A 5225 parenting schedule is one in which one parent gets Wednesday and Thursday overnights, one parent gets Monday and Tuesday overnights, and Friday, Saturday, and Sunday overnights alternate between the two parents. The result of the schedule is that Parent 1 gets 5 days in a row, then Parent 2 gets 2 days, then Parent 1 gets 2 days, and then Parent 2 gets 5 days, thus 5225. The total schedule is 14 days, and the schedule gets repeated throughout the year. This schedule is often the preferred schedule by child custody professionals, especially for school age children.
The graphical depiction above helps you understand where this schedule gets the name, 5225. You may also see this schedule named, 5-2-2-5 with dashes, with slashes 5/2/2/5, or maybe be called 2255 or 5522. All of these names refer to the same parenting schedule.
There are other ways of doing 50/50 custody, this just happens to be the most common one.
Our original blog post on a 5225 parenting schedules can be found at this link. It includes a variety of questions from readers of the blog and responses from our attorney.