What Is Joint Child Custody

Mom and dad are splitting up. Custody of the children is an unknown factor at this point. Do you or should you both want joint child custody? Do you both want joint child custody for the sake of the kids? Do you both want a say in the kids lives?

In this custody agreement mom and dad share the responsibility of making choices for their children. Joint child custody can cover both physical and legal Legal matters pertaining to the children.

The parent with legal custody gets to make all the decisions of a child's life including health-doctor, Education-school, Welfare of said child. Physical custody is who the child will actually be with most of the time.

Both parents can have joint custody in these two areas. One parent may have the child during the week for school. The parents may split the time during the week. This has to be thought through very carefully. You do not want to make it tough for the child while in school. Staying at a parents house during part of the week that is quite a ways away from the child's school will make it tough on the that child and can affect the school work being done.

Now if the parents have split up and are both still in the same school district this would not be a problem.

How do you about obtaining the joint child custody result? The parents may differ on this.

The least amount of stress can be put on the children by the parents working out a joint custody deal between themselves. This will save each parent a significant amount of money in terms of lawyer's fees and court costs.

The other way is to go to court and let the judge decide. Joint child custody may be granted depending on the parents. He also may rule that one parent would be better for the child to stay with. This is most certainly true in the case of mental and physical abuse to the child by one of the parents.

The state in which you reside needs to be taken into acccount. There are states that are no fault states as is the case in Pennsylvania.

What this means is that no matter how many times you spouse has cheated on you, the courts will not take this into consideration when it comes to determining if joint child custody is warranted.

The best thing you can do to prepare yourself and to increase your chances of joint child custody is to get as much information and some proven strategies that will work in you favor.