What Can You Do When Your Custody Evaluation
was NOT Conducted Properly?

You've just completed a lengthy, stressful and costly custody evaluation. You believe that you did your best to communicate your concerns to the custody evaluator. You feel you were cooperative in making all appointments and answering the custody evaluator's questions honestly and accurately. But now, after all those weeks of waiting, you find that the custody evaluator's recommendations are very different from what you had expected.

Suprisingly, this is not an uncommon situation. Some parents are completely blind-sided by this discovery while others have some suspicion that things may not have gone the way that they had hoped they would go. Regardless of the circumstances, having a custody evaluation report that is less the favorable, the critical question that remains is - what if anything can be done about the custody evaluator's report?

When faced with an unfavorable report by a custody evaluator, many parents are inclined to either do nothing or have another independent custody evaluation conducted by another custody evaluator. Neither of these options is recommended as the first course of action. Instead, a logical and more cost effective starting point is to have your custody evaluation reviewed by a professional who has expertise in the areas of divorce, custody, family dynamics, child development and scientific methodology.

A review of your custody evaluation will determine if it was conducted in a methodologically sound manner. In other words, a proper review of your custody evaluation will identify if the custody evaluator followed the established protocols, if it was free of any obvious signs of bias and if the custody evaluator's conduct was incompliance with the code of conduct of his or her licensing body. Regarding the latter, the information contained in the custody evaluator's curriculum vitae (CV) can be thoroughly investigated to determine if he or she has the proper training to conduct custody evaluations in the first place.

A review of custody evaluation believed to have flaws is a cost effective approach to determining what the next step should be. It makes no sense to pursue litigation or another custody evaluation, both of which are very costly and stressful if there is no basis for doing so. For example. there are some cases where a custody evaluator has followed all of the prescribed steps only to arrive at recommendations regarding your children (based on his or her findings) that are very different from your own. In these instances, you are more or less stuck unless you can find some evidentiary basis (e.g., the custody evaluator neglected to consider some pertinent information) for disputing the custody evaluator's findings.

On the other hand, if methodological flaws are identified by reviewing the custody evaluation, some form of challenge should be a seriously considered. The nature and timing of the challenge are largely dependent on the type of methodological flaws found during the review of the custody evaluation, the stage of the case itself and the attorney's objectives for the case. This is something that clients need to discuss with their attorneys.

The value of having a custody evaluation reviewed is that if methodological flaws are found, an attorney has a sound basis to have it and the custody evaluator called into question. A properly conducted review of a custody evaluation relies on science and not opinion. Remember, that the failure to do anything about a suspect custody evaluation means that the custody evaluator's recommendations will be accepted as valid.