When planning for a divorce, it’s essential to know what options are available to you regarding custody of your children.

Legal Custody

Legal custody means that you get to make legal decisions for your children regarding their education, whether or not the child will be raised within any religion, and medical decisions.

Sole Legal Custody

When one parent has the sole power to make decisions about the child’s health, location, education, and wellness, then they are said to have sole legal custody.

However, modifications can be made to the child custody agreement if there are permanent changes on the part of the parent who does not have sole custody. These changes cannot be based on sudden good luck.

Joint Custody

This is when both parents have the right to make the aforementioned decisions. Joint custody is an option divorcing couples choose to share as much equal time with their children as possible. There are some difficulties that come to newly single parents with joint custody, such as the constant moving of kids around, maintenance of vastly different schedules and the necessity to keep good relations and constant cooperation with the other parent. It can be a very satisfying option for two people trying to maximize the amount of time they have with their children. Spending time with your children will not be monitored, and you will both be able to continue doing things as you did before — take your kid to the emergency room, sign field trip papers, etc. This agreement can last as long as no custody agreement modifications are filed by either parent.

Note, however, that this is not the same as joint physical custody, which is explained below.

Physical Custody

Physical custody, also called residential custody, refers to the physical location where the child will be living. This is an important distinction if one parent decides to move to another state or area.

Joint Physical Custody

As a parent, you can have joint power to make decisions with the other parent, but you may not live with your children half of the week or year. This would be a situation where you’d have joint physical custody over your children, where the children spend an almost equal amount of time with both parents.

Sole Physical Custody

This is when the child lives with only one of the parents in one location. The child may see the non-custodial parent during pre-determined visits.

Visits

If you do not have custody of your children then you can be granted unsupervised visits with your children. You will be able to take your kids to your home or out without anyone dictating to you what you can do or monitoring you. Supervised visits, on the other hand, are monitored by a person selected by the court. In some cases that person can be another trusted family member.

When You Need To Change Custody Agreements

The custody agreement you made when you were getting divorced may not be what you want it to be now. You may have been in a different frame of mind than with the overwhelming tasks of getting divorced. Or things may have changed in your ex-spouse’s life, such as losing a job, getting into an abusive relationship or showing signs of being mentally unfit. If you need to make a change to your custody agreement then you should contact a custody lawyer with your concerns.