For a marriage that ends amicably, with both parties still able to maintain some semblance of communication, joint custody could work. However for an ugly divorce like we had, I think imposing joint custody on the parents does far more harm than good. The argument from the Austrian court system is that it is in the best interest of the child to maintain joint custody, regardless of the prevailing circumstances. I still can't, for the life of me, understand how it can be in the best interests of the child when the parents cannot even stand the sight of each other.
In my case the first disagreement came about when I decided to vaccinate the child and he didn't. He filed a case against me at the jugendamt to stop me. We had to start having weekly sessions from then to discuss this "problem". For someone as extroverted as he is, and me being rather introverted ad not speaking German well, he dominated the meetings, accused and basically drove the conversation without the social worker making any effort to stop him. After the a couple of sessions ended with no clear consensus, I simply called the social worker and asked her what to do concerning vaccination, and she told me to go ahead with it, because despite having joint custody, both parents are still allowed to make decisions independently if they feel it's in the best interest of the child. (Shaking my head at this point). We ended wasting a year at the jugendamt doing some kind of "mediation", discussing hot topic issues like I left my widows open and the child might fall out, I took her to kindergarten when she suffered a runny nose, and other similar stupidity. It got so bad to the point where my ex dominated the meetings that even the social worker squeeze in a word edgewise when my ex began his soliloquys. She decidedly invented a "game" where she put a stuffed animal infront of him when he needed to say something and when she took it away he had to stop. That's what my life was reduced to. I told her over and over that this was psychopathic behaviour he was exhibiting, and it was part of the reason I left the marriage, but the show went on.
In the meantime he tried to file for sole custody in court but this was ignored.
I also mentioned to the jugendamt that he suffered from ADHS and apparently it was serious enough that he couldn't hold employment and was therefore paid unemployment money. In my opinion if someone is sick enough not to be able to hold a job, raising a child, which is one of the most important jobs, he certainly cannot perform it satisfactorily. The answer I got was that even psychopaths can raise children, so this argument was invalid. I also told the social worker that it was clear my ex was manipulating the child against me from the things she began saying to me. This was all ignored.
At the end of one year I was so fed up because I felt they tried to favor him although they saw that mediation hadn't worked due to him particularly, so I filed in court for sole custody and told them I would not sit in a joint mediation anymore. I asked the social worker to write her recommendation to the court and let go of the case. Their recommendation was simply that we were counter-accusing each other and that the best solution would be to maintain joint custody but change the contact from daily basis to him getting every second weekend Friday to Monday morning in kindergarten and one overnight stay during the week he doesn't have the child. The holidays would also be split 50/50.
With the case still in court, he accused me again at jugendamt of endangering the child's welfare for whatever reason. We got a new social worker as the old one had left (possibly fired for being lousy at her job) and this time it turned out to be a man, something my ex had been constantly demanding, claiming bias against him by women. I went in for one solo session with this social worker (Herr. Mondschein) and he simply told me in my case there had been injustice served, i was basically a single mother almost paying everything for the child and subjected to bullying for one year from my ex-husband. He told me he didn't see the need why I should be subjected to this any further and he would immediately close the case and ask that my ex begin to pay child support immediately. (I had also complained about thus to the previous social worker but she shut me down and told me that at jugendamt they don't discuss money, and if this is a issue I should take it to court. I did. Later on I found out they do handle this themselves in a different department.
The entire case was now in court and this time round I had a lawyer.
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