Bilateral Assessment Appeal

[FL_Needs_To_Change]

From the courts own actions, i've arrived at the opinion that it lacks "teeth" and the justices show little regard for the welfare of the child. No one in the court system (other than the assessor) seems to want to take responsibility and make any decisions. I'm very frustrated. I can only imagine how my friend feels.

Welcome to the reality of Family Law.
Many here would easily attest to the same conclusion.
There rarely seems to be any justification to the rulings, and the fact that not a single judge is willing to take a stand and do what was "actually" in the best interests of the children.

We were in a similar situation. A psychological assessment was requested by ex as she felt we were undertaking PAS. We had been for many years explaining her behaviour as PAS. She asked for the test, we thought, GREAT finally they'll all see what we have been seeing and saying for years!!! And then when it came time for the child to participate with dad to rule out any physiological issues between them, the ex refused to provide the daughter for testing with dad. We felt the test/assessment was fundamentally flawed so too the suggestions of the psychologist. Yet the courts still ruled in mom’s favour. We tried to fight it to get the assessment nullified, we ran out of money and emotional energy, dad gave up and is no longer in the child's life because of it. We saw how the fight was impacting the child. Mom was still using the child as a pawn and using the psychologist's recommendations to traumatize the child through multiple medical sessions and visits she clearly did not like or want to attend. The daughter was obviously feeling like there must be something wrong with her or her behaviour to have to under go allof these visits. Mom made sure daughter found the perfect medical professional to back her claims and the claims of the initial psychologist.

I hope your case does not end equally.

[3/16th's]

I can't comment on the peculiarity of the original custody arrangement. I'm not privy to the semantics of the original arrangement.

I can comment though on how disappointed I am in the court system. My friend (the father) has given me regular updates about the trials and tribulations he's going through in an effort to obtain custody of his child. He has reems of documents detailing, very specifically, how unfit a parent the mother is. He has a bilateral assessment that is 100% in favor of him taking over custody. Yet the court allows the process to continue. From the courts own actions, i've arrived at the opinion that it lacks "teeth" and the justices show little regard for the welfare of the child. No one in the court system (other than the assessor) seems to want to take responsibility and make any decisions. I'm very frustrated. I can only imagine how my friend feels.

Like I said I said in my first post, the mother wants a second opinion on the assessment. I suspect that this is a ploy by her to get the father to give up the fight due to the high assessment cost.

Any advice, examples or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated!

Hugh

[dadtotheend]

Far from being an expert, it seems peculiar for an agreement to provide for a switch in custody. On the face of it, that would seem unstable for the children and I can see a judge scratching his head.

[3/16th's]

Hello there,

I am posting on behalf of a friend who is going through a fairly messy custody battle with his ex.

when the couple first divorced, custody was granted to the mother. The court ordered that after "x" amount of years of schooling, custody would be given to the father. This past summer was when "x" amount of years was finally reached. Unfortunately for him, getting custody of his son was not just a simple matter of going to pick him up.

Court proceedings have been going back and forth since August with the original order, from all appearences, being ignored by the courts of today. This was a particularly bitter pill to swallow for the parties on the fathers side since the mother turned out to be a less than ideal parent.

One of the results of the fathers/mothers lawyers legal wrangling was a Bilateral Assessment of both households. Ironically, this was requested by the mother.

After an extremely stressful assessment process and an agonizing 1 month wait, the assessor submitted his report that was heavily in favor of immediate custody being granted to the father. In his report, he said something to the affect that sole custody should be granted immediately or risk harming the child psychologically.

Naively, I thought that would be the straw that broke the camels back, but unfortunately, that is not the case. The mother is considering getting a second opinion done. This is where the irony plays in since she requested the first one. The first assessor had done many, many assessments and has been in the psychiatric field for decades. One would think that if he can't provide an accurate assessment, who can?

I think all parties on the fathers side are wondering when the courts will step in and say, "enough is enough".

Does anybody have any advice or know of any legal precedence that could help us out in this situation?

No longer naive,

Hugh Bradley