CHILD CUSTODY LAWS IN CALIFORNIA EXPLAINED - VIDEO #24 (2020)

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Tutorial video in a series of DIY divorce videos explaining child custody laws in California.

Legal custody is all about making decisions regarding the health, education, and welfare of the children. There is “joint legal custody” and “sole legal custody”. Joint legal custody means you and your spouse equally share in the rights and responsibilities of making decisions that concern the health, education, and welfare of your children. Examples of these kinds of decisions are decisions about which school or daycare the children will attend; what kinds of extracurricular activities they will participate in, deciding which doctor and dentist will treat them; what kind of medical or dental treatment they will receive; whether they will receive therapy; etc.

If you and your spouse have “joint legal custody”, you are required to discuss, in good faith, these decisions and make joint decisions. If you have “sole legal custody”, then you can make all of these decisions by yourself and you are not obligated to obtain the consent of your spouse before making important decisions about your children’s health, education, and welfare.

Most people agree to joint legal custody. However, there are a number of reasons why you may want sole legal custody. If you were the victim of domestic violence during the marriage, you may not want to have discussions after the divorce with your ex-spouse about the children. If, during the marriage, you were the parent that assumed sole responsibility for dealing with the children’s school, doctors, dentist, and extracurricular activities, then you and your spouse may both agree that you should continue in this role. If you anticipate that your spouse will oftentimes be unresponsive or slow to respond when it comes to making decisions about the children, then you may want to have sole legal custody.

“Physical custody” refers to how much time the children spend with each parent. Like with legal custody, when it comes to physical custody, you can have “joint physical custody” or “sole physical custody”. Joint physical custody means the parents are sharing physical custody of the children in some way. Many people think that “joint physical custody” means 50/50 custody. Although 50/50 custody is a form of joint physical custody, any arrangement whereby the children spend some amount of time in each parent’s physical custody is a “joint physical custody” agreement. So, if the kids are with Dad 20% of the time and with Mom 80% of the time, that is still a form of “joint physical custody”. “Sole physical custody” means the children are in just one parent’s physical custody. There are lots of different terms that people use when making physical custody orders. For example, terms may be used such as “primary physical custody” or “primary residence of the children” or the phrase “reasonable rights of visitation” may be used instead of having the agreement say one parent has physical custody.

If Dad has only “reasonable rights of visitation”, the agreement is so vague that it is essentially unenforceable. Dad could call Mom 20 times and ask to visit with the children and Mom could refuse visitation all 20 times without technically being in violation of the court’s order because “reasonable rights of visitation” is not precisely defined.

If you and your spouse can’t reach an agreement about how to share custody of our children, one option is to see if your spouse is willing to meet with a therapist that specializes in child custody issues. Oftentimes, a good therapist can help you come to an agreement on child custody issues. Another option is to meet with a private mediator to resolve the custody dispute.

If you end up having to litigate child custody disputes, the court will require you and your spouse to participate in a court program called “Child Custody Mediation” or sometimes it is called “Child Custody Recommending Counseling”. You will be required to participate in one of these programs before you attend any child custody hearing. We discuss how to prepare for and what to do during “Child Custody Mediation” or “Child Custody Recommending Counseling” in a later video when we start talking about contested divorce cases and “Temporary Orders”.

Видео CHILD CUSTODY LAWS IN CALIFORNIA EXPLAINED - VIDEO #24 (2020) канала Free Divorce