The Legal Perspective
Before you separated, perhaps you made many decisions together. You chose an obstetrician for yourself or your spouse when a pregnancy was confirmed. After your children were born, you selected a pediatrician. You decided whether to raise your children in a religion. If you were both working, you selected child care. As the children grew older, you decided whether to send them to nursery school. When it came time for kindergarten, you decided when to start your children and picked their schools. You decided to put braces on your children's teeth. You probably planned to decide on high schools together and help your children make college choices. Divorce will complicate this, and you may find it challenging to figure out the laws that apply in your case. The American Bar Association website,
There are several divorce education programs available in the United States today. If you're having difficulty helping your children understand certain aspects of divorce, such as custody issues, you may want to consider attending one of these programs to help both you and your children through these trying times. Check with your child's school to see if they have a support group for children or consult your church or local community agency for suggestions.
Legal Custody
The law calls making decisions about your children's health care, education, religious upbringing, and so on legal custody. As part of your divorce, you'll choose — or the court will decide — whether you'll have joint legal custody or whether one of you will have sole legal custody. Joint legal custody means you make these decisions together. Sole legal custody means one of you will have total authority over these decisions.
Physical Custody
Before you separated, maybe you divided responsibility for taking care of the children. One or both of you got the children up, fed them breakfast, and got them to school or to the school bus. One of you took them to soccer practice. One of you volunteered in your children's classrooms. Each of you spent time with your children. The law calls the actual time you spend with your children physical custody.
If both of you continue to share the actual hands-on care of the children, this is called joint or shared physical custody. If the children spend most of their time with one parent, that parent is said to have sole physical custody or primary physical custody. Sometimes parents divide responsibility by actually dividing the children. One parent takes the older children and one the younger. This arrangement is called split custody. Courts and psychologists agree this usually isn't good for children. Most take the position that children should stay together whenever possible.
