Is joint custody the best option for your kids?

As a parent contemplating a Missouri divorce, one of your biggest concerns likely is how your children will react to your divorce and how the day-to-day loss of both of their parents will affect them. If you have not yet considered joint custody, you may well wish to do so.

Whether or not joint custody will work in your situation depends on how cooperatively you and your soon-to-be ex-spouse can work together in your children’s best interests. If you both possess the requisite maturity, stability and determination to make joint custody work, however, your children can benefit in many ways.

Childhood advantages

StatNews.com recently reported the results of a new study showing that children whose parents divorce, but who agree to post-divorce joint custody arrangement, receive the following benefits:

• They generally have and exhibit fewer emotional and psychological problems than do children from divorced homes whose parents do not share custody.
• They generally maintain better relationships with their extended families.
• They generally do better academically, achieving and maintaining higher grades.
• They generally choose and maintain better peer relationships.
• They generally have a lower risk of alcohol and/or drug abuse.

Adult advantages

While joint custody is all about your kids, you and your children’s other parent likewise have many things to gain from such an arrangement, including the following:

• You likely will achieve a better post-divorce relationship than do parents who do not share custody.
• You likely will adhere better to whatever parenting time schedule you have.
• You likely will cooperate better with each other in general, not just in those instances that directly affect your children.

This is general educational information and not intended to provide legal advice.