Child custody evaluation (also known as evaluation of parental responsibility) refers to the use of the legal system to resolve questions of the distribution of decision-making responsibility and time with children, often but not always in the context of marital dissolution. This process exists to resolve disputes between two or more adults who have an interest in providing parenting to a child and who cannot agree about how the child's care should be divided between or among them. They may be divorcing or may have never lived together in the same household (such as when grandparents vie for the right to parent a grandchild whose biological parent is unavailable or when a child is born to two biological parents who were never involved in a ...