Legal Custody Arrangements and Children's Economic Welfare

Abstract

This article investigates the effects of legal custody arrangements on the amount of child support fathers pay after divorce, contrasting the experiences of families in which parents share authority over children through jont legal custody and those in which mothers have sole legal custody. It argues that join legal custody encourages similarities between the way divorced fathers and fathers in two-parent households invest in their children. The analysis used data from a representative sample of recent divorces, in which children live with their mothers, to explore the relationship between legal custody and legal child-support obligations (awards) and to investigate the effects of the type of custody on child-support payments. Joint legal custody is associated with higher support awards, but the association is explained by the higher incomes of fathers with joint custody. Legal custody arrangements do not affect levels of child-support payments when family characteristics and the amont of child support awarded at divorce are taken into account. Legal custody does,however, alter the process governing fathers' contributions to child support. Parents' incomes have a larger effect, and child-supprt awards a smaller one, on payments among families with joint legal custody, suggesting that joint legal custody may allow fathers greater discretion about contributions to child support. By stengthening ties between divorced fathers and children, join legal custody may increase the correspondence between parents' and children's socioeconomic status and result in greater inequality among children of divorce.