Parenting and Custody

Overview.  There is no area of our practice that is more important to or has longer lasting effects for our clients than custody.  We are committed to advocating for our collaborative clients and fostering the ability of mediating and collaborating parents to successfully co-parent after the legal process has ended. We educate and empower our clients to further their child’s best interests in terms of a parenting plan, access schedule, decision-making practices and future conflict resolution procedures.
 
Since every family is unique, creating successful post divorce parenting plans is an area of divorce especially suited for non-adversarial resolution.  Mediation and collaborative divorce provide the divorcing couple with the professional support needed so that the parents retain their parental decision making authority, rather than delegating that to a judge, lawyer, guardian or custody evaluator.  The collaborative process especially, having a specific role for a parenting specialist, insulates a child from divorce while giving him a voice in determining his family’s future.
 
Confronting and addressing custody and parenting issues can bring out the best or the worst in each parent.  This firm urges parents to find the strength to be their best during these difficult times.  Every child deserves this from the two most important people in the world to him - his mom and dad.
 
Parenting Education Program. All divorcing parents must complete a six-hour parenting education class offered by various organizations throughout the state.  Completing the class is mandatory, even where parents have a positive and successful co-parenting relationship, and is a prerequisite to the court issuing a judgment of dissolution.
 
Terminology.
 
“Legal custody” refers to the right of a person to make major decision for and on behalf of a child.  Most parents receive a judgment of “joint legal custody” meaning they must make major decisions for the child together.  “Sole legal custody” occurs when only one person has the right to make major decisions for a child.
 
“Parenting plan, parental responsibility plan, access schedule, parenting time” are all plans which identify, describe and allocate parenting rights and responsibilities.
 
“Physical custody” or “primary residential custody” are terms used increasingly less often and identify generally with whom the child will live, such person making the day to day decisions affecting the child.
 
“Visitation” is a generally obsolete term describing the rights of access a parent has to his or her child when the other parent has physical custody.
 
“Shared custody” refers to a parenting plan in which the child spends substantial time in the care of each parent, although not necessarily exactly equal time.  Parents with shared custody share responsibility for the child’s day-to-day care.
 
Adversarial divorces only.
 
“Custody study”. An intrusive and inherently judgmental examination of the divorcing couple, their child and their lives.  The study may be conducted by a family relations counselor or a private evaluator, typically a psychologist or psychiatrist.  The custody evaluator makes a recommendation to a judge at trial about what parenting orders, in the evaluator’s opinion, are in the child’s best interests.
 
“Regional Family Trial Docket”, is a special statewide custody in Middletown to which most of Connecticut’s high conflict custody disputes are handled and tried.
 
“Guardian Ad Litem”, an attorney or other professional appointed by a court so that the child’s best interests are known to the trial judge.
 
“Attorney for the Minor Child”, an attorney appointed by a court to represent the child as his attorney.
 
Attorney Cappalli’s Service as Guardian Ad Litem and Attorney for the Minor Child.  This firm is committed to improving the welfare of children whose parents choose to address parenting issues through litigation.  Therefore, notwithstanding her non-adversarial philosophy, Attorney Cappalli serves these children by accepting court appointments as Guardian Ad Litem and Counsel for the Minor Child. Attorney Cappalli has supplemented her general legal expertise with specialized training starting with The State of Connecticut Regional Family trial Docket Child Development program in 1995 to the 2010 State of Connecticut Judicial Branch Guardian Ad Litem/Attorney for the Minor Child Comprehensive Basic Training.  Attorney Cappalli regularly serves children as a Special Master at the Regional Family Trial Docket.