Types of Discovery Applicable in Child Custody Proceedings

Discovery is the process during the course of a legal action by which the parties to a lawsuit obtain information about the situation underlying the litigation and the factual and legal underpinnings of the other party's case. Rules of civil procedure in the courts of various jurisdictions regulate the discovery process in civil cases. Discovery procedures can be made use of in child custody proceedings arising out of a divorce between parties with a minor child or children as well as in other types of legal actions.

In recent years, as the extent and sophistication of child custody proceedings have increased, wider employment has been made in such cases of the range of discovery techniques used in other types of civil litigation. One such discovery method is the oral deposition, in which a party to the proceeding or other witness is questioned about the subjects at issue in somewhat the same way that such questioning takes place during the trial of a case. Written interrogatories, a group of questions sent to a party for his or her response, are also used. Requests for admissions, which as their name suggests are statements submitted to a party which he or she is required to admit or deny, can be used to determine which issues in the case are not in dispute and so do not need to be proved by the party who obtains such admissions from the opposing party. Parties can also be requested to produce documents in their possession for inspection by the opposing party. Because of the personal nature of family law proceedings such as child custody disputes, a party may claim that certain information requested in discovery is subject to some type of privilege that bars its disclosure, and the court may be called upon to determine the applicability of the claimed privilege to the subject matter sought in discovery.

Family law in the United States, including the legal principles applied in child custody proceedings, has developed out of the separate legal systems of each of the states rather than from a single unified body of federal law. As a result, the legal standards governing the use of discovery in child custody proceedings will vary from state to state, and will be found in state statutes and procedural rules and in the decisions of courts dealing with matters of family law.