties will revisit the schedule when the youngest child starts third grade" — is easier than a modification motion at the time.
Where Civly fits
2-2-3 is the schedule people most often lose track of, because the pattern inverts every week. "Do I have them Wednesday?" depends on which week it is, and two parents can be confidently wrong in opposite directions.
Civly runs it as a colour-coded shared calendar, so both parents are reading the same fortnight. Holiday provisions sit on top as overrides. And with more than a hundred and fifty exchanges a year, the reminders matter more here than on any other pattern.
If you have a decree, the AI reads it and builds the pattern from the document.
This is general information, not legal advice. What schedule is appropriate for your family depends on your circumstances, your children's ages and your state's law. Talk to a family law attorney licensed where you live.