Who gets the apartment and how can I guarantee 50/50 custody?

The following is a statement of general legal principles applicable to South Carolina law. A lease to an apartment is considered an interest in property, albeit not a very strong interest. Usually what occurs is that one party keeps the apartment and agrees to pay the rent as to not harm the credit of the other. This is usually accomplished through an agreement. If you cannot agree and a judge is forced to make the decision, the judge will usually do one of three things: award it to Wife, award it to Husband, or have both parties vacate. It is not common for a leased apartment to be a major contested issue at trial due I do not know of any area of South Carolina that has rent control, hence I have never seen a leased apartment be considered as a tangible equity for a party. In your situation I strongly advice you seek legal counsel as it sounds like your case is more complex than what could reasonably be handled pro se.

In Utah, when a married couple is poised to separate, and the question arises as to which one of them gets to remain in the marital residence, many factors are considered. If there is a mortgage or rent to be paid, the court may look at who has the ability to pay that rent. In your case, it appears that you are out of work and financially dependent upon your spouse. You cannot pay rent out of your own pocket. That does not mean however that the court did not order your spouse to pay the rent on your behalf so that you can stay housed. And as you pointed out, you have been the primary caregiver of the child of your marriage for the last 2 1/2 years (and since birth to boot). You will have to prove that you are the primary caregiver, however, because you are a man, and in Utah (as is the case in most states), there is a clear bias against the idea of man being the primary caregiver of children. Judges who are a generation younger than you grew up in a time when male primary caregivers were few and far between. So even though you know you have been the primary caregiver of this child for the past two and half years, do not expect the court to believe that without providing copious amounts of evidence to establish this fact.