When you have joint custody are you allowed to see the child just as much as the residential parent .

Right off the bat, my sense is that you are misunderstanding the actual terms of your divorce agreement or someone explained the terms to you incorrectly. Believe it or not, in New Jersey family law, there is no such legal term as "joint custody". 85% of all divorce agreements in New Jersey say that the parties shall maintain a "joint legal custody" arrangement for the benefit of their child[ren], which term actually has nothing to do with the parenting time plan in place for you with your child. "Joint legal custody" means that when there is a major decision affecting your child's health, education or general welfare, you and the primary custodial parent must discuss it.  When you have a joint legal custodial plan, it also means that one parent is the parent of primary residence and has the child[ren] living with him / her more than 50% of the overnight time. The other parent is identified as the “parent of alternate residence”, which means that the child[ren] live with him / her less than 50% of the time.  Alternatively, some people have a "joint physical custodial plan", where the child[ren] live with both parents approximately equal amount of overnight time and in this limited setting, neither parent is designated as the parent of primary custody and the agreement would specifically spell out a shared equal custodial plan where the child[ren] live in each parents home approximately equal amounts of time during the year.  So, presumably you have a joint legal custodial plan and in that setting, the agreement should spell out your entitlement to a specific parenting time plan. If things have changed since the agreement was put in place, that can constitute a "change in circumstance" and give you the ability to renegotiate your parenting time with the child[ren] or file an application with the court seeking to modify the plan. If you are planning to seek modification of the existing plan because of a change in circumstance setting, my suggestion is to do it right and hire an experienced family law attorney to file it. If you screw it up, filing it on your own or through a lawyer who is not a family law specialist, you will not then be able to simply refile that application with a different lawyer. You have 1 shot to do it correctly, so hire the specialist to work with you on that application.