Rule 90.6.Appointment of Child Custody Investigator.

In a custody, support, or domestic-violence-related action, the court may appoint an expert under Evidence Rule 706 to investigate custody, access, and visitation issues and give an independent opinion on the child's best interests. A custody investigator should understand child development, the impact of separation on children, domestic violence and substance abuse issues, the relevant Alaska law, and how to communicate findings to children, adults, and the court, and must disclose any relationship with a party that could call the investigator's impartiality into question within 10 days of appointment. The investigator files a written report by a court-set deadline describing the investigation, summarizing what was learned, and explaining conclusions and recommendations; unless the court orders otherwise, the report is deemed admitted into evidence upon filing, though a party can require the investigator to testify by including the investigator on the party's final witness list. The report is confidential absent a court order, though it can be shared with a party's own trial-preparation expert.

A typical investigation includes interviews with each parent and their new partners, interviews with or observation of the children, observation of parent-child interaction, review of the court file and other documents, criminal and child-protection background checks, review of records concerning the child and household members, and outreach to references or other people with relevant information — though the court can narrow the scope, and the investigator retains discretion to skip steps that are clearly unwarranted. The investigator can ask a party to sign a release for confidential records, and a party who won't sign has 10 days to instead move for a protective order, backed by a certification of a good-faith effort to resolve the dispute first; if the party does neither, the court must order the records released. The investigator generally may contact a represented party without notifying counsel, and may not engage in ex parte contact with the court except for routine scheduling. A party can depose the investigator after the report is filed, and the investigator's records are discoverable as though the investigator were a party, subject to any court-imposed limits on confidential material. Fees are split equally between the parties absent good cause to allocate them differently.