Custody evaluation

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

Can anyone who has undergone a custody evaluation chime in here? I would love to speak over the phone if possible. If you have experience, can you message me?

Thanks

[Darsha500]

Can anyone who has undergone a custody evaluation chime in here? I would love to speak over the phone if possible. If you have experience, can you message me?

Thanks

[kells76]

No CE for us (my husband has two kids and their mom has many BPD traits), but we did make it thru CPS involvement.

Do you have a CE scheduled? Did you select the evaluator?

Do you have a lawyer right now?

What's the current parenting time arrangement for your son?

[Sluggo]

CE was good for me.  It helped me see see things from a third party view.  It did validate what I saw happening.  I was not being crazy. 

It helped some in court.  They referenced it a lot during the trial.   It was very expensive, about 20k and 8 months to complete.

Sluggo

[ForeverDad]

There's a saying around here, The custody evaluator can make or break your case in court.  How so?  It largely depends whether you can select an experienced and respected CE, especially one trusted by the court.  My lawyer warned me that my case could go against me since our court trusted our CE so much that his recommendation was almost from god.  Fortunately, ours was a child psychologist and, though quite understated, he was quite excellent.

Some here have struggled with unqualified lawyers and counselors who are either inexperienced or biased.  Some take nearly a year with sessions and compile virtual books and of course charge accordingly.  My CE's initial recommendation in 2008 was about a dozen pages yet spot on.  It took about 5 months and was charged less than $4K.

He gave us various mental health assessment questionnaires, probably one was the MMPI, and had separate interviews with and without our our child.  He was very perceptive of how we parented.  After all, the professional perspective is that the minor children get the primary attention and consideration.  The summary observed, Mother cannot share "her" child but Father can.  It also recommended Father have custody should Shared Parenting be tried but fails.  (At the time mother had temp custody and I had only alternate weekends.)