Well, here in Ky., arbitration is set first where the parties sit with their lawyers and a 3rd-party arbiter in the hopes of hashing out asset/custody issues before going to trial. This saves each side (and children, if any are involved) from a long, drawn-out battle. It works rather well, esp. for 'amicable' divorces.
Unfortunately, not all are amicable and it does go to trial where assets are split 50/50 and custody is typically joint, with parenting time/support payments being the only major issue. Now, battles can occur over individual pieces of property but a judge will come down with an order if the parties cannot agree amongst themselves.
And, for custody/child support, the state has finally awakened to the plight of fathers being given the shaft. In many cases in the past, the father might have had the children for equal time each month yet had to pay an inordinately high amount of money each month to the mother. It was based on 'disparity in income'. So, if the father earned 85% of the family's income and the wife only 15%, the father's child support payments would follow some chart for monthly costs of child-raising and he would pay 85% of that. Trouble with that is, well, if the father had the children 50% of the time, he was paying more than need be to the mother (he was paying 85% of the monthly costs yet the mother only had them 50% of the month).
That's changed this year and the chart used by the state has been modified to account for parenting time.
In order to get 'sole custody', one party has to prove, pretty much, that the children's lives were in jeopardy. One of the parents would have to be doing drugs in front of the kids, leaving them unattended for days, not keeping them in school, physically abusing them, etc. Needless to say, sole custody is a rare judgment. However, parenting time can be fought for in front of the judge by proving the needs of the children are best met with one parent or the other. Thus, joint custody is almost always awarded (also meaning one parent cannot leave the county/state w/o consent of the other parent) but parenting time is adjusted.
So, this helped me out a lot in my case. I have my daughters every other week and pay nothing in maintenance and very little in child support compared what I would have had to pay just a few yrs ago (when we were divorcing at one point - later got back together and went to counseling but it still ended up failing...divorce was final in Feb.)
Also, the courts order a counseling sessions (usually for 2 hrs on consecutive Saturdays) that is mostly for the kids but lets the parents air their frustrations and feelings.