Yes. Joint legal custody does not require equal physical placement. Legal custody and physical placement are separate concepts under Wisconsin law. Parents may share joint legal custody—and therefore generally share responsibility for major decisions concerning their child—while one parent has substantially more physical placement time than the other.
For example, parents could have joint legal custody while the child primarily resides with one parent during the school week and has placement with the other parent on alternating weekends, certain weekdays, holidays, and during the summer. The unequal placement schedule does not, by itself, change the parents' joint legal custody.
Likewise, an approximately equal physical placement schedule does not necessarily mean that the parents have identical decision-making authority. Wisconsin law permits a court, in appropriate circumstances, to give one parent authority over specified major decisions while otherwise maintaining joint legal custody.
When both parents are awarded physical placement, Wisconsin law generally directs the court to establish a schedule that provides regularly occurring, meaningful periods of placement with each parent and maximizes the time the child may spend with each parent, taking into account geographic separation and accommodations for the child's different developmental and educational needs. That directive does not create a requirement for 50/50 placement. Wisconsin appellate courts have explained that maximizing placement does not override the court's discretion to establish the schedule it determines is in the child's best interests.
In short: joint legal custody answers the question “Who makes the major decisions?” Physical placement answers “When is the child in each parent's care?” The answers do not have to be equal.
