I have custody of my 4 year old son. We have never gone to court and had anything ordered. Since he was a baby, I have let his father see him and have regular visitation. He is paying child support. We were never married. He keeps threatening to take me to court and get joint custody. I'm assuming he means joint legal custody since he has commented he thinks the child needs his mom and he just wants visitation ordered through the courts. I'm so confused as to the future if the judge gives him joint legal custody. Just recently he has a problem with every decision I make regarding the child. He wants to have a say in day care, medical doctors (he has changed his previous doctors and I didn't have a say in the matter), visitation, smoking around the child (which I understand and have supported). Any decision I make, he has to fight me on it. If it's like this now, how can joint legal custody possibly work if we can never see eye to eye. The only time he lets up is when he finally gets his way. I don't see this as a positive future environment for our son. What happens if both parents views are so different, but one is not better than the other. I don't want to be dragged into court every time we disagree, but I don't want to just give in and not have any say in decisions regarding our child. Please help! (By the way, we live in Utah).

If the two people don't work together, no it never really works, what happens is if there is a issue he has the right to change it, and you change it back ( can really hurt the child) or the one person without physcial custody, will have to keep going back to court and back to court to fight over all the silly little issues And atually at this point if you have not been married, and there is no custody agreement in place, he actually has no legal right to even be given the medical info on the child, can not even legally sign for the child to see the doctor. Only a legal guardian can do that, and he is not since he has no legal custody at all for the child.