Tennessee Parenting Plans and the Best Interest Factors

From The Mid-South Divorce Guide, chapter 21, by William W. Jones
IV, a Memphis family law attorney and Rule 31 Listed Family Mediator
licensed in Tennessee and Mississippi. This guide covers Shelby, Tipton
and Fayette Counties in Tennessee and DeSoto, Tate and Tunica Counties
in Mississippi.

Questions this page answers

• What is a permanent parenting plan in Tennessee?
• What are the best interest factors in Tennessee?
• What is a primary residential parent?
• How does a judge decide custody in Tennessee?

Tennessee does not say
custody anymore

The word custody still shows up in conversation and in some statutes,
but the operative framework in Tennessee uses different language, and
the language change was on purpose.

You will have a primary residential parent, defined
in Tennessee Code Annotated section 36-6-402 as the parent with whom the
child resides more than fifty percent of the time. The other parent is
the alternate residential parent. You will have a
residential schedule saying where the child is on which
days. And you will have decision-making authority
allocated between you, for education, non-emergency health care,
religious upbringing, and extracurricular activities.

The point of the change was to move away from the idea that one
parent wins the child and the other gets visitation. Both of you are
parents afterward. The plan describes how.

You will still hear the word custody, and you will hear it from
judges and from attorneys, including me. It is so ingrained in all of us
that forty years of habit does not wash out because the statute changed.
When you hear it in a courtroom, translate it in your head. What we mean
is primary
residential parent and alternate
residential parent, and what the order will actually say is PRP and
ARP.

The permanent parenting plan

Under Tennessee Code Annotated section 36-6-404, every divorce
involving a minor child must incorporate a permanent
parenting plan. There is a standardized statewide form developed by
the Administrative Office of the Courts, and it is not optional
paperwork. It is the document that governs your life for the next
decade.

The blank form is public. You can pull it from the Tennessee
Administrative Office of the Courts parenting plan forms page. It is
worth looking at early even though yours will be filled in by lawyers,
because reading the blank version shows you the shape of every decision
you are about to make and the questions the form will force you to
answer.

It has to address a lot. The residential
schedule, day to day and for holidays and school breaks.
Decision-making authority. A dispute resolution process for
disagreements that come up later. Child support. A requirement that the
support obligor provide income information annually. Transportation and
exchange logistics.

Read every line of yours before you sign it. I mean every line.
Clients skim the schedule, agree, and then discover in year three that
the plan is silent about who gets the child on the Monday holiday after
a weekend, or that spring break is defined by a school calendar that
changed. Every ambiguity in a parenting plan is a fight waiting to
happen, and post-decree fights cost money and, under section
36-5-103(c), can cost you the other side’s fees.

The best interest factors

Everything runs through Tennessee Code Annotated section 36-6-106(a).
As of July 1, 2026, there are eighteen enumerated considerations. In
substance, the court weighs:

1. The strength, nature, and stability of the child’s relationship with
   each parent, including whether one parent has performed the majority of
   parenting responsibilities.
2. Each parent’s past and potential future performance of parenting
   responsibilities, including the willingness and ability of each to
   facilitate and encourage a close and continuing relationship between the
   child and the other parent.
3. Refusal to attend a court-ordered parent education seminar, which
   may be considered as a lack of good faith.
4. The disposition of each parent to provide food, clothing, medical
   care, education, and other necessary care.
5. The degree to which a parent has been the primary caregiver.
6. The love, affection, and emotional ties existing between each parent
   and the child.
7. The emotional needs and developmental level of the child.
8. The moral, physical, mental, and emotional fitness of each parent as
   it relates to their ability to parent.
9. The child’s interaction and interrelationships with siblings, other
   relatives and step-relatives, and mentors.
10. The importance of continuity in the child’s life and the length of
    time the child has lived in a stable, satisfactory environment.
11. Evidence of physical or emotional abuse to the child, to the other
    parent, or to any other person.
12. The character and behavior of any other person who resides in or
    frequents the home.
13. The reasonable preference of a child twelve years of age or older,
    with a younger child’s preference heard in the court’s discretion.
14. Each parent’s employment schedule, and the court may make
    accommodations consistent with those schedules.
15. A history of reduced or restricted parenting time.
16. Failure to pay court-ordered child support.
17. Added effective July 1, 2026: “Without creating any
    presumption as to parenting time, the extent to which the parenting
    schedule proposed or ordered provides each parent with meaningful
    opportunities to participate in the child’s life, consistent with the
    child’s best interest.”
18. Any other factors deemed relevant by the court.

Read that disclaimer again

The legislature wrote “without creating any presumption as to
parenting time” directly into the statute. That was deliberate.

Tennessee has no presumption of equal parenting
time. There is no 50/50 starting point. Bills proposing one
were introduced repeatedly and were narrowed into factors instead after
opposition from the family law bar. HB 1131, which would have created a
genuine 50/50 presumption, died in House Judiciary in April 2025.

What Tennessee does have is a directive in section 36-6-106(a) that
courts order an arrangement permitting both parents to enjoy the
maximum participation possible in the child’s life, consistent
with the best interest
factors, the parents’ locations, and the child’s need for
stability.

That is a real directive and it does work in favor of meaningful time
for both parents. It is not a presumption, and anybody telling you
Tennessee starts at half and half is telling you something the statute
specifically says it does not do.

In practice, what determines the maximum participation possible is
usually work schedules. Not affection, not effort, not who wants it
more. If one parent works nights, or drives a route, or is on call every
third week, or works a rotation that puts them out of town half the
month, that reality shapes the schedule more than anything either parent
argues about in a courtroom. The statute now lists employment schedules
as its own best interest factor, and it lets the court make
accommodations around them.

So be clear-eyed about your own schedule before you ask for time you
cannot actually cover. A schedule you cannot keep gets modified, and a
modification hearing is not where you want to be explaining why.

If your case is in Mississippi, this answer is now completely
different. See Chapter
34.

What actually persuades a
court

After a lot of years watching this, the factors that move judges most
reliably are these.

Who has actually been doing the parenting. Not who
says they will. Who has been going to the appointments, packing the
lunches, knowing the teacher’s name. This is why the parent who has been
disengaged and suddenly becomes Father of the Year the week after being
served does not get the credit they expect.

Which parent supports the child’s relationship with the other
parent. This factor is enormous and it is the one clients
underestimate most. A parent who badmouths, who blocks, who schedules
over the other parent’s time, who uses the child as a messenger, is
doing more damage to their own case than to their ex. Judges see it
constantly and they hate it.

Stability. Courts are conservative about disrupting
an arrangement that is working.

Whether the concerns you are raising are about the child or
about your spouse. This is the hard one. A lot of what people
bring me is genuinely about the marriage rather than about parenting.
Courts do not make moral judgments the way they did fifty years ago.
Your spouse being a bad husband does not make him a bad father, and a
judge is going to separate those two things even when you cannot.

Download the whole guide. All 35 chapters plus four blank client forms, complimentary, no email required. Download The Mid-South Divorce Guide (PDF)

Questions about your own situation? The Jones Law Firm, 5100 Poplar Ave, Suite 708, Memphis, TN 38137. Call (901) 761-5353.