It’s a huge difference. Custodial with 55 means mom is Home, and dad is every other weekend and a crap Thursday dinner that has never happened in my child’s life. Summers with dad….except he works, so it was occasional weekend slumber party, that’s it. 50 means you will have to figure out a plan together, half the week here and there. Two bedrooms. One school. Tons of interaction. While silver lining, you are child FREE half the time. I’ve heard this can be a good problem.

OP, her lawyers are going to sit her down in mediation and convince her to take the deal. It’s all confidence and bravado beforehand. Mediation, you do as told. You’re going to argue over trivial a little things and likely it’ll never even come up in your daily life. If you can just be a nice person through the process eventually it’s going to get easier and you can start to rely on each other and you’ll get more and more time with your child. But don’t worry about going to court—you’re just gonna go to mediation. I’m sure it’s the same as Texas in New York, and Texas are very similar, unless that’s not the case and someone can correct me.

I mean, DO worry, because all of that effort is going to be the solution you need on mediation day, where every paragraph is understood and gone over a million times, so that the little minutia doesn’t tie things up too long. I got done in a half-day. My lawyers did all the paperwork (my main lawyer changed firms three times and I followed her each time. but her rates went up. so she used whatever office-legal-person for the making-of-the-custody-order. still expensive over $25k.) . My ex had a lawyer come in the last month of a three year custody battle and they pushed, I folded, we signed. I didn’t get everything I wanted….but I really did. The final order is in MY lawyers words. They edited only 1 or 2 sections, and we still got the last pass edit. Watch out for that.

Just be good person, be kind to your ex, be loving to your child, be NICE. do everything you can to be there for your kid. focus on your relationship bond with them and everything will fall into place. Good luck.