Physical custody involves the day-to-day care of a child and establishes where a child will live. The parent with physical custody has the right to have his/her child live with him/her. If a child lives primarily with one parent, that parent is said to be the custodial parent with sole physical custody. The other parent would be considered the non-custodial parent and would typically have visitation rights to his/her child. If a child lives equally or close to half the time with each of his/her parents, the parents are said to have joint physical custody. In some joint physical custody arrangements, a parent that has more time with the child may be denoted as having
primary physical custody of his/her child while the other parent has secondary physical custody.
See more at Wikipedia.org...
In a divorce, one of two types of child custody. A parent who has physical custody lives most of the time with the child. Compare with legal custody.