Custody & Visitation

“Legal custody” refers to the ability to make important decisions about your children’s health, education, and welfare. What school should they attend? What medical care should they receive? Should participating in extracurricular activities be tied to their grades? You can have joint legal custody, where the parents make those decisions together, or sole legal custody, where only one parent has a say.

“Physical custody” has to do with where the children live or sleep most of the time. It’s a general concept about what is a child’s “home”, and doesn’t refer to a specific schedule. Again, the order will be either joint physical or sole physical. Even if one parent has sole physical custody, the other parent may have the right of visitation. Joint physical custody is the norm, but the Court may order sole physical custody if the parents live far away from each other, or if the children are with one parent almost all the time.

So if legal and physical custody are either “joint” or “sole,” why do we hear people talking about “50-50 custody”?

“Fifty-fifty” (or “70-30” or “60-40” or any other percentage breakdown) refers to the visitation schedule or parenting plan, but really the only time we refer to percentages is when calculating child support. When people say they want “fifty-fifty” custody, they are saying that the child should spend the exact same number of hours a week with each parent. 

Don’t get stuck in the mindset that “50-50” is what you want or need or deserve. There’s no “right” to an equal time share — it all depends on what is best for your child. Work with your lawyer to discuss schedules, day care, extracurricular activities, carpooling, and the many other factors that will go into coming up with the best possible parenting plan.

After the parties have met with FCS and the mediator has sent out the report, the parties must make a good-faith effort to meet and confer with the other side to come to an agreement before the judge will hear them. The earlier this is done, the greater the chance that the sides will come to an agreement and can avoid the hearing entirely.

If no agreement is made, the parties will attend a hearing, either in person or by Zoom. The ‘regular domestic calendar’ for the Sonoma County Family Court has both morning and afternoon appearances (8:30 a.m. or 1:30 p.m.) and this is when your hearing will be scheduled. Depending on how many cases are on calendar and in what order they’re called, you may need to be present from 8:30 a.m. all the way up until noon, or from 1:30 p.m. all the way up until five.

At the hearing, the judge reviews the results of the Family Court Services appointment and asks whether both parties have read the mediator’s report. If the report includes an agreement, the judge asks whether the parties are still on board. If there is no agreement, the judge will take about 15-20 minutes for each case – ten minutes per side – to hear oral argument from the lawyers and/or self-represented parties. At the end of the hearing, the judge will make new custody and/or visitation and/or parenting orders, which generally go into effect immediately and are written up shortly after the hearing.