The 2-2-3 Custody Schedule, Explained (With the Other Common 50/50 Patterns)

What 2-2-3 means

A 2-2-3 schedule splits every week into three blocks: two days with one parent, two days with the other, then three days back with the first. The next week flips, so the parent who had the three-day weekend now has the Monday-Tuesday block. Over fourteen days each parent has seven, and each parent gets every other weekend.

Written out, week one is A A B B A A A and week two is B B A A B B B. That flip is the part people get wrong on paper: the pattern is a two-week cycle, not a one-week one, so a calendar that only shows this week is only half the story.

Why it is common with younger children

The longest a child goes without seeing either parent under 2-2-3 is three days. For toddlers and early primary-age children, many mediators and parenting-plan templates prefer that to a full week apart, which is why it is the pattern most often suggested when a 50/50 order involves young children.

The trade is handoffs. 2-2-3 has three a week - more than any other 50/50 arrangement - and each one is a transition for the child and a coordination point for the adults. Schedules that work well on paper fall apart on the third handoff of the week when nobody is sure whose evening it is.

The other 50/50 patterns, briefly

Week on / week off is the simplest: seven days each, one handoff a week, usually on a Friday or Sunday evening. Common with older children who can go a week between parents and manage their own school things.

2-2-5-5 keeps fixed weekdays - one parent always has Monday and Tuesday, the other Wednesday and Thursday - and alternates the Friday-to-Sunday block, giving each parent a five-day run every other week. Fewer handoffs than 2-2-3, and the fixed weekdays make after-school activities easy to plan.

3-4-4-3 alternates the long weekend: three days, then four, then four, then three across two weeks. Each parent gets a long weekend every other week. Every other weekend plus a midweek evening is not a 50/50 split; it is common when one parent has the school week and the other has alternate weekends with one dinner or overnight in between.

Where the plan and the calendar drift apart

A parenting plan describes the pattern. It rarely describes the year. Holidays override the rotation, school breaks are often split differently from term time, and a single agreed swap in March can throw a hand-drawn calendar off for the rest of the year if only one parent updates their copy.

The reliable way to keep a rotation straight is to treat it as three layers: the pattern underneath, holidays and exceptions on top, and accepted swaps on top of both. Any given day belongs to whichever layer is highest, and the answer never depends on who remembered what. That is also the only way two people can hold the same calendar without a text thread.

Keeping it straight on your phone

Alternate is built around exactly those three layers. You pick the pattern from cards that draw each one as blocks - 2-2-3 shows its two-week flip so you can check it against your plan - set the anchor date and the starting parent, and the app generates the whole year. Holidays and exceptions are added on top with a name, a range and a repeat rule; swaps are requests your co-parent accepts or declines, and an accepted swap changes both calendars at once.

Today then answers "whose day is it?" in a glance, Count shows days with each parent by month, and Export writes the year into Apple Calendar or an .ics file. Your co-parent joins from a QR code, never pays and never needs an account. See the Alternate product page for screenshots and the privacy policy for what the app stores, which is the schedule and first names, and nothing else.