Writing Evaluation Reports

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Child Custody Evaluation – Now That You Have Your Report, Do You Negotiate For More, Stop, Go Back?

Once your high conflict custody battle reaches the custody evaluators final report stage you find yourself at a new crossroads. Now you have a decision to make. Based on the findings of the custody evaluator you have 3 choices.

1. Accept the report as is.
2. Negotiate with the other parent for some changes.
3. Reject the report and ask the court to assign a different evaluator.

How do you know which of these options you should take? Let’s look at each one.

Accepting the custody evaluators report as is may not be as straight forward as you might think. The best reason to accept it is because it is written completely in your favor. The worst reason to accept is because you don’t like it but cannot afford to have another report done.

Accepting a report because it is in your favor is a no brainer. But the far more difficult choice is to feel that 98% of the report is in your favor and you want one more thing that is very important to you. You would be far better off to accept the report as is. The point is that you have an evaluator agreeing with you on virtually every point. If you negotiate a new item, you lose the opportunity to file the original report and more importantly the direct quotes that you can pull from for years to come. Besides, if you are high conflict this is quite likely only the first evaluation. Yes, there may be one or two more. You can ask for additional changes then.

Negotiating with the other parent can be valuable if you both have equal items to exchange that are important to each of you. I consider this to be an infrequent outcome. Do not negotiate if you are giving up something important and not gaining more in return.

Rejecting the custody evaluators report and asking for another should be done when the report has errors, like considering income as a factor, or when the report is biased. One possible reason for bias is that one of the parents and the evaluator did not hit it off. Remember that if you decide to ask for another evaluation you had better figure out how to change the report in your favor. Learn how the evaluator is required to write their report and act accordingly.

About the Author

Do you want to learn more about high conflict child custody resolution? Receive my brand new series "Child Custody Court Processes and Case Flow" here.

If you want to learn more about handling Child Custody Evaluation issues you can find it here.

Ed Brooks knows firsthand how painful a High Conflict Child Custody battle can be and has created a site where parents can get advice on how to handle all aspects of a high conflict Child Custody battle.

MyOpinion - Evaluation Reports


writing evaluation reports
writing evaluation reports
writing evaluation reports