Why Go for Joint Custody?

Whether you call it joint child custody, co-parenting, or shared parental responsibility, when parents can raise their children together without a high degree of conflict, statistics show this type of parenting is best for the children.

Or course, parents divorce because they are unable to resolve issues in their marital relationship. Naturally, barriers exist in getting along with each other that they must overcome for joint child custody to work.

What Children Prefer

An article in Psychology Today lists reasons why co-parenting is the preferred arrangement. The article promotes considering what is in the child’s best interests from a child’s perspective. It offers arguments for shared responsibility, stating that shared responsibility does the following:

• Preserves children’s relationships with both parents and parents’ relationships with their children
• Reflects children’s preferences and views about their needs and best interests along with parents’ preferences and views about their children’s needs and best interests
• Decreases parental conflict and prevents family violence
• Reflects child care-giving arrangements that existed before divorce
• Enhances the quality of parent-child relationships
• Decreases parents’ focus on turning time spent with children into a statistic and reduces litigation
• Provides an incentive for negotiation, mediation and development of parenting plans
• Provides a clear and consistent guideline for judicial decision-making
• Reduces the risk and occurrence of parental alienation
• Enables parenting orders to be more easily enforced because of equal responsibility
• Addresses social justice in protecting children’s rights

When violence and high conflict aren’t an issue, children typically want both parents in their lives and want to have meaningful relationships with both parents.

New York courts weigh a child’s preference on custody more heavily when the child is 13 years or older, and this is true even when they do not rule as a child would want. Courts also try not to separate siblings from each other whenever possible.

Do You Have Questions about Child Custody?

Attorney Chris Palermo is glad to answer your questions, help you consider all the aspects of child custody and to protect your rights as a parent.