730 Child Custody Evaluations

The Custody Evaluation: Legal And Practical Context

by Michael Dishon, Ph.D.

The custody evaluation is often referred to as a "730 Evaluation." This is because the respective section of the Evidence Code authorizes a judge to order such an evaluation.

A 730-child custody evaluation can be:

Agreed to by the parties and their attorneys (legally referred to as "by stipulation")
Requested by either side in a custody dispute, subject to approval by a judge, or
Ordered by a judge
Typically, the need for such an evaluation arises in the context of unresolved questions about one or both parents' parenting practices, a parent's mental health problems because they may diminish parenting capacity, and concerns about child abuse, substance use, and other circumstances that may have a negative impact on the "child's best interest." One such circumstance occurs when one parent wants to move out of state and the other parent objects to the move.

By law, the evaluation is supposed to answer the question of what is in the best interest of the child. That is the golden standard in all jurisdictions in the US, and it is supposed to serve as the basis for the judge's custody/visitation orders. However, what is and is not in the best interest of the child is controversial both from a legal and psychological perspective, a question that will be addressed in another article.

While in theory, any person can hire a suitable mental health professional to conduct an evaluation, unless the evaluation involves all relevant family members (usually both parents and all minor children, but sometimes also the stepparents, step-siblings, grandparents and others, say a nanny), it will be considered a one-sided evaluation. Such one-sided evaluations are discouraged by the courts as well as by the ethics of the mental health professions, a point I will return to below.

An expert hired by one side will often be viewed as a "hired gun." Since it is in the court's discretion whether to accept the evidence of a "hired gun," and since a judge may decide against hearing the hired gun's evidence, the effort and expense become risky.

Child Custody