New York Law Journal, November 1, 2024 —
As divorce lawyers, when we break down the parameters of “physical custody” and “legal custody,” we tend to proceed on autopilot.
Meaning, we immediately begin to determine what could be a workable “regular schedule” (which parent is with a child, when, and for how long, in a 14-night cycle, i.e., 7-7, 8-6, 9-5) and a “holiday/vacation schedule,” i.e., who has this holiday versus that holiday in “even-numbered” vs. “odd-numbered” years.
We then get to work on how “major decisions” affecting a child’s welfare will be made, e.g., sole decision-making, joint decision-making, joint decision-making with a parenting coordinator as a “tiebreaker” of sorts, etc.
What I suspect we do not spend enough time considering—myself included—is what it must feel like for a parent who once began and/or ended the day with his/her child in the home to now be thrust into a new world order where that same parent begins and ends various days in that same home (or a new home), but without his/her child present because it is not his/her “parenting day” in the “regular schedule.” Parents who have entered into joint custody arrangements (the focus of this article) are compelled to adapt to a new normal that involves periods of physical absence.
Relatedly, there is the new world order for a divorced (or divorcing) parent where he/she is no longer involved in each and every decision made in a child’s day-to-day life. Indeed, the “routine daily decisions” are typically no longer made by the parent who is not with a child on a particular day in the “regular schedule.” These same parents who have entered into joint custody arrangements must also adapt to a new normal that involves periods of what I will call routine decisional absence.
That brings us to the recent decision of K.S. v. J.S., 2024 NY Slip Op 51418(U) (Sup. Ct., Putnam County) (Grossman, J.). In K.S., the parties placed an oral stipulation on the record regarding custody of their two young children in open court; the transcript of the proceeding was “so-ordered” by the court.