Ben Affleck on His Kids With Jennifer Garner: Custody Switches Every Week, and Family Dinner Comes With a Condition - "If They Agree to Spend Time With Me"

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner married in 2005, separated in 2015, and their divorce became final in 2018. Eight years later, Affleck reveals what their arrangement for their three children looks like - and it's surprisingly ordinary: one week the kids are with him, the next with their mother.

"We work hard, and then I go home and pick the kids up from school," the actor says of the weeks when he's a full-time dad. Violet is 20, Fin 17 and Sam 14 - an age at which, he admits jokingly, dad isn't always the first choice of company. "We have dinner together if they agree to spend time with me."

Behind the joke there's a real cost. Affleck says he deliberately turned down some projects that would have meant long stretches away from Los Angeles, so he could be there for the kids. Today he works in the city, with the company Artists Equity, together with Matt Damon.

Hollywood knows divorces that drag on for years, with accusations through lawyers and tabloid headlines. The Affleck-Garner arrangement sounds almost boring - a schedule, school, dinner. Maybe that's exactly why it works. Affleck thanks his ex-wife for her role as a mother and for the respect they kept even after the split.

He says his life today is "really wonderful" and that he feels especially happy and at peace. For a man whose relationships were for years a tabloid chronicle, maybe that's the biggest news: the most important part of his week is the moment he picks the kids up from school.