Q: If parent A is court ordered to p/up children from parent B at 4 can they decide to say “oh my mom will get them at 630

A: First of all you are writing this as though you are not the mother or the father who have this arrangement. This has to be something that the two parents work out. Any parenting time plan is going to require some flexibility but it also requires firm boundaries as the parent in father's position has the right to know that the visit will happen and should have to wait around for a long time. The court on the other hand will not want the pick up time to conflict with mom's job.

So it would seem that the best solution for father to file a Petition with the court to modify the parenting time plan to fit the most likely times that mom knows she can commit to the visit. Maybe having the parenting time always start at 6:30 pm would be the better way to go if mom seems to always be pushing the pickup back to 6:30. I have also seen parents solve the problem by having a time limit to how long mom has to pick up the children. 30 minutes if mom lives nearby, an hour if mom is driving a long distance, might be something to suggest. So the parenting time could say that absent a mutual agreement mom has parenting time starting at 6:30 pm on Friday and the parenting time will be canceled if pick up isn't done by 7:30pm. Another solution if mom has a job that has a changing schedule every week would be to find out what day mom gets her work schedule and require mom to confirm the pickup time on Friday by a certain time every week - say within 1 day of getting the schedule. There should be built in flexibility to accommodate mom's work schedule.

I don't understand from your posting if mom is failing to take the children for the entire weekend regularly. But if that is the case, then the parenting time should be modified to reflect the actual time that mom has to parent the children. So if she is only doing Friday to Saturday, then get the plan modified. The point is that the plan should reflect what time mom is actually exercising and give her more time if she can reliably commit to it.

Another possible solution might be for father to drop the children off at mom's house if there will be an adult or responsible baby sitter there to supervise them until mom get's off work. It is perfectly OK for mom to use child care for some of the time on her weekend and still have the children. It isn't ideal. Ideal would be mom having the weekend off work and being able to spend all her time with the children. But the reality is that life is very expensive and people have to work long hours and sometimes two jobs to make ends meet. Of course if mom has other days off during the week, then maybe the parenting time could be moved to her time off days if that isn't too disruptive of the children getting their home work done and getting to school.

Split families just aren't easy to manage. These parents may have to figure out what works best by trial and error. New girlfriends and boyfriends and well meaning relatives really need to let these two adults work these things out among themselves and they have to reach some level of maturity to put aside their emotional issues and put their children first. It's tough but the court mediation program can really help with this.