Child custody: while you are getting divorced

by Ami Detroja

Divorce and child custody cases are often sensitive and emotional matters. A good and sensitive attorney, who understands you and your needs, can formulate a plan to protect your rights and assets. Divorce affects you in two ways financially and emotionally. Typically, the parent who does not end up with primary custody of the children will have a faster economic recovery from divorce.

When you decide live separately, at that moment you not think about your children. How much they will get affected, by your this kind of big decision? Your children are your responsibility and you cannot ignore them. Please keep in mind that the purpose of custody legal action is supposed to be to determine the best home environment for the children. When parents engage in bitter, spiteful, aggressive litigation, they make the transition much more difficult for their children, and they also damage their ability to communicate once the litigation has ended.

If you understand your children, their needs and emotions then child custody will not be a big problem for you. But if both mother and father think that children will be happy with them, problem arises at the big level. At that time, they require good legal advisor who help them.

Most of child custody lawyer suggest that information gathering is the heart of the child custody. You can obtain the information from a variety of sources like school reports, previous assessments, and medical reports and often includes a review of court records pertaining to the current action, criminal reference checks on parents and at times new partners and Children's Aid Society reports.

In addition to the gathering of reports, required interviews of the parents and the children in various combinations are taken by the assessor. Where a parent has a new partner, spouse or girl/boy-friend, they will likely be included in the interview process. They can include other family friends, employers, colleagues, teachers, professionals and extended family members if deemed necessary by the assessor.

After completion of the information gathering and all, assessor prepares a detailed report that sets out recommendations for parenting arrangements to meet the best interests of the child. The recommendations specify a parenting plan that can include who has primary responsibility for making decisions affecting the child's life, living/care and school arrangements and may also include recommendations for parents and/or child to address gaps or concerns related to parenting abilities.

The process ends with a disclosure meeting with parents to review the report; it may include parent's lawyers also. They make sure that the information on which they are giving the child custody, are correct and both parents and lawyers understand the report and recommendations.

Even after a long discussion, I think that it will be better if parents try to solve this problem out of the court. By this process children really get hurt. It is my personal advice that keeps away your children from your personal problems.