Custody is decided on your facts, not on a formula
There is no template. A court looks at the particular circumstances of the particular children, and Arkansas law requires custody to be decided without regard to the sex of a parent. Anyone who tells you the outcome before reading the file is guessing.
Joint custody is the starting point
Since 2021 there has been a rebuttable presumption that joint custody is in a child’s best interest, and joint custody means an approximately equal division of time rather than a label on paper. The presumption can be rebutted, but it takes clear and convincing evidence that joint custody is not in the child’s best interest.
One detail that gets misreported often enough to be worth stating plainly: this presumption applies to an original custody determination. It does not govern a request to modify an order that already exists, where the question is whether circumstances have changed.
Paternity comes first
Where the parents were not married, legal custody of the child sits with the mother until a court orders otherwise. A father who has established paternity can then petition for custody, and the court looks at whether he is a fit parent, whether he has assumed responsibility by providing care, supervision, protection and support, and what is in the child’s best interest.
This catches a lot of people out, and it is worth sorting early rather than at the point where something has gone wrong.
Support is calculated, but not by a rule of thumb
Arkansas changed how child support works in 2020. The old approach took a percentage of the paying parent’s income. The current one is an income shares model, which combines both parents’ incomes on the principle that children should receive the same proportion of parental income they would have had if the parents lived together. The worksheet also accounts for health insurance, extraordinary medical costs and childcare.
The chart and the official worksheet are published by the Arkansas courts, and they are revised from time to time, so we work from the current version rather than a figure someone remembers.
Can my child choose?
Not at any particular age, whatever you may have been told. Arkansas sets no age at which a child decides. The court may consider a child’s preference if the child has sufficient age and mental capacity to reason, regardless of chronological age, and even then it is one factor rather than the decision. The figures that circulate about this, usually twelve or fourteen, are not Arkansas law.
Orders can change
An order made three years ago was made about a situation that may no longer exist. Where circumstances have genuinely changed, a modification is the route.