| Abstract: | ABSTRACT The court, child custody evaluators, and mediators are often faced with difficult decisions regarding how to best meet the needs of children from families who are involved in child custody disputes. In some cases, the court, child custody evaluators and mediators are asked to make decisions about parenting plans for infants and toddlers. When decision makers are faced with actual cases, they are likely to be assisted by lines of inquiry that help them gather the most relevant data to answer the question at hand. A review of the literature has led to the development of 13 criteria that decision makers can use to reach conclusions about whether overnight visits would be advisable with a given infant or toddler. The criteria are considered neutral and are not based on any bias or preconceived opinion about whether overnights with infants and toddlers are or are not advisable. Instead, the criteria proposed provide the decision-maker with an objective way of structuring their thinking about a particular case to insure that all pertinent information has been considered before reaching a conclusion about whether overnight visitation is in the best interest of a given child. |
