When you're fighting for full physical custody of your child, it means that you want to be the primary caretaker of your son or daughter, and you want the other parent to merely have visitation rights. If you succeed, you will be known as the "custodial parent," and your child will live with you full time. Meanwhile, the other parent will be characterized as the "noncustodial parent" and have the right to visit the child according to a regular visitation schedule.
Plan for changes in visitation to avoid arguments
Visitation is a major sticking point in almost every divorce case involving children. No parent wants to lose time with their child, so having to divide time is difficult.
How to make a long-distance parenting plan
Parents are not always lucky enough to live close to one another. When two parents share custody, but they live a long distance apart, they will need to make strategic use of holiday schedules to ensure that the noncustodial parent -- i.e., the parent with whom the children do not live -- gets to continue spending quality time with children.
These celebrities battled in court over their kids
Anyone who glances at the news from time to time is well aware of the fact that celebrities are prone to having relationship troubles. Even worse, those who are married tend to have ugly divorce proceedings when lots of money and children are involved. Here are three examples of celebrity child custody battles and their results:
Brad Pitt gets to see his children every other day
In spite of an intense custody battle with his estranged spouse, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt has recently spent every other day with his six children. This every-other-day visitation arrangement has begun after the recent expiration of the couple's temporary summer custody agreement. At this time, the couple's court-ordered custody evaluation has not been completed, so permanent legal arrangements are pending.
Sharing holiday time with the other parent of your kids
Barring rare circumstances, the other parent of your children will usually share custody with you -- and at the very least, this parent will have visitation rights. This means that when important holidays come around, you'll have to find a way of sharing this time with the other parent of your kids.
4 ways to share your parenting time
Newly divorcing parents will need to find a suitable way to divide the time they spend with their children. The best way to arrive at a suitable and lawfully appropriate parenting-time agreement is to stay flexible to what works for you, your child, the other parent and your unique situations. Here are four ways that parents might split the time they spend with their kids:
What is therapeutically supervised visitation?
Florida parents don't always have the legal right to spend time with their kids. When a parent is denied access to his or her children like this, however, it's painful and damaging for both the parent and the child. In fact, children can grow up with emotional scars when they're denied access to a mother or father for legal reasons. For this reason, Florida courts will strive to ensure that children have access to both parents. Courts may even award supervised visitation in cases where the court believes that the parent poses a danger or threat to the safety of the child.
Quality of life in marriage, credit-card debt and child support
Just like some are content with one beer and others are not, some can spend responsibly and others are swipe-happy with their credit cards. If you're a responsible spender, and you're married to a swipe-happy person, you may be suffering financially because of it. In fact, many decide to bring their marriages to a close because of their spouses' out-of-control spending habits. When one spouse racks up large credit card bills, however, the other spouse might might wonder how will this debt will be divided in divorce and will the false quality of life made possible by the debt affect child support amounts?
Do you need to factor third-party time into your parenting plan?
You and your ex will be the ones who spend the most time with your children. There's no doubt about that. As such, the primary purpose of your parenting plan is to decide how you and your ex will divide the time with your kids between one another. An important way to ensure this division is fair involves taking into account third-party time.
