SOLE CUSTODY – is it right for you?

Sole custody is when one parent makes all the serious decisions concerning the child’s life, including religious upbringing, schooling and medical care. That parent is also solely responsible for day-to-day decisions such as day care, after school care or activities, optional medical care and all free time activities.

The arrangement varies, but typically, the non-custodial parent has every other weekend with the child, beginning on Friday afternoons and ending Sunday night, plus a few hours or one sleep over during the week. Parents alternate holidays. A judge may split the Thanksgiving weekend, for example, or award Christmas Eve to one parent and Christmas Day to the other when it is feasible. The non-custodial parent typically has the children for four to eights weeks in the summer. Today judges who award sole custody to one parent give liberal visitation to the other.

Advantages of Sole Custody

Sole custody allows you to make major decisions relating to your children without consulting their other parent. One exception, though, is that you must consult about the time your child will be with the other. It lets you be in control.

Sole custody minimizes hassling with your ex, so if you don’t get along, you won’t have to communicate around issues that could be contentious.

Disadvantages of Sole Custody

If you only allow minimal time for your children to be with their other parent, you run the risk of psychological suffering. Your children may feel cheated out of a full relationship with this parent, and in turn resent you or your ex. Furthermore, the parent who does not have custody may feel so left out that he becomes withdrawn from the children’s life. He may even choose not to see the kids or to move away. Non-custodial parents tend to drop out of their children’s lives at a much greater rate than those in custody arrangements. A National Survey of Children study showed that 49 percent of children who lived with only one parent had not visited with their non-custodial parent in the last year, and only one in six saw that parent once a week or more. Having an absent parent, especially a father, in a sole custody arrangement has been linked to cognitive, conduct, and learning problems, as well as gender identification issues in children.

Sometimes having all the responsibility can be lonely and exhausting. If you work, you probably have a full time job at the office, and another when you get home. Your ex may not provide any emotional or financial support. This can be quite a burden.

Full-time single parenting leaves little time for oneself. If you want to move on with your life, get a rewarding job, or have a new relationship, it may be logistically challenging with children underfoot and little to no support.

Sole custody can often lead to financial repercussions. If your ex does not see the children as much as he would like and has little say in their life, he’s unlikely to chip in any extra money to raise your kids other than what is court ordered. You may feel strapped for money and your children may feel that they do not fit in with their friends. In fact, a 1996 U.S. Commission on Child and Family Welfare reported that to expect a father to continue to provide for a child’s well being through child support payments to an ex-spouse but to exclude him from his child’s life may promote anger, resentment, and a sense of “taxation without representation.”