Commonly, the law will award sole custody of the children to one parent, traditionally the mother, and then order the other parent to pay child support, a property settlement and possibly alimony. The law is pledged to give the children the same economic status they would have enjoyed had the marriage not been dissolved. The parent who emerges from divorce as the sole custodial parent is assured of an ongoing claim to the other parent's income without having to make the difficult compromises that every marriage demands. Even when they do stay and pay, they are often precluded by the courts from adequate access to their children who then grow up with the kinds of social and psychological problems that children from intact families rarely exhibit. To remedy this destructive process, some 45 states have enacted joint custody laws under which the children spend a significant percentage of their time with each parent.
Most states allow the court to award joint custody as a discretionary option.
But judges are often reluctant to do so. They believe the value of joint custody has not been sufficiently demonstrated and they are concerned that joint custody will result in less support for children. Recently, surprising support for joint custody has emerged from divorce research. In separate studies, researchers have found that states with strong joint custody laws show both a substantial increase in child support compliance and a significant decline in their divorce rates. The researchers have advanced several reasons for these seemingly paradoxical results.