Legal custody

Child custody is a term that refers to the bundle of rights and responsibilities that a parent carries with respect to his/her child. Child custody includes numerous concepts; some of which overlap and some that are distinct. The term child custody can be further broken down into terms that shed additional light and provide a greater understanding of the respective parents’ rights and obligations with respect to their common child.

Legal Custody is the parent with legal custody can make all decisions regarding the health, welfare and education of the child. A parent with legal custody can make decisions about schooling, religion, and medical care, for example. In many states, courts regularly award joint legal custody, which means that the decision making is shared by both parents.

If you share joint legal custody with the other parent you cannot exclude him from his rights. You won't get fined or go to jail, but it will probably be embarrassing because you'll have to go to the court -- which may harm the children.

The Joint Legal custody is where the children live with one parent (residential custodian) while the other parent has visitation rights. With Joint Legal Custody, both parents make the decisions on behalf of the children concerning health, education, religion and general welfare.

The Sole legal custody is when one parent has the right to make all the legal decisions regarding issues such as health, education, general welfare and religion but this type of custody is not very common anymore.