We don't really have an order related to our daughter. Our divorce was by default - he never showed up. I was grated sole custody, visitations are reserved. Because of recent restraining order we are now going to go mediations to establish visitation schedule. For now, everything is very vague and that does not help.
Well, you should be dealing from a position of strength since you have custody and majority time. In many states a default non-primary parenting schedule is alternate weekends (Friday pm to Sunday pm or Monday am) and an evening (or overnight) in between, usually alternate Thursdays. In my county that schedule is not chiseled in stone but it is a published 'guideline' schedule. That is
reasonable unless you have basis for more concern about ex's parenting. So in mediation you can set boundaries for how much time you're willing to 'gift' your ex before saying, "mediation isn't working, we'll have to let a judge decide".
When you do settle or get an order, be sure not to feel compelled to be overly fair or overly nice. Set your limits for what you will accept and stick to them unless you have basis to deviate. A standard order with appropriate tweaks is the most you should accept.
Do not fool yourself into hoping that being generous with a schedule will cause him to reciprocate similarly, it won't. While "reasonable" telephone contact and "mutually agreed" exchange locations may be okay for most orders, when there are confrontations, conflict, boundary pushing and obstruction it is best to tighten those normal vague clauses. Anything left to interpretation is likely to be reinterpreted by the ex, of course to the ex's benefit.
Also, it is good to not schedule your flights too close to exchanges so that ex has leverage. For example, if you tell ex, "I have to pick up the children at the regular 6 pm exchange because then we have to go right to the airport and fly at 9 pm" then you gift ex leverage to scheme sabotaging the exchange and hence the start of your vacation. That's why I tried to start my vacations on my weekends back in the early days of my separation and divorce. In 2006 I scheduled a vacation to start on my weekend. She treated it like a request, saying, No. But I left on my weekend and she was stuck with allowing me my normal weekend. Of course on Monday when I was almost to my destination in the mountains and it was the normal exchange time she tried to get the local sheriff to declare an Amber Alert. Fortunately she was told it didn't meet the criteria of an Amber Alert but she did manage to get an investigation started, their investigator contacted my lawyer and they worked out a solution for the duration of my vacation.
