If a case concerns custody or parenting time of the children one of the things the court is going to want to know about is the physical, mental and emotional well being of all involved parties. So if there is a physical, mental or emotional issue with a parent that will affect the children or will affect having the children in their care, by all means that person’s medical history is relevant and very possibly admissible at trial so that is something you are going to want to investigate.

There are a few ways to get medical records from the other party. One way is to ask the other party to provide the records to you. That is something I do a lot in my own cases, but there are times when I am concerned that the other party is not going to provide the full medical record. They may be hiding something or not disclosing something. So in those cases I opt to get the medical records myself. How I do that is I get ‘releases’ from the other side.

My strategy is to get the...

Interviewing children by a mental health professional in a child custody case can be ordered by the judge to determine custody, decision making or parenting time.

If children are of sufficient maturity judges can consider whatever the child wants in making a decision about what is in the child’s best interest.

The judge will often order an evaluation of the child via an interview by a mental health professional. In many of these cases both myself and my client are shocked when the interview comes back and the child has said something different than what the child has actually relayed to the parent whose asking for the change.

But when I sit down and think about it I’m not so shocked because of children and how eager to please their parents they are. How they love their parents and don’t want to hurt either parent’s feelings or have the parent be angry with them. So this can be what is behind when a child tells one parent that they want to come live with...

There are actions you can take now to increase your chances of success in your family court hearing.

Hi I'm Wendy Hernandez and in this video I’m going to give you a few real world examples of ways to increase your chances of success in your divorce or custody case:

Let’s say your ex-spouse is alleging that you have mental health issues or a mental health issue and you are denying it. One thing you can do to squash that accusation or allegation is go out and get a psychiatric evaluation. These evaluations do come at a cost however you could save money from the get go instead of having to fight this custody or divorce battle for months.

Now it may be that you do have some type of mental health condition but there is no shame in that. In that case you would show the other party what the condition was and what kind of treatment you are receiving and that you are complying with a course of treatment the doctor has prescribed for you.

By going above and beyond you are...