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Familiarize Yourself with the Different Custody Arrangements
There are many different kinds of child custody you will need to make yourself familiar with if you are going to go through a custody battle. If you learn the laws and different types of custody, it will help you when you are making decisions regarding your and your children’s futures.
One of the different custody arrangements is called Legal Child Custody. The two most used arrangements are legal child custody and joint child custody. The parent that makes all the major decisions for the child has legal child custody. They will make any decisions concerning health, school, religious and many more.
There are two types of legal custody. They are sole custody and joint custody. The parent that has sole custody will make all the major decisions for the child, which includes all the medical and educational decisions. When parents have a shared custody or joint legal custody, both parents will share all the responsibility of the decision making process. With this type of custody, both parents have a hand in deciding where the child will go to church, all medical issues and deciding where the children will go to school.
Physical child custody is the decision of where the children will live. If you have sole physical custody, the children will live with one parent. There will be visitation arrangements for the other parent. If you are looking into joint physical custody or shared parenting it will give physical custody to both of the parents. In this type of custody, the child may stay with one of the parents during the week and then will go the other parent for the weekends. In some cases, the child will stay in the same home and the parent will rotate. Also, you may receive joint legal custody, but not be rewarded joint physical custody. All cases are different and you will want to contact your family lawyer to determine what is best in your situation.
You may find yourself thinking that when you go to court that the judge will favor with the arrangement that is in the best interest of the child. How is this considered? What kind of factors does the court take into consideration when determining which is best? Joint or sole custody? It is important that you hire someone that can represent you in this big life decision. They will be able to answer any questions you have regarding the child custody decisions you are going to face.
Some of the important decision factors are how old the children are and what the parents are petitioning to the court. Also, the relationship between the parents will be evaluated and the relationships between the parents and their children. Mental health conditions will also be a large factor. It seems that parents that have a strong desire to work with the other parent may provide a more stable environment for the children. The environment of the home and what the parent can provide for the child is most important, emotionally and physically.