Georgia Custody Evaluation
When you contact North Georgia Family Lawyers, LLC regarding your impending divorce if you have children, we’ll assign one of our Atlanta child custody lawyers to the case.
Mediating Child Custody
Often, the divorcing couple can work out a custody agreement and agree to one primary parent, also called custodial parent, and one non-custodial parent. The child or children live with the custodial parent and visit the non-custodial parent. The schedule of visitation also becomes a matter that the parents decide.
When Parents Can’t Agree, the Court Decides?
But in some cases, the parents cannot decide or agree to which partner should get custodial custody. When this occurs, the court decides. A judge in Georgia’s family court hears the case and refers to a custody evaluation.
What Is a Georgia Custody Evaluation?
The term custody evaluation refers to a study of the family’s life, each family member’s physical and mental health, and each parent’s living quarters and living arrangement. Two individuals complete the study – a mental health professional and an attorney, neither of whom can have had prior contact with the family. The mental health professional can be a psychiatrist, psychologist, or licensed social worker. The attorney is typically a child custody attorney Atlanta residents trust.
What happens during a Custody Evaluation?
The mental health professional and the Atlanta custody attorney each contribute a portion of the custody evaluation. The mental health professional examines each member of the family – both parents and each child – separately. This individual also examines the interaction between parents and children. The attorney, referred to as guardian ad litem, visits each parent’s home. These visits may be planned or unplanned. They uncover the cleanliness of the home and the day-to-day living conditions and family interactions.
What is a Custody Evaluation for?
Your Atlanta child custody lawyer can request that the court conduct this study to show that your claim that your current spouse isn’t fit to care for your child or children is true. You may want this evaluation because your spouse may:
- experience mental health issues that psychological evaluations document,
- lack parental fitness to successfully raise a child,
- experience addictive disorders, such as alcohol or other substance abuse, gambling addiction, etc.
- experience anger management issues illustrated by a history of violence in high-stress situations.
Although your Atlanta child custody attorney can request this type of study for you, the court does not have to order it. If you decide to hire parties to conduct this study on your own, your current spouse may not share the significant cost of between $3,000 to $20,000. Custody evaluations take months to perform and investigate each facet of both parents’ lives, as well as the health and welfare of each child in the family.
Get Help with Your Custody Battle
Contact North Georgia Family Lawyers, LLC to find a child custody lawyer Atlanta trusts to help you win the fight for custody of your child or children. Let us help you document your health and capability as a parent. We can also help you obtain a study that documents your spouse’s lack of parenting skills or mental or physical health issues that preclude them from functioning as the custodial parent. It can also help a parent who lost custody due to an issue of mental or physical health or addiction regain custody of his or her child or children by showing their improved situation as documented by two completely objective professionals.
In most cases, the court won’t bar either parent from all contact with a child. If one parent alienated the other parent, cutting them out entirely of their child’s life, the Georgia court system frequently rights that wrong. A child custody evaluation simply determines which household presents the better primary home for a child. That means the evaluation helps the court determine which parent could provide the safer, healthier, more loving, and appropriately disciplined home.
Contact North Georgia Family Lawyers, LLC today about your child custody matters. We are here to help you.