State College Family Law Blog

If you ask most divorcing spouses, they will have several reasons why they decided to bring their marital union to a close. Some spouses might not be entirely clear about what happened -- they just know that it's time for them to move on. If you take a poll of Pennsylvania divorce and family law attorneys, they'll also be able to give you a long list of the reasons why marriages end.

Here are two of the most common things on which divorcing spouses blame their marital troubles:

Getting a divorce is emotionally difficult enough, but to add the excessive costs and complexities of the legal proceedings into the mix, it's enough to cause any divorcing spouse to feel overwhelmed. Fortunately, for couples who choose to mediate their divorces, they'll be able to prevent a lot of stress, while saving a tremendous amount of money and time in the process.

For many couples, mediation is the preferred method for bringing their divorces to a close. Mediation allows for negotiating the financial and child custody aspects of the divorce process so that couples can reach a peaceful, out-of-court settlement agreement. It works particularly well for spouses who have children because it helps support a friendlier relationship between two exes who will need to remain co-parents and will need to be able to work with each other for many years into the future.

Many fathers wrongly assume that they have a disadvantage when it comes to child custody disputes. In fact, if any parent has less of a chance of winning a child custody lawsuit, it probably doesn't have anything to do with gender. What it has everything to with is which parent was more involved in the child's care and upbringing during the marriage.

From this perspective, if a father wants to have the same chance of winning child custody as the mother in a given dispute, he needs to prove that he was just as involved in caring for the child's daily needs as the mother. Here are a few tips for fathers who want to have the best chances of winning a child custody matter:

If there's a battle over who should receive physical child custody, family law courts will usually favor the parent deemed to be the "primary caretaker." The primary caretaker is the parent who predominantly cared for the children, bathed them, fed them, took them to school, put them to bed, took them to the doctor and performed other activities on their behalf.

Courts will typically award full physical custody to the primary caretaker, meaning that the children will live with this parent full time. As for the parent who does not receive physical custody, he or she will usually have limited visitation rights. For this reason, it's important to understand how much a child custody battle usually hinges on which parent is the primary caretaker.