Physical custody is best understood as the designation of who the children are with and when they are with them. 

If you’ve already read my post on legal custody, you know physical custody is not the same as legal custody.  You can click HERE to learn about legal custody.  The phrase “joint custody” is a synonym for, and carries the same legal meaning as, “joint legal custody.”  It is often used when parents are sharing 50/50 physical custody, but the phrase “joint custody” does not carry the legal meaning of 50/50 physical custody.  What matters in terms of physical custody is not whatever you call it, but what the custodial schedule is. 

“Primary physical custody” is a description of a custodial schedule wherein one parent has more custodial time overall than the other.  It is a description, not the bestowing of a specific custodial right.  This schedule involves one parent having primary physical custody and the other parent have secondary physical custody in the form of visitation.  This can take the form of the visiting parent having every-other weekend visitation from Friday-Sunday.  Historically, this was probably the most common schedule.  However, I feel comfortable saying that most judges now believe that this is not enough time for children to spend with, learn from and be co-parented by the visiting parent.  Indeed, some judges and some entire counties full of judges believe that 50/50 physical custody should be the presumption, rather than the exception.  There are many ways to give a parent with visitation every other weekend more time with the children without going all the way to a 50/50 schedule, and any combination of these should be considered as possible avenues of compromise and settlement:

•  The visitation weekend could end on Monday with a return to school, rather than on Sunday.

• The visitation weekend could start on Thursday, rather than Friday, in order to give the visiting parent a night to be involved in homework and the school routine.

• The visiting parent could have a dinner night each week or on each week that they don’t already have a visitation weekend coming up.

• The visiting parent could have a mid-week overnight during the week that they don’t already have a visitation weekend coming up.

• A 50/50 week-on, week-off custodial schedule during summer when school is out.

“Shared physical custody” is the way I would describe a 50/50 custodial schedule or something close to it.  Whether your judge will impose this type of schedule, or a primary physical custody schedule is highly dependent on the facts of your case, your judge’s view of those facts and your judge’s views of the benefits and drawbacks of shared vs. primary physical custody schedules.  Many factors will be considered, such as the proximity of each parent’s home to the other and to the children’s school(s), the historical involvement of each parent in the daily care of the children, whether the parents have been following a schedule on their own after their separation but before coming to Court and whether that schedule is working, the work schedules of the parents and their availability to be home with the children after school to take care of the nuts and bolts of the school night, the relative ability of the parents to communicate and handle the job of a 50/50 custodian, substance abuse issues, and countless others.   There are many different ways to do a shared custody schedule, and they do not all have to be exactly 50/50 schedules.  Here are the most common forms of a shared physical custody schedules, in my experience:

• Week-on, week-off – Sunday to Sunday or Monday to Monday with exchanges at school (often preferable when parents do not exactly get along).  This is the version of a 50/50 schedule that has the most minimal transitions between households, and I would consider this the most common version of a 50/50 schedule in Harnett County.

• 2-2-3 – This refers to a two-week repeating schedule where one parent has Monday-Wednesday (2 overnights), the other has Wednesday-Friday (2 overnights) and the parent who had Monday-Wednesday has the weekend from Friday-Monday (3 overnights).  The next week the parents switch to where the parent who had Wednesday-Friday for the prior week has Monday-Wednesday and the weekend from Friday-Monday.  The upside to this schedule is that neither parent ever goes more than 3 days without seeing the children, which can be preferable, especially for young children.  The downside is that it can get confusing and less consistent for the parents and the children, and it can be hard to plan trips out of town if you don’t co-parent well and there is a lot of back and forth between the households. 

• 2-2-5-5 – This refers to a schedule where one parent has Monday-Wednesday every week, the other parent has Wednesday-Friday every week and the parents alternate Friday-Monday every other week. Functionally, this means you will either have two consecutive overnights with the children or 5 consecutive overnights, because when you have the weekend, it will either be attached to your Monday-Wednesday or your Wednesday-Friday. This is somewhat of a hybrid between the week-on, week-off and the 2-2-3 schedule. It has the benefit of offering each parent a block of 5 days to spend with the children without having a transition between households. However, it is sometimes difficult for both parents to agree that one will have every Monday-Wednesday and the other every Wednesday-Friday, for various reasons.