If bringing children to court to talk to the judge is a bad idea, how do can you have the child’s preference be known to the Court?
One way is to have a Guardian ad litem (GAL) appointed to the case. The GAL represents the children and their best interests. The GAL will get to know the children and talk to them about their preferences if the children are of the age, experience, and maturity level to express a reasonable preference. The GAL can then inform the judge of what the child said to the GAL about his or her preference for custody and visitation.
Another way to have the children’s preference know to the court without bring them to court is to have a custody evaluation. A custody evaluator will talk the children and report to the court what the children told him or her.
Under certain circumstances, if the children are seeing a therapist, you can try to call the therapist to court to testify to what the children told him or her.
