The Legal Issues 143
The traditional sole custody order granted both physical and
legal custody to one parent, with rights of reasonable visitation to
the other. Under that approach, the parent with sole custody has
the major responsibility for caring for and raising the child(ren),
and that parent has the primary say on all matters concerning
their upbringing. This is clean, clear, and definite, and judges are
accustomed to seeing it. If this is what you want, you should have
little trouble obtaining court approval for such a request. How-
ever, there has been a growing trend for parents to request joint
custody as a means of encouraging the maximum involvement
of both parents, and many states’ laws have recently changed in
an effort to deal with this trend.
The old-school thinking in support of sole physical custody
awards was that it is the physical dislocation, the general discom-
bobulating of the child’s previously secure environment, that hurts
them the worst. Thus, the remedy that seemed to be needed was to
maintain as much continuity as possible in the child’s surround-
ings both during the divorce itself and also during the period fol-
lowing the divorce. The belief was that in this way kids would be
more able to maintain higher security and self-esteem by having a
safe environment and not having to move out of their home.
That is why courts used to grant sole custody to one parent
(usually mom) and then let mom stay in the house with the kids.
These stability factors were deemed to be the most important
aspects in minimizing the emotional damage that kids suffer from
their parents’ divorce.
Joint custody, on the other hand, means that both parents are
involved in making decisions about the children, such as what
school the children will attend, what sort of religious affiliation
they should have, and where they should reside. Separate pro-
visions can also be individually made for legal and for physical
custody, and each of these custody configurations can in turn be
handled on either a sole or joint basis. For example, custody pro-
visions that grant joint legal custody while awarding one parent
primary physical custody have become increasingly common.
Although judges will now routinely approve joint legal cus-
tody agreements, before they will approve a joint physical custody
arrangement they may want you to describe very specifically