How to prepare for a child custody evaluation home visit. Do I know anything
about that? Well I used to do them so listen in.
Your child custody evaluation
home visit, how do you prepare for that? At Live On Purpose TV, we bring in people
who have a little bit of experience and I did that today. This is my friend, Sid
Say hello, Sid. - Hi. - Now that we've got the introductions out of the way, Sid
and I got to know each other years ago when I was doing child custody
evaluations for the court and I always included a home visit because if I'm
going to make a recommendation to the judge about where these kids are going to
live, I want to have some first-hand knowledge about where they have been
living or where they're going to be living so I would naturally go into that
environment. Now, Sid, you've been on the other end of this where you've
represented parents typically in a child custody case but you know how
judges think too so I think that's part of the knowledge we need to pull
out of you today, okay. What do you think is the most important thing
for someone to know as they prepare for their child custody evaluation home
visit? - It's a case-by-case thing what's most important but the thing that comes
up the most is that the evaluator reports that there's something obviously
wrong with the home for example dog poop on the beds, laps in the yard, things like
that, things that are obviously dangerous, yes, super obvious so having minimal cleaning
and as sort of a natural or clean environment. It doesn't have to look like
it's not lived in. I've had custody evaluators report back to me that
sometimes the house is absolutely pristine and they're positive, the house
isn't always like that and I know my house isn't always like that. - You know, I used to
put in my notes sometimes to the judge. I would tell him there's a state of
unnatural tension. You know when you walk into a place and you just know that
as soon as you leave, everything's going to fall from where it was
back to where it used to be so that's what you're talking about?
- Yeah, that's sort of obvious. Another obvious thing that I get a lot of
feedback about is that parents seem to just want to talk about the other parent
even though they're at their own home visit, they want to talk about the other
parent, they want to talk about how bad it is, they want to talk about, see, we have this bed
here for our child, the other side, they they have to sleep on the couch,
things like that and that's also just the wrong approach. - You know what I just
thought of, what if you just invite the other parent over for your home visit?
How silly would that be? It's not about them. You showcase your brilliance and
you don't fake it because that causes the unnatural tension so you want to be
real. You mentioned the safety things so
that stuff is obvious. Look, if you're having a problem with safety
concerns, we've got other concerns about this custody situation so get yourself
up to speed. Now this brings something up that I think is important.. You may
realize or people may give you a heads up to some changes that you need to make
personally whether that's about safety or the appropriateness of sleeping
arrangements for example. You know what, and be transparent, okay. If
your kid is sleeping with you on your bed, just be transparent about that
because I'm going to ask the kid and I can usually tell when they're lying or when
they're trying to do a script or cover for mom or dad. I've been into
homes where it's like this beautiful little bedroom for the child, right,
and the kid is going through this little script of, this is my room, right?And
they're all excited and then I pull them aside and I say, so where do you sleep?
Oh, in there with mom. - Yeah, well and that's that brings up another thing.
Don't try to get the kids to say a certain thing, don't coach them on what to say
and I know parents say they never coached their kid. I never told them what
to say, I just tell them to tell the truth but the truth is, I feel the
coaching all the time. People bring kids into my office because I'm a special
master which means I'm sort of like a minor judge sometimes and when I get the
parents out of there and start talking to the kids, I hear it almost always a
different story than what I heard from either of the parents. Sure, that's
what evaluators go through as well and when you're in the home environment,
the kids are more used to it I guess and I think they can be more relaxed or they
could be more tense if they've been coached and I think the evaluator can tell that.
- Which is a great point because
as an evaluator, often what I was looking for is not how pristine is this home I
mean, I would go into places and there's bread baking in the oven and there's
potpourri simmering on the stuff. Please, you know. This is not a Pinterest contest.
- Well unless they share the bread. - Well, there's that but here is what I'm looking
for, I don't care about all that stuff, okay, don't care, as long as the the
fundamental safety and provisions for that child's needs are in place, I'm good
with whatever your home looks like. What I'm looking for is how that child is
feeling and interacting and being in that environment and if you've
created, if you're coaching them, if you've set up a whole bunch of fake
stuff for the evaluation, these kids are going to pick up on that quickly and
that's what I'm going to notice. I don't care about all the facades, I'm going to
notice how that child is feeling and the very best thing you can do, this happens
way before the home visit, okay. You set up the most sane stable loving
comfortable provided environment that you possibly can for your child and you
do that not for the home visit, you do that because that's the right thing to
do for you and for your child. Do you see where I'm going with that? - Well and that also
brings up, think about what the whole focus is here, is the focus on what's
best for the child or is to focus on showing that I'm the
parent? And if you think about what's best for the child and this is
just my experience, most custody evaluators come out pretty even, they
don't come out that one parent is just totally one and the other parent is
totally lost, they come out pretty even and these days, I don't know if
you're aware of this but the law is such that a 50/50 custody or something close
to that is often recommended by custody
evaluators because the truth is that, either parent can probably handle it
and so what the evaluators are looking for are things that really stick
out and if there's a bunch of tension and things like that then - that's going to
stick out - that's going to stick out and it's also hard to discern what the truth
is so you got to be careful about
that and focus on what's best for the kids and realize that it may be best for
the kids not to just be with one parent or the other most of the time. - There's
always paradoxes in psychology and one of the paradoxes that I think we've
identified here and you'll see this from your experience too, Sid, the home visit is
not about the home. - Yeah, that's right. - It's not about as long as it's adequate.
Now if it's not adequate, you probably don't have any business having
custody of that child if another person can provide an adequate environment. That
sounds harsh but you know what, at a very fundamental level,
most people have an adequate environment. Don't worry about the home, you make sure
that you're setting up a culture in an environment for this child that is
healthy and is not characterized by the conflict of fighting with the other
parent, it's not characterized by coaching them to try to make you look
good. See, we get our focus back on the child
and then things get a lot a lot better. - Right, and then from a judge's
perspective, judges always have the law to go by and the first thing in the law
is where does the child live or the children live right now, is there a good
reason to change that and if there's not some big danger or some big problem with
changing that then that's a big hurdle to overcome and then the next one is
what the child wants. Now the child doesn't really count directly, they
count child only counts indirectly, never ever ask the child where do you want to
live, ever. Now I don't know a house like that, I just
handled that but I counsel my clients not to do that. Unfortunately, in the
media you see that in movies and TV shows all the time. Well where do you want
to live? I don't care, just tell me where you want to, never ever do that, don't do
that ever. In fact, let it just flow. - Yes, in fact, you just led into something
beautifully because we're doing another video, you can link to it right
up in that corner about five mistakes that will lose your child custody case
so make sure you watch that one too. Sid, will you hang around for that? - Absolutely.
- Awesome. Thanks to my attorney friend, Sid. We've got some nice insights
about how to do that. Share this with someone who would benefit.