South Carolina Child Custody Agreement

It changes the paperwork, not the standard. Two duties in the custody article are triggered only by disagreement. Section 63-15-220(A) requires each parent to prepare, file and submit a parenting plan at all temporary hearings where custody is contested, and section 63-15-230(C) requires the court to consider all custody options and state its reasoning if custody is contested or if either parent seeks an award of joint custody. Parents who agree owe neither. What still applies is section 63-15-230(A), which requires the court to make the final custody determination in the best interest of the child based upon the evidence presented, and the seventeen factors at 63-15-240(B), which govern any custody order the court issues. No South Carolina statute gives an agreement a presumption or binding force.

Yes. The arrangement becomes enforceable only when the family court enters an order adopting it. Section 63-15-240(A) provides that a custody order may include, but is not limited to, the approval of a parenting plan, and section 63-15-230(A) puts the final custody determination on the court and ties it to the child's best interest based upon the evidence presented. A judge who is directed by statute to decide on the evidence is not bound by what the parents chose.

Only in a narrow situation. Section 63-15-220(A) requires each parent to prepare, file and submit a parenting plan at all temporary hearings where custody is contested, and it lets the parties elect to file one joint plan instead. At the final hearing the plan is optional under section 63-15-220(B), which says either party may file and submit an updated parenting plan for the court's consideration. Where custody is uncontested there is no plan requirement at all, and failure to submit a plan does not preclude the court from issuing a temporary or final custody order.

Section 63-15-220 describes a plan that reflects parental preferences, the allocation of parenting time to be spent with each parent, and major decisions, including but not limited to the child's education, medical and dental care, extracurricular activities, and religious training. The list is short and expressly open, so most parents go well beyond it with a holiday schedule, exchange arrangements, communication terms and a process for future disagreements. Child support is calculated separately under South Carolina's support rules and is not settled by a parenting plan.

It is about decisions, not about where the child sleeps. Section 63-15-210(1) defines joint custody as both parents having equal rights and responsibilities for major decisions concerning the child, including education, medical and dental care, extracurricular activities, and religious training. The same definition allows a judge to designate one parent to have sole authority over specific, identified decisions while both parents keep equal rights over all the others. Section 63-15-230(D) then provides that notwithstanding the custody determination, the court may allocate parenting time in the best interest of the child, so a joint custody label does not by itself tell you the schedule.

Section 63-15-240(B) sets out seventeen factors that apply in issuing or modifying a custody order. The list is open at both ends, because the chapeau says the best interest of the child may include but is not limited to those factors and the seventeenth is other factors as the court considers necessary. Several are unusual enough to plan around: factor (7) covers manipulation or coercive behavior used to involve the child in the parents' dispute, factor (8) covers any effort by one parent to disparage the other in front of the child, factor (12) provides that a proposed custodial parent's disability must not in and of itself be determinative, and factor (16) treats a move of more than one hundred miles from the child's primary residence in the past year as a factor unless the parent relocated for safety reasons.

The court must consider it, but the child does not choose. Section 63-15-30 requires the court to consider the child's reasonable preference for custody and to give weight to the child's preference based on the child's age, experience, maturity, judgment, and ability to express a preference. South Carolina sets no age at which a child's wishes become controlling.

South Carolina has no relocation notice statute. There is no notice period, no mileage trigger for notice, no objection window and no allocation of the burden of proof. What the code has instead runs the other way: section 63-3-530(A)(30) provides that the family court may not issue an order prohibiting a custodial parent from moving a residence to a location within the State unless the court finds a compelling reason or unless the parties have agreed to such a prohibition. That is one of the few places South Carolina gives a parental agreement express operative effect. Separately, a move of more than one hundred miles from the child's primary residence in the past year is a best interest factor under 63-15-240(B)(16), which is a factor trigger and not a notice trigger. Because the statute is silent, parents who want a firm notice rule write one into their own agreement.

It stacks three separate devices. The strongest is section 63-15-50(A), which allows visitation to a person found by a court to have committed domestic violence, or found to have been the primary aggressor where complaints were made against both parties, only if the court finds that adequate provision for the safety of the child and the victim can be made. That is a precondition on the award rather than a factor to weigh. Section 63-15-50(B) supplies conditions the court may impose, including protected-setting exchanges, supervised visitation, a batterer intervention program, abstention from alcohol for the 24 hours preceding visitation, no overnight visitation, a bond against unlawful retention, and address confidentiality, and section 63-15-50(F) makes the perpetrator pay the actual cost of treating a child injured by the violence. Section 63-15-40(A) separately requires the court to give weight to evidence of domestic violence, and it is also a listed factor at 63-15-240(B)(15). There is no rebuttable presumption against custody for a perpetrator anywhere in the chapter.