How Do Courts Determine the Primary Care Provider?

You and your spouse may have equally strong bonds and healthy relationships with your child. But over the course of your marriage, and based on the way you chose to run your household, one of you may have naturally slipped into the role of your child’s primary care provider. While this might not make the Tennessee family court automatically name you the custodial parent in your divorce case, it may serve as a key factor to support this decision. With that being said, please continue reading to learn how family courts determine the primary care provider and how one of the experienced Clarksville child custody lawyers at Fendley and Birch can help you collect and present evidence of this.

What does a primary care provider mean in a custody case?

In the context of your child custody case, the Tennessee family court will view the primary care provider as the parent who, up to this point, has handled most of the child’s daily, essential tasks, such as hygienic routines, education-related matters, and medical needs. Importantly, you must understand that this may or may not be different from the parent who has spent the most quality time with the child.

This may matter because the court typically favors the concept of the primary care provider becoming the custodial parent, even when a joint custody arrangement is decided. Simply put, they generally find it in the child’s best interest to do so for the sake of stability and continuity in care. With this, as the custodial parent, you may also have the final say on major decisions for your child (i.e., religion, education, and healthcare), along with being designated for legal and administrative purposes (i.e., government benefits).

How do courts decide on who was the primary care provider of the child?

Even if you self-proclaim yourself as the primary care provider of your child, the Tennessee family court will prefer objective proof. What’s more, such proof should establish patterns of managing your child’s daily needs rather than isolated incidents. In other words, there should be timestamps of sustained involvement instead of last-minute documentation. Without further ado, you may do yourself justice by collecting and presenting the following pieces of evidence:

• You have been consistently listed as your child’s primary contact at school, the one to attend parent-teacher conferences, and conduct email correspondence with their teachers.
• You have consistently signed the consent forms for your child’s healthcare procedures and are the one to schedule and take them to their doctor’s appointments.
• Your child’s coaches have testified on your behalf and described how you have been the one to consistently drop them off at practices and attend their games.
• Your child’s care providers have testified on your behalf and described how you have been the one to consistently coordinate the logistics of their childcare.
• You have a calendar or journal that outlines your consistent routine for meeting your child’s daily needs (i.e., meal prep, laundry, homework help, bathing, bedtimes, etc).

If you wish to explore your legal options moving forward, please allow one of the skilled Clarksville family lawyers from Fendley and Birch, to be your guiding force. Please schedule your initial consultation with our firm at the first chance you get.