Changes to the Texas Standard Possession Order (HB 1012)
Under the presumptive possession schedule set up by the Texas Legislature, the non-custodial parents weekend period of possession extends an extra day if the child school schedule has either Monday or Friday as a student holiday. Unfortunately, most school districts do not use the terms “holiday” and there are typically different terms that address days off for both students and teachers. Phone calls to the school or school district usually would not provide much clarity because, as noted above, the terms did not match up.
Thankfully, 153.315 was reincarnated that should fix this. This section was modified to include a student holiday or teacher in-service day as a holiday and to change the term “holiday” to “student holiday”. The purpose of this code section is to mirror the language used by most school district so the possession schedule makes sense. The problem parents were running into is that their stated Court Ordered parenting time was ambiguous because the language used in the possession schedule was different than that used by the school. The revised statute should go along way in avoiding future disagreements.