One of our most recommended handbooks is
Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder by William Eddy & Randi Kreger. It contains an immense variety of practical advice and strategies.
He emphasizes the need for a proactive and experienced lawyer, more than one who files forms and holds hands. He also stresses the need to use a well qualified Custody Evaluator who has the respect and trust of the court. For your CE, it sounds like one was picked almost out of the phone book? You may have to challenge the recommendation with a better and more trusted expert.
It is rare for a court to accept full custody early in a case, courts really try hard to default to shared or joint custody. My CE was a child psychologist and my lawyer described him as treated like god in court, never a recommendation disputed. Well, I saw his initial report that was discussed between judge and lawyers months before the scheduled trial:
The report's initial recommendation? "Mother cannot share 'her' child but father can... Mother's temporary custody should end immediately... If Shared Parenting is attempted and fails then father should have custody."
I was in and out of family court from 2006 to 2013. In that span of time I went from alternate weekend dad (2 years) to (last minute settlement, trial averted as) joint equal time dad (3 years) to full custody equal time dad (3 years) to full custody majority time during school year dad (final 6 years, but at least we never went back to court). It took 8 years to get to an order that worked, meaning we didn't go back to court.
As I wrote above, courts are generally reluctant to block one parent from parental custody unless there is substantive cause and probably the CE cannot justify that. I don't know whether you can get equal parenting time from your court, but you probably have a good chance at walking out with shared or joint custody, though it may take hiring a better, more trusted, expert than the CE you have now.
You will notice in my quote above how every 2-3 years I was able to return to court to improve my parental status. It wasn't me as much as it was her doing it to herself. She got lots of default preference, for years, but she squandered it over time by her own behaviors. And I
documented it.
You can't fix her. Court won't try to fix her either, at least not much. Courts typically rule by
documented behavior... Police records, doctor or hospital records, day care and school records, your own records (journals, calendars, emails, voice recordings, etc).
Her lawyer may try to schmooze the court with emotional claims - typically emotionally compelling but without real substance - masked as fact, but you have the facts on your side.
For example, her lawyer is presenting you as controlling?
Then why in the world did you file for divorce? See how unsubstantiated her claims are? And how simple some of your responses can be? You want to get away from her, not stay and control her.