Child Custody and Visitation: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
25 flashcard terms for Family Law Topic 6, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 15-question quiz — free, no account needed.
The universal governing standard for custody, directing the court to weigh statutory factors about the child's welfare rather than parental desert or convenience.
Legal custody
Authority to make major decisions about education, health care, and religious upbringing, frequently ordered jointly even where physical care is unequal.
Physical custody
Responsibility for the child's day-to-day care and residence, allocated as primary, shared, or split depending on the parenting schedule adopted.
Joint custody presumption
A statutory preference in many states for shared decision making or substantially equal parenting time, usually rebuttable by evidence of conflict or abuse.
Parenting plan
A detailed schedule and decision-making protocol, required by many states, covering holidays, exchanges, communication, and dispute resolution procedures.
Tender years doctrine
The abandoned presumption favoring mothers of young children, invalidated as a gender classification and replaced by the neutral best interests inquiry.
Primary caretaker factor
A weighted consideration identifying the parent who historically performed feeding, bathing, medical, and school tasks, once a presumption in a few states.
Approximation standard
A reform proposal allocating post-divorce parenting time in rough proportion to each parent's share of caretaking during the marriage.
Painter v. Bannister
The much-criticized case awarding a child to grandparents over the surviving father based on lifestyle and stability judgments about the parent's home.
Palmore v. Sidoti
Held that a custody change cannot rest on the racial composition of a parent's new household, since private biases may not be given effect by law.
Religion as a custody factor
Courts may consider religious practice only where a specific practice causes demonstrable harm, avoiding entanglement in comparing faiths.
Sexual conduct nexus test
A parent's nonmarital sexual relationship or orientation matters only if the record shows an adverse effect on the child, not by presumption.
Troxel v. Granville
Struck a broad third-party visitation statute as applied, holding courts must give special weight to a fit parent's decision about visitation.
Fit parent presumption
The constitutional assumption that a fit parent acts in the child's best interests, which nonparents must overcome before a court substitutes its judgment.
Grandparent visitation statute
Legislation permitting court-ordered contact with grandparents, valid only if it respects parental decisions and typically requires harm or a prior relationship.
Guardian ad litem
A court-appointed representative charged with investigating and advocating for the child's interests, distinct from an attorney advancing the child's stated wishes.
Child's preference
A factor whose weight grows with the child's age and maturity, controlling in no state but often decisive for older teenagers in practice.
Friendly parent provision
A statutory factor favoring the parent more likely to foster the child's relationship with the other parent, criticized for penalizing abuse victims.
Domestic violence custody presumption
Many states presume that awarding custody to a parent who committed family violence is contrary to the child's best interests, rebuttable by treatment and safety showings.
Relocation dispute
A move-away case balancing the custodial parent's autonomy and reasons for moving against the harm to the child's relationship with the other parent.
Supervised visitation
Contact restricted to a monitored setting where unsupervised time would endanger the child, ordered as the least restrictive protection short of termination.
Visitation and support are independent
A parent may not withhold the child for nonpayment and may not stop paying because contact is denied; each duty is separately enforceable.
UCCJEA home state jurisdiction
The interstate custody act gives priority to the state where the child lived with a parent for six consecutive months before the case began.
UCCJEA temporary emergency jurisdiction
A state where the child is present may act if the child is abandoned or needs protection from abuse, entering a short order until the home state responds.
Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act
A federal statute requiring states to honor and not modify sister-state custody orders that were entered consistently with its jurisdictional priorities.