Joint physical custody

Joint custody is a court order whereby custody of a child is awarded to both parties. In joint custody both parents are custodial parents and neither parent is a non-custodial parent, or, in other words, the child has two custodial parents. In the United States, many states recognize two forms of joint custody, which include joint physical custody (called also "shared custody" or "shared placement") and joint legal custody. In joint physical custody, the actual lodging and care of the child is shared according to a court-ordered custody schedule. In joint legal custody, both parents share the ability to have access to their children's records, such as educational records, health records, and other records.Although the child may legally pick where they want to live at the age of 14 in the states of Michigan, California, Indiana, Florida,Nevada, South and North Dakota.

In England, prior to the nineteenth century, common law considered children to be the property of their father. However, the economic and social changes that occurred during the nineteenth century lead to a shift in ideas about the dynamics of the family.Industrialization separated the home and the workplace, keeping fathers away from their children in order to earn wages and provide for their family. Conversely, mothers were expected to stay in the home and care for the household and the children. Important social changes such as women's suffrage and child development theories allowed for ideas surrounding the importance of maternal care.

There has been a major shift which is favoring joint custody in the United States court system, which began in the mid-1980s. This change has shifted the emphasis from having the need for the child to have an attachment to one "psychological" parent to the need to have an ongoing relationship between both parents.

Originally, joint legal custody meant joint custody. In this joint legal custody arrangement, the child's parents shared responsibility over discussing issues related to the child-rearing. In these arrangements with joint legal custody, one of the parents was awarded physical custody, which designated them as the primary parent, or one of the parents was allowed to determine the primary residence of the children. Though this implied that both parents had a "significant period" of time with the children, it did nothing to ensure this factor, which meant that the parent without primary custody of the child could end up having little opportunity to see his or her children.

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