Split custody describes an arrangement where: one or more children live with one parent more than 60 percent of the time in the year, and one or more children live with the other parent more than 60 percent of the time in the year.
Defined in section 8 of the Federal Child Support Guidelines as a situation “where each spouse has custody of one or more children†of the marriage.
A child custody decision which means that legal custody goes back and forth between parents like a ping-pong ball, as they, in turn, take care of the child. They are very rare (for example, only 5% of all custody orders in the USA) because they works against consistent upbringing decisions for the child. Also known as "divided custody" although the latter concept is mostly used to describe split custody over greater periods of time such as alternate years with each parent.
A custody arrangement in the case of multiple children, awarding sole custody of one child to one parent and sole custody of another child to the other parent. This arrangement is generally disfavored by judges because they are reluctant to split up siblings.
