Overnights vs. parenting-time percentage
Parenting time gets described two ways — a count of overnights and a percentage. They're the same fact, and one is just the other divided by the nights in a year.
The percentage is the overnights, divided
A parenting-time percentage is simply a parent's overnights divided by the nights in the year. Ninety-one overnights is about 25%; roughly 182 is about 50%. Nothing more complicated is going on — which is exactly why courts and guidelines prefer the overnight count.
Overnights are unambiguous: a night is a night. 'Every other weekend plus Wednesdays' is a description, not a number — turn it into overnights and the percentage falls out.
Which number your state's formula means
If your state's support guideline uses a parenting-time percentage, or a shared-parenting threshold, it's this overnight-based figure it means — not a rough estimate of how much time each parent 'has'. That's one more reason to count overnights precisely rather than eyeball the split.
The percentage on each of our schedule pages is the annualized figure before holidays and summer shift it; use the calculator to get the number for your own pattern.
Count your overnights
The arithmetic part — counting overnights from your actual pattern — is something we can help with. The money is your state's to calculate.
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