Pre-maturely Litigating Psychological & Custody Evaluations
Attorneys who either want to churn fees or who are afraid their client will not do well on a psychological/custody evaluation will oftentimes resort to litigating a psychological/custody evaluation during the evaluation. Their purpose in doing so is to unfairly influence the outcome of the evaluation. Unfortunately, they oftentimes succeed and the family is forced to endure a custody arrangement that is not based on the best interests of the children.
In California, the better practice is to wait until the psychological/custody evaluation is competed and distributed to the respective attorneys and the court and then, if you believe the evaluator’s methodology is problematic, challenge it by either impeaching the evaluator or by hiring another evaluator to perform a “unilateral” evaluation and to critique the first evaluator’s work. (Some states like California allow parties obtain “unilateral” evaluations without a court order; other states require permission from the court.) A “unilateral” evaluator is an evaluator hired by
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