Child Custody.

Child custody is a legal term that refers to which parent has the rights and responsibilities of physically caring for your children after divorce. Contrary to popular belief, child custody covers more than just where your children live. It also includes decisions on who your children see, how much time your children spend with you and the other parent, and potentially even where they go to school.

In the UK, there are four main types of child custody, which are:

1. Physical custody. This form of child custody sets out which parent your children live with on a daily basis. Physical custody can be broken into ‘sole physical custody’ and ‘joint physical custody’. Sole physical custody is where your children live primarily with one parent. In comparison, joint physical custody is where your children spend significant amounts of time living with both parents.

2. Legal custody. Legal custody is different from physical custody as it dictates which parent decides how your children are raised. An example of a legal custody responsibility is which school the children attend. However, like physical custody, this can either be one parent who has legal custody or both parents who share legal custody.

3. Full custody. This form of child custody is where one parent receives both physical and legal custody of their children.

4. Joint custody. This final form of child custody can be separated into three forms, which are:

• Physical joint custody. When children spend significant amounts of time living with both parents.
• Legal joint custody. Where both parents make decisions over their children’s upbringing.
• Joint physical and legal custody. When your children spend significant amounts of time living with both parents and both parents decide over the children’s upbringing.

There are two ways that you can get custody of your child. Firstly, you can negotiate with your former partner and reach an agreement over the child arrangements outside of court. Alternatively, you can start the child proceedings and reach an agreement in court. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t have to be done at the time of your divorce. Many couples will agree child custody informally during divorce, but fall out later down the line and require a formal court application.

Agreements outside of court aren’t legally binding. Therefore, if your former partner decides to ignore the agreement, there’s no legal enforcement. In this instance, you will need to take your partner to court to start the child proceedings to get an agreement legally bound.

The cost of a child custody case depends on a wide variety of factors, such as how willing the parents are to negotiate or the type of child custody in question. As a result, it’s impossible to provide a cost estimate for your specific child custody case without knowing more details.

For a more accurate price estimate for your case, our solicitors will require an initial consultation. This initial consultation is untimed, so you’ll have as long as you need with our child custody solicitor to run through all the details of your matter. During the consultation, our child custody solicitor will give you an overview of your standpoint from a legal perspective and provide you with a more precise cost and time estimate for your case.

We are currently unable to offer legal aid in any capacity as we lack the necessary legal aid certificate. We also don’t offer pro bono child law work at present.