Children's Issues
Paternity, Legal Decision Making, Parenting Time, and Child Support
When people who have a minor child in common go separate ways, the family court’s role is to ensure that appropriate arrangements are made for the child. If the parents were married, then the family court will enter orders about the child as part of the divorce or legal separation case. If the parents were not married, the court generally does not get involved until one parent asks them to by filing a paternity case. While every case (and every child) is unique in some ways, three issues that Arizona family court cases involving children have in common are legal decision making authority (sometimes abbreviated as “LDMA”), parenting time, and child support.
Legal Decision Making Authority
Legal decision making authority is similar to what some jurisdictions call “legal custody.” Legal decision making is about major life decisions for a child, which includes subjects like education, medical and mental health care, religious training, and significant personal care matters. In all cases, the parents should attempt to make these decisions together in the child’s best interest but if the parents cannot agree, what happens next depends on what rules have been set about legal decision making.
Parents can share joint legal decision making authority, or one parent can have sole legal decision making authority. If the parents share joint legal decision making authority, it means that they will raise the child(ren) as equal partners, with neither parent having greater rights to make these decisions than the other. If the parents disagree on a particular issue, they must maintain the current situation as best they can until they can find a resolution, possibly with the help of a mediator, possibly by returning to court. If one parent has sole legal decision making authority, that parent has the ultimate right and responsibility to make decisions for the child’s education, medical and mental health care, religious training, and significant personal care matters if the parties disagree on these matters. Even if one parent has sole legal decision making authority, both parents are generally allowed to access a child’s school and health records. While it is not an official category recognized in Arizona’s legal code, many family courts will also consider “hybrid” decision making, which is sometimes called “Joint with final.” In this case, the parties are generally still required to work out their differences of opinion about how to raise their common child(ren) between themselves but one parent is given the ability to make a “final” decision about one or more issues, subject to the other parent’s ability to ask the court to rule on the matter if they believe it is necessary.
Parenting Time
Parenting time fills the role that was formerly known as “physical custody.” The most important feature of parenting time is the “parenting plan,” which sets out a schedule for each parent to spend time with the child and other related issues such as extracurricular events, time spent with the child’s extended family, the parents’ responsibility for travel, and communications between the parties and the child. There are several common variations on parenting time schedules, but the basic idea is that a child should have contact with each parent that is as frequent and meaningful as possible under the circumstances. Which circumstances are most important varies from case to case, but some of the more common factors are work and school schedules, the availability and cost of transportation, and the living situation for the child. In some cases, typically those involving abuse, neglect, or poorly managed mental health or substance abuse issues, the only safe and appropriate way for a parent to have contact with their child is with a third party supervisor.
Child Support
Arizona law also requires the court to consider whether one parent needs to pay child support to the other. Arizona uses an “income shares” model for determining its child support guidelines which means that the amount of child support is intended to be enough to allow the parent with a lower income to provide the same standard of living to the child as the child would have had if the parents had stayed together as a couple. To create the guidelines, a committee meets every few years to review statistics from around the state and turns the data into “standard” amounts for how much people making different incomes and with different numbers of children spend on their children. These standard amounts are applied to a particular case according to a formula. The most important factors that are taken into account by the formula are the parents’ respective earning capacities, the amount of time each parent spends with the child, and which parent is paying for the child’s healthcare and daycare. Sometimes further adjustments are made if raising a child requires extraordinary expenses, and a family court will sometimes decide that the result of the formula is not appropriate in a particular case, but in general, the court’s decision will be close to what the guidelines’ formula predicts. There is also a free calculator available online here that can show how the guidelines would apply to a particular case.
