• Who Gets the Children These Days?paternity image by Indigo Fish from Fotolia.com
  
  When a parent holds his newborn child for the first time, he never wants to envision a day when he will only see that child every other weekend, yet custody issues affect nearly one million American children. The good news is that the law evolves and custody norms have made some significant leaps forward in recent decades.
  
  

Tender Years Doctrine

• Almost since divorce has been recognized as a legal alternative to a bad marriage, the concept of the "tender years doctrine" has existed. It presumes that only a mother is capable of nurturing a child. Elizabeth Baldwin, an attorney practicing in Florida, says that overturning this doctrine flies in the face of biology. Nursing infants, for example, are wholly dependent upon their mothers. Yet all but five states (Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee) now declare in their legislative codes that parents are to be considered equal regardless of their gender. And Jeff Atkinson, author of the American Bar Association's Guide to Family Law, says that he sees a "slow movement toward paternal custody."
  
  

Joint Parenting

• Almost all state courts lean toward joint legal custody these days. In fact, only three (Arkansas, New York and North Dakota) have no legislative provisions for it. Legal custody refers to the decision-making processes that parents must engage in as they raise a child. Joint physical custody, which means that a child must split his time between two parents' households, is less commonly awarded. According to a study published by Stanford University, "educated" parents tend to be better able to deal with shared physical custody.
  
  

Anger Issues

• Divorce can be a nasty business and spouses can come out of it hating each other. If they're parents, this can be especially hard on the children. According to Elizabeth Baldwin, judges are increasingly considering the ability of one parent to foster a relationship for their child with the other parent.
  
  

Best Interests of the Child Standard

• Every state now falls back on this concept as the basis upon which their judges will decide custody. The standard takes into consideration several factors, some of which are a contradiction in terms. One factor under the standard is which parent can spend the most time with the child. Another is which parent can best financially provide for the child. Obviously, the parent who is away from home earning cannot simultaneously be nurturing the child.
  
  

Influence on Child Support

• Lately, more and more states are counting "overnights" into their child support equations---how many nights per month the child spends with the non-custodial parent. The idea is that if the child is with dad, then dad shouldn't have to pay support during that time. According to Elizabeth Baldwin, this concept was launched in order to encourage fathers (who still tend to be the non-custodial, support-paying parent) to spend more time with their kids after a divorce. The downside, of course, is that they're being rewarded financially for doing so, and for some fathers, the money is their sole concern.