Legal Question in Family Law in California

I'm having trouble understanding how travel between two points could be different except by choice. The freeway goes both ways, doesn't it? If one person chooses to take a slower route, that is their problem.

What most people do is simply agree that either each person picks up the kid(s) at the start of their time, or drops them off at the end of each person's time. Choice of route is up to them.

Sometimes people take traffic into account. For a while I had my son weekends during the summer and weekdays during the school year, swaps on Friday evenings and Sunday evenings. Her drive was counter-commute on Fridays, so whether she was picking up during the school year, or dropping off during the summer, she alwasy drove on Fridays and I drove on Sundays.

I was a little puzzled at first also, but then I thought maybe they are meeting midpoint. From my experience, a judge is just going to pick it by miles, because that is constant. It is not law, and I suggest you two come to a compromise you both are reasonably happy with. Travel times vary, and people who are divorced can argue for days about who suffers more. What I usually tell clients is that the kids suffer more than either of you when you two fight. I would NOT recommend taking this in front of a judge and wasting the court's time. He would probably give you both the tongue lashing of a lifetime. There are way more important issues with child rearing in two different households that you both will have to somehow work out. This may be a good first lesson on how to coparent.