Family Lawyers and Child Custody Issues

Child Custody lawyers are specialist family lawyers who are able to assist with the delicate matter concerning the custody of children.In the UK, child custody law determines who should be responsible for the care of the child and with whom the child should reside with.Good family lawyers are able to assist you with these matters and ensure that this emotionally difficult time runs as smoothly as possible for both parents and the children involved.The issue of child custody is something that usually occurs following divorce, however, child custody lawyers are not just consulted during a divorce of after the separation of a child’s parents. Their advice is quite commonly sought by unmarried parents and even other family members of the parents as to contact or by a third party at the time of a parent’s death or incapacity. Family lawyers will always put the best interests of the child first.Some divorce proceedings can manage fine without the consultation of child custody lawyers and some parents will cooperate when it comes to sharing their children and resort to mediation to settle a dispute, if anything.However, some custody battles become difficult and often consist of a number of various accusations being thrown at the other party in a bid to gain full custody of the child. It is these, infrequent yet difficult custody battles, they may benefit from the assistance of family lawyers.In some rare circumstances a parent may be permanently excluded from having any access to their child either by the other parent, social services or a court order. Where this is the case, the court has the right to change the decision at any point in time, should the circumstances change. This means that where, for example, the mother was a drug addict should be become clean and stays clean then she could re-apply for access. The courts also have the powers to limit this access to supervised visits to ensure that the safety and welfare of the child is paramount at all times.Types of CustodyThe three main types of custody that can be agreed upon or are often awarded by the courts are: -1. Sole custody is where one parent will have physical and legal custody of the child.2. Joint custody is where both parents hates the legal custody of the child and/or both parents have physical custody of the child.3. Split custody where one parent has full time custody over some of the children and the other has full custody of the other children.The term physical custody refers to the general day-to-day care of a child and usually covers the residence of the a child i.e. where they will live.If a child lives with both parents, each parent has what is known as ‘joint physical custody; and each parent is said to have custody of that child making the custody ‘joint’. Where joint physical custody is awarded or agreed upon by the parties, as is often the case with this type of custody, this means that the child often has two homes and shares his time between the two parents.Joint custody can work well as it means the parenting is shared and both parents share the responsibility of day-today decisions and main decisions are made by the person caring for the child on that particular day rather than having to consult the parent with sole custody.