Legal Custody vs Physical Custody
Custody is two separate things wearing one word.
Legal custody is who makes the decisions — school, doctors, religion, braces, whether she can quit swimming.
Physical custody is where the children sleep.
They are decided separately, they can be split differently, and you can have a lot of one and none of the other. Most of the confusion in early custody conversations comes from people using "custody" to mean whichever half they are thinking about.
Legal custody: who decides
Joint legal custody means both parents share decision-making on the significant things. It is the most common arrangement, and in many states it is what courts start from unless there is a reason not to.
Sole legal custody means one parent decides. It is less common and usually reflects something specific — one parent being absent, or a history that makes joint decision-making unworkable.
Some states split it by category: both parents on medical, one parent on education, and so on. Some name a tiebreaker for when joint decision-makers deadlock.
What joint legal custody does not mean is that you must agree on everything, or that either of you can veto the other indefinitely. It generally means you consult before significant decisions, and it does not usually cover day-to-day choices — bedtime at your house is your call.
The word doing the work is significant. What counts as significant is not always defined, and that is where the arguments live. A plan that spells out which decisions require consultation is worth more than one that says "joint legal custody" and stops.
Physical custody: where they sleep
Physical custody describes the actual schedule — how many nights at each home, in what pattern.
Joint or shared physical custody means the children spend substantial time with both parents. What "substantial" means varies enormously: some states use a specific overnight threshold, others do not define it. A 50/50 split is joint physical custody; so, in many places, is 60/40 or 65/35.
Primary physical custody means the children live mostly with one parent, and the other has parenting time on a defined schedule.
The labels matter less than the schedule underneath them. Two families with identical calendars can have their arrangements labelled differently depending on the state.
Why the distinction matters in practice
They combine independently. Joint legal with primary physical to one parent is extremely common: both parents decide the big things, the children mostly live at one house.
Money often follows physical, not legal. Child support calculations in most states are driven by overnights and income, not by who holds decision-making authority. Two parents with joint legal custody can have very different support obligations.
The labels carry weight people did not intend. "Sole custody" sounds — and feels — like the other parent has been removed from the children's lives. Often it refers only to decision-making, and the other parent still has a full schedule. Being precise about which custody you mean prevents a lot of unnecessary alarm.
Different states use different words entirely. Texas uses conservatorship and possession. Several states have replaced "custody" with parental responsibility and parenting time. Florida uses time-sharing. The concepts map roughly, but the vocabulary in your order is the vocabulary that governs.
The question people actually mean
When someone asks "who has custody," they usually mean one of three things:
- Where do the children live? — physical custody
- Who decides about school and doctors? — legal custody
- Who is in charge? — not a legal category, and the honest answer is usually neither of you, separately
Sorting out which one you are asking is often most of the argument.
Where Civly fits
Civly does not change the terms of your custody arrangement. What it does is make the schedule underneath the labels visible to both of you at once — the nights, the exchanges, the holiday overrides — so "whose week is it" stops being a question with two answers.
Decisions that need both parents can be sent as a request rather than a text, so the answer is recorded rather than remembered.
This is general information, not legal advice. Custody terminology and law differ substantially between states — some do not use the words "legal" and "physical" custody at all. What governs your family is the language in your own order. Talk to a family law attorney licensed in your state.