The best interests of the child is something that the court has to consider when making custody decisions, particularly legal and physical custody and parenting plans. It’s not very well-defined in Massachusetts law. It’s essentially what’s going to promote the child’s happiness and welfare. For example, if you’re looking at custody, they look at how is the living situation of each parent, how could it adversely affect the social, emotional, moral, health, and development of the child. There’s no one right answer I mean, and judges are put sometimes in a really tough position to make that determination of what is in the best interests of the child.

I mean we often hear at court – judges will tell the litigants in an effort to encourage them to come to an agreement about these issues – that we don’t know your family. We don’t know your children, you know? We will make the decision about what’s best for them, or what we think is best for them if we have to, but really, you two should be making that decision, and sometimes they can’t. And sometimes, you know, it does fall to the court to make that determination, but it’s a vague standard that can be informed by a number of factors.

It can be informed by the history of the roles that each party has played, you know, whether one has traditionally been the caretaker of the children. It can be informed by the health histories of the parties. Sometimes you have to have a guardian ad litem conduct an investigation and make a recommendation to the court as to what that person thinks might be – what that person thinks would be in the child’s best interest. It’s something that, you know, I think courts probably grapple with quite a bit because nobody has a crystal ball, and nobody knows for sure what is the right decision, but we as attorneys, we have to, you know, take our clients. We have to take the information they give us, and impart it to the judge, and make the best case for what our client feels is in the best interest of the child.