What’s the difference between joint-managing conservatorship and joint custody? You may be surprised to learn that joint custody doesn’t, in fact, exist at all. Learn more about joint-managing conservatorship as opposed to “joint custody” and the types of parental rights joint-managing conservators have in this Q&A special.
Mark Scroggins 0:06
Hey folks, Mark Scroggins with Scroggins Law Group back here to answer a bunch of q&a that we get from a lot of people aside from just in the reclamation transformation. So one thing here comes to disclaimer, anything that I answer in response to these questions because it’s not create an attorney client relationship between me and anybody out there, or SLG, collectively, that’s Scroggins Law Group, and anybody out there either these are merely being answers to questions that are things you need to know, before you go in and talk to a lawyer about whatever family law issue you have.
Okay, so with that, let’s get started on our questions today. What is the difference between joint managing conservatorship and joint custody? Well, there’s no such thing as joint custody, period, there’s not okay, what is joint managing conservatorship? conservatorship deals with child rearing decisions that you and the other parent make in child rearing. So the big ones are the exclusive right to make the determination of the primary domicile of the children. So when you hear that someone is primary, that’s all that means. Okay? The other big rights and duties in child rearing are the rights to make educational decisions, the right to make emergent medical care decisions, the right to make psychological decisions, the right to make psychiatric decisions, the right to make non emergent medical decisions.
Those are all really big issues, there are other issues that I’m not going to really get into because they don’t come up as much like underage marriage, early enlistment in the military, those are rife for lots and lots of discussions. But the others are the big ones. And you can see where there can be intersections between those. So let’s say that you’ve got a child that has a DD or ADHD so that can bring in educational decisions, psychological decisions, and psychiatric decisions. Those are all huge, and you end up in an intersection with all of those. So it’s really important to understand the difference of those and the importance of those, because those rights and duties can also be awarded in different ways. They can be joint by agreement, which is an absolute travesty, because y’all are going to have problems from here on out, which actually, maybe I shouldn’t say that because it keeps people like me on retainer for ever.
So what you really want is to have them with a independent and a notice requirement that makes sure that you have to notify the other side of here’s what I’m planning on doing and make sure you’ve got like a 48 hour notice requirements, something like that. That gives either side the ability to go running back to the court and file something to try to stop it if they need to. So independence, great. Independent with a notice provision is better. Joint by agreement is terrible. Because you’re going to fight all the time. And if you say no, we’re not going to fight well then why are you getting divorced? Okay, so trust your lawyer, folks. That’s the best thing you can do.
