What is the Child Custody Evaluation?
In some cases a Judge will order what is called a custody evaluation and this does not rear its head in every case by any means. It’s a pretty rare thing, but we’ll talk briefly about it. We also have some information about it on the actual content for the course that you’ll see on the website.
If you think it may be something that you’re going to deal with, you can feel free to look at it in depth on those–in the articles that we have on the course.
What a custody evaluation is, is where a court appoints a mental health professional like a psychologist, to make a recommendation on custody. That person is going to spend some time with the child and spend some time with the parents. They’re going to start talking about the child’s developmental needs, they’re going to look at the child’s status and they’re going to look at the child’s relationship with each parent.
That person is going to kind of be the third party who can draw on their professional experience to help the Judge in deciding what really is the best custodial schedule for this child. You may see that pop up in your case, but more often than not we don’t see custody evaluations ordered. Again you can look at the content that we have on the online course for more information about a custody evaluation. You can, at a minimum, know it is another process out there that may be important in your case.
