Legal Question in Family Law in North Carolina

No. You said that you adopted the child. If that is the case, then you are as much a mother to this child as his birth mother. That said, you and your husband will either have to agree on custody or else the court will decide based on (1) the fitness of the parents (which is not an issue in most cases); and (2) what is in the child's best interests. That means everything which will harm or help the child - his environment, education, spirituality - his emotional and physical well being.

There are two kinds of custody - legal and physical. Legal custody is almost always joint and involves things like access to school and medical records and major decisions in the child's life like where he will go to school or what religion he will be raised in. Physical custody is where the child lives on a daily basis and who will feed, clothe and house the child. Usually, primary physical custody is with one parent and visitation will be in the other.

Visitation can be as broad or as regulated as you and your husband want it to be. The better you can cooperate, the better and less expensive it will be for everybody, especially the child. He will have enough to deal with learning that he is adopted. Understand that the child is small now. The child's needs at age 2 are not going to be the same when the child is 16. Custody should be flexible enough to deal with the changes in life without always going back to court except for major changes of custody from one parent to the other.