Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce - Emily Doskow [82]
The proximity of your home to your spouse's may also factor in to the judge's decision. The closer you are, the more likely the judge will order a time-sharing plan that gives both parents significant time with the kids. The location of their school and their social and sports activities may also matter.
Each parent's willingness to support the other's relationship with the children. The judge will look at your record of cooperating-or not with your spouse about your parenting schedule. The judge might also want to know things like whether you bad-mouth your spouse in front of the kids or interfere with visitation in any way. The more cooperative parent is going to have an edge in a custody dispute-and a parent who's obviously trying to alienate a child from the other parent will learn the hard way that courts don't look kindly on that type of interference. In other words, taking the high road can serve your self-interest here.
The judge will also look at how you and your spouse communicate and cooperate in making decisions about your children. A judge is much more likely to grant joint legal custody where you are able to make decisions effectively.
Each parent's relationship with the children before the divorce. It sometimes happens that parents who haven't been much involved with their kids' lives suddenly develop a strong desire to spend more time with the children once the marriage has ended. In many cases, this desire is sincere, and a judge will respect it, especially if the parent has been dedicated to parenting during the separation period. But the judge will definitely take some time to evaluate a parent's change of heart and ensure that the custody request isn't being made primarily to win out over the other parent.
Children's preferences. If children are old enough-usually, older than 12 or so-a judge may talk to them to find out their preferences about custody and visitation. Some states require courts to consider kids' views, but others disapprove of bringing the kids into it at all. The judge also may learn about the children's preferences from a custody evaluator. (See "Your Kids and the Court Process: Custody Evaluations," below.)
Religion and Custody
In some states, whether or not a parent provides religious training to children can be factored into custody and visitation decisions. For example, in some states, courts have concluded that learning two religions is not harmful to children, while others have reached the opposite decision and ordered one parent to stop teaching religion to the child. Courts have also made orders that a parent take the children to church during visitation times (because they're used to going to church on other Sundays) and that religious practices that are outside of the mainstream (like Jehovah's Witnesses) are not inherently harmful to children and can't be limited by court order. In other words, the courts are all over the map, and the rules depend on where you live.
If you have sole legal custody of your kids, you can pretty much make whatever decisions you want about their religious upbringing (though in most cases you can't control what they do when they're with the other parent, and an Oregon court recently ruled that even a parent with sole custody couldn't have his 12-year-old son circumcised over the other parent's objections). But if you share legal custody with your spouse, you can't make unilateral decisions about things like sending your kids to religious school. If you and your spouse disagree, you'll have to work it out, take it to mediation, or ask a judge to decide.
Continuity and stability. When it comes to children, judges are big on the status quo, because most of them believe that piling more change on top of the traumatic transition of divorce generally isn't good for kids. So if you're arguing that things are working fine, you've got a leg up on a spouse who's arguing for a major change in the custody or visitation schedule