Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce - Emily Doskow [67]
Courts make decisions about legal and physical custody separately. For example, it's not unusual for parents to have joint legal custody, but for one parent to have sole physical custody and the other to have regular visitation. Legal custody, remember, just refers to making decisions about your child's life, and you can make those jointly, no matter where your child lives.
How custody is characterized now can affect you later. For example, in California and some other states, a parent with physical custody has a presumed right to move away with the kids; to keep the kids nearby, the noncustodial parent must go to court and show that the move would he harmful to the kids. So if your spouse'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.
The High Road: Agreeing With Your Spouse on a Parenting Plan
Many spouses disagree to some extent about how they will share time with their children. But you don't have to be on good terms or in complete agreement about everything in order to negotiate an effective parenting plan. You just need to be willing to put your children's needs first.
If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Mom's House: Typical Custody Arrangements
Divorced parents share custody in a wide variety of ways. Especially as many fathers stay more actively involved in parenting than did the dads of previous generations, parents are coming up with new and different time-sharing agreements.
What will it really be like to continue parenting with your ex when you don't live together anymore? You can no longer use the fly-bythe-seat-of-your-pants method that might have worked when you all lived together, to determine who took care of what on any given day. Instead, you'll need an agreement and a plan about sharing time with your kids, and about what your responsibilities are now.
Giving Your Kids a Say
Your kids may have strong opinions about where they want to live and how much they want to visit the noncustodial parent. Very young children obviously won't have much say about custody and visitation, but older kids have their own activities, commitments, and attachments, which deserve to be considered. Generally, they'll want to be where their friends are and will resent a schedule that interferes with their activities. If you and your spouse don't end up living near each other, you'll have to figure out how forceful you'll be when teens don't like the plan you've come up with.
If you talk to your kids about custody or visitation, make sure you don't pressure them. Just listen to what they have to say and tell them you'll take their views into account. Never tell them that you'll be sad or lonely if they want to spend time with your ex or live in that parent's home instead of yours.
Sole Custody and Visitation
A very common arrangement is for one parent to stay in the family home with the kids. The children spend most of their time there and see the other parent at regularly set times. In legal terms, one is the custodial parent and the other 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. In other words, the mother had sole physical custody, and the father had visitation rights for one dinner a week and every other weekend. That schedule is still used regularly.
Joint Custody
Some parents really do share physical custody 50-50 or something fairly close. But to make this work it's crucial for the parents to live near each other; otherwise kids can't move easily back and forth or continue with their regular activities. Also, carefully consider the frequency