Most parents try to work out agreements between themselves, or with the help of an attorney or mediator. Joint legal custody means that both parents must make significant decisions on behalf of the child together. Just because one parent has sole physical custody, meaning the child lives with them full time, they may not have sole legal custody. Joint custody, both physical and legal, is preferred by most psychological experts and law professionals as it results in a much better outcome for the children if the parents can get along reasonably well.
Learn more about How to Communicate After Divorce. Custody is extremely important to understand because it affects your responsibilities as a parent and the well-being, both emotionally and physically, of your children.
Child custody laws vary by state. Contact an experienced family law attorney or the local bar association in your state to learn more.
Legal custody is the authority to make decisions for and about a child. Joint legal custody also called shared legal custody, shared parental responsibility, etc. The alternative is sole legal custody , where one parent has full responsibility to make major decisions for the child. You need to specify in your parenting plan which legal custody option your family will use. This determines who makes decisions about your children's education, medical care, religion and more.
Custody X Change is software that creates professional parenting plans and parenting time schedules. Make My Schedule and Plan Now. You can have joint legal custody with sole physical custody or joint physical custody , which determine who your child lives with.
Joint legal custody is a way to give both parents a say in their child's upbringing. It is meant for cases in which both parents are able and available to make important decisions. In many states, it is the default option or is at least preferred over sole legal custody. In these states, sole legal custody is awarded when joint legal custody isn't in the best interest of the child. There are many ways parents can share legal custody. Your court may let you decide the specifics, or it may use one of the arrangements below or a variation as standard.
Option 1: Parents collaborate on all decisions, whenever feasible. To prevent a move, the noncustodial parent must go to court and show that the move would. So if the other parent's attorney tries to tell you that it doesn't matter whether you let the other parent have sole physical custody even though you spend significant time with the kids, don't buy it. Check with a lawyer about whether the decision could come back to haunt you later.
There's a strong preference among judges to order joint physical custody, in order to guarantee that children have regular contact with both parents. Some states direct judges to assume that joint physical custody is better, and require any parent who disagrees to provide evidence about why it's not a good idea in that particular case.
Shared physical custody means that the kids get to have two engaged and involved parents and two real homes—not one home and one place they go to visit their other parent. Joint physical custody doesn't always involve an exact time split, but it's usually something close.
This only works, however, if the parents live near enough to each other that the kids can move easily back and forth between houses and can maintain their regular activities no matter which house they're in.
Shared physical custody isn't always best when the parents really don't get along—the many transitions between parents create too many opportunities for conflict.
If one parent has the kids most of the time, that parent is usually granted sole physical custody, while the other parent gets the right to regularly schedule time with the kids, called either "visitation" or "parenting time.
The children spend most of their time there and see the other parent at regularly set times. In legal terms, the parent with sole physical custody is the custodial parent and the other is the noncustodial parent who has visitation rights. For a long time, lots of folks had a fairly standard "Wednesday night dinner and every other weekend" arrangement. Commonly, the mother had sole physical custody, and the father had visitation rights for one dinner a week and every other weekend.
Legal custody was often shared, but it wasn't unusual for the mother to have sole legal custody as well.
That schedule is still used regularly, but so are a lot of other schedules. The information provided on this site is not legal advice, does not constitute a lawyer referral service, and no attorney-client or confidential relationship is or will be formed by use of the site. The attorney listings on this site are paid attorney advertising.
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