Guardian Ad Litem

David Siegel: Or a child rep.

Jesse Barrientes: Or a child rep.

David Siegel: There's two different breeds.

Jesse Barrientes: Actually there's a third one, right. There's a guardian ad litem attorney for the child.

David Siegel: Right. What's that person's function? That's important.

Jesse Barrientes: That person is again, you're represented by your divorce attorney in Joliet, he's looking after your best interests. She's represented by her attorney. She's representing her best interests, and so the child needs to be represented. Generally what'll happen is it will most always be a guardian ad litem, not a child rep, okay, because it goes beyond our show here. There are different things that are required of each one of those things, but generally it's going to be a guardian ad litem, and they're going to look out for the best interest of the kid, and they're going to make her report to the court and tell them what they think the best interest. Now there's also what they call a 604 B expert which is psychologists that's appointed by the court. It's the court's witness, and everybody's going to get psychological evaluations. They're going to come in. The psychologist is going to administer tests.

David Siegel: But I don't need a psychologist. I'm just going through a divorce here. Why do I need a psychologist?

Jesse Barrientes: That depends on who you ask Dave. Anyway, in order to determine the child's best interest, that's what they're going to look at, and so the court is going to give great weight to the decision of either the guardian ad litem because of what their recommendations are. The guardian ad litem is the right arm of the court, so it would be with the psychologist too.

David Siegel: But judges are reluctant are they not, to actually go to a full-blown hearing on custody? Aren't they going to try and encourage even in this process of having a psychologist – they're going to encourage the parties to work out an agreement amongst themselves regarding custody?

Jesse Barrientes: Right.

David Siegel: How many times has it actually, percentage-wise, do custody battle actually go to a full hearing to determine custody?

Jesse Barrientes: There's a lot of them, but in any litigation it's a small percentage of them that actually go to hearing. Of course the judges are always – because they're interested in resolving it. Just for clarification, we had those three classifications. We had the guardian ad litem, we had the attorney or the child rep, and we also had the attorney for the child. Those are the three kinds of categories, and again, just for clarification because I don't think I mentioned that last one before.

Anyway, yeah, the judges are going to try to resolve that, and move that, and push it because that's really what's in the best interest. It's really a horrible thing. The child is going to get questioned. The child is going to go to this psychological evaluation, and they try to do it the best way they can, but essentially, most of the time the courts are going to listen to what those people recommend.

David Siegel: It's litigation the child did not ask to be part of.

Jesse Barrientes: That's right.

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