DAMN’D If You Do: Understanding Kentucky’s Equal Timesharing Presumption

If you’re going through a divorce or custody dispute in Kentucky, one of the first things you need to understand is the difference between “custody” and “timesharing”—because they are not the same thing. Timesharing refers to the amount of time a child spends with each parent. Legal custody, on the other hand, concerns who makes the big decisions in a child’s life—schooling, medical care, extracurricular activities, and religious upbringing.

Under KRS 403.270, Kentucky law presumes that joint custody and equal timesharing are in a child’s best interest. Joint custody means both parents share equal decision-making authority over those important matters—not the day-to-day decisions, but the ones that shape a child’s future. If the parents reach an impasse, a court can step in to cast a tie-breaking vote—though, for First and Fourteenth Amendment reasons, courts generally stay out of deciding a child’s religion. Sole custody, by contrast, gives one parent the exclusive right to make all of those decisions.

So what does equal timesharing look like in practice? For older children, courts commonly order a week-on, week-off schedule. For younger children, courts prefer more frequent contact with both parents—often a 2/2/3 rotation, where weekdays and weekends alternate between households. This ensures that neither parent becomes solely the “make you do your homework” parent while the other gets to be the “fun parent.” Courts also take a child’s extracurricular activities seriously; exchanges should never disrupt a child’s life, and schedules are crafted to keep soccer practice, piano lessons, and everything else running smoothly.

But what overcomes this presumption? I use the acronym DAMN’D—as in, “DAMN’D if you do, not if you don’t”—to describe the circumstances that can tip the scales away from equal time:

D – Drugs. Active substance abuse by a parent.

A – Abuse. Physical, sexual, mental, or emotional abuse.

M – Mental Health. Serious, unaddressed mental health issues affecting a parent’s ability to care for a child.

N – Neglect. Exposing a child to a risk of harm, as defined under KRS 600.020(1).

D – Distance. If one parent moves far enough away that the child would have to wake up unreasonably early for school, a court will take notice. While there is no bright-line rule, courts generally consider one hour of travel each way to be the outer limit for school-age children—and some may find even forty-five minutes excessive. The parent who remains in the county where the child lived when the family was together usually has the stronger argument.

Unless one of these DAMN’D factors is present, you are unlikely to overcome the presumption that equal timesharing is in your child’s best interest. Kentucky law starts from a simple premise: children benefit from meaningful, equal time with both parents. The system is designed to protect that principle—and to protect children when it breaks down.