Custody

Physical and legal custody can either be sole, where one parent has it alone, or joint, where it’s shared between the parents. Any combination of the two is possible. Parents or caregivers can have joint physical custody in which, for example, the child spends half the week at one person’s house and half the week at the other’s, or they can have joint legal custody in which they share decision-making responsibility for the child.

The most common arrangement in the Virgin Islands is for one parent to have sole physical custody and both parents sharing joint legal custody. Generally, the courts favor both parents having maximum contact with the child.