When your parents live together, they are both responsible for taking care of you. When your parents stop living together, this might change.
For example, if your parents can’t agree on custody and parenting time, even with the help of a mediator, they will have to go to court and have a judge decide. If this happens, the judge can order sole custody or joint custody.
Here are some things that will be taken into consideration when the judge is making decisions about custody:
If one parent has custody, the other parent usually has parenting time or visitation, which means that you visit him or her. There are lots of different ways to arrange how you spend time with the parent who has parenting time. Visits might be for a few hours a week, a few days a week, just weekends, or another arrangement that fits your family. If the parent with parenting time lives far away, parenting time can also include keeping in touch in other ways, like phone calls, e-mails, and letters. Parenting agreements may be very specific—spelling out specific hours and days for visits—or very general and flexible.