What Are the Best Interests of the Child?

Massachusetts Custody Lawyers Protecting Your Child's Interests

In Massachusetts, when the courts are trying to determine what to do regarding issuing a custody order, their standard of review is “best interest of the child.” There are a lot of things they look at regarding age of the child and if a parent has been a primary parent throughout the marriage. However, at the end of the day, making that determination is all about what they think is the healthiest situation for the children.

There are two parts to our job as child custody attorneys:

• The primary part is obviously to advocate for you and make sure that your concerns related potentially to the other parent’s parenting ability are heard—and they are often very valid concerns.
• The other part is communicating to you—to take yourself as much out of the equation as possible.

The divorces that go smoothly and wonderfully for the children and have the least amount of impact on the kids are the ones where both parents—maybe they hate each other, maybe someone cheated, maybe they’re just not going to let this go for a while—but, at the end of the day, they make decisions related to the custody and the visitation. It has to do with what they think is going to make their child healthy and happy and safe.