If you’re facing a custody battle, be sure to ensure that custody or guardianship is in your child’s best interest. A deeper understanding of the legal implications will be important. This is why we’ve compiled the Virginia Child Custody Guide to give you the information you need to protect your children’s good interests.
Single guardianship is defined as an organization in which one person is responsible for the care and control of a child and has primary decision – making authority over the child. A guardian parent has the final say in important decisions that affect children who live mainly with either parent. With custody of your child, it’s important to understand the different types of guardianships and custody problems parents face in Virginia. AEUR ™ shared rights and responsibilities in decisions that affect the child. A parent assumes the primary responsibility for the care and control of a child in the custody of another parent or a guardian parent.
The court considers what is in the best interest of the child. Shared custody means (I) provides for joint physical custody, whereby the parent retains the primary responsibility for the care and control of a child and for decisions concerning that child, and (ii) the children’s principal residence, which may be a joint custody agreement where the parents share the Child’s physical custodial care. Under the shared support guidelines, the primary caregiver will typically receive at least 90 days of physical custody of the child. It is therefore important to understand how these days are calculated for the purposes of this 90-day rule. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Joint Custody Guidelines states that the guidelines for joint custody for children apply only to parents who have physical Custodial Care of a child for more than 90 Days. It states that the guidelines for joint maintenance of a child apply to a period of twenty – four hours. This means that if, however, the parent who should have custody for that day or period spends the night with the child and exercises physical custody of the common child, there is a 90-day threshold for the number of days a parent should be having custody during that period. Moreover, parents themselves may agree to apply for guidelines of joint custody over the children after the 90-day threshold is met. If the parents who have physical Custodial Care of children raised for more than 90 days do not use the guideline of “joint custody,” then it does not apply.
The term “divided custody” describes the custody of children who live alternately with one parent and with another parent. If the children live with both parents, then the parent has primary custody and the parents behave in separate custody. Separate guardianship for the purposes of child support is a mechanism by which parents are not to be subject to the same rules and regulations as their respective children.