Among the most critical divorce aspects that courts decide on are custody and visitation rights for the divorcing spouses. Just because spouses are divorcing does not mean that children and parents will be divorced too. Therefore, California law accords special attention when it comes to protecting child-parent relationships even after divorce.
The law allows two forms of custody- physical and legal. The latter involves making critical decisions for the minor, such as which school they'll attend or what doctor will attend to them. The former involves where the minor will physically live. Both of these custody types can be sole or joint. In most cases, family courts grant joint child custody. However, there are instances when joint custody isn't in the child's best interests. Therefore, in a situation like this, the court may grant sole child custody to one spouse while the other will be granted visitation rights.
In California, visitation rights take four forms:
- Supervised visitation whereby a professional or the other parent ought to be present during visitation
- An open-ended agreement between parents to develop a practical visitation plan
- A comprehensive visitation schedule
- Disallowance of all the rights to visitation
The judge has the discretion to act as they deem fit when deciding on visitation rights and custody matters. However, they prefer allowing parents to develop a plan by themselves, possibly with help from a mediator appointed by the court.
