Courts will look at whether one of the spouses has committed adultery or done something else bad, but their primary focus is not on whether somebody just did something bad, but rather what effect it s had on the children . And courts will also look at what the child seems to prefer. Instead, the court will look at all the factors and weigh them to decide what s in the overall best interest of the child. Click here for the list of factors . Alabama has a statute on joint custody .
Joint custody means both joint legal custody and joint physical custody.
Joint legal custody means some kind of sharing of decision-making authority. Joint physical custody means meaningful contact with both parents but does not necessarily mean equal time parenting. How Child Support Works Alabama uses guidelines to figure child support . Basically, the state looks at how much money each parent makes as a percentage of the total. Then you look up that total income figure and the number of young children you have in a big table to get a basic child support figure.