Hi, all:

Looking for some insight from anyone who is familiar with child custody proceedings when one parent is bipolar. I am friends with a couple who are separated - the father is bipolar and has had extreme challenges over the past 3 years - on disability and in and out of inpatient, multiple medication changes with virtually no success. He is now not taking any meds, and while he seems much better than he was 6 months ago, he is clearly in a manic state - very grandiose thoughts, excessive spending, huge ego, some paranoia. He thinks he is smarter than Albert Einstein, for instance. However, we think he has his therapist fooled into thinking he is fine, and he claims a psychiatrist told him he does not need to be on meds anymore.

His wife is concerned about him having unsupervised visits with their 3 year old daughter, but she is not looking to block visitation completely. He, of course, thinks he's fine and is denying everything he says to her that she documented in an emergency custody action. He recently stated that he has the right to take his daughter alone whenever he wants as her parent, hence the emergency filing. She is fine when the three of them are together so she can see how he acts.

The hearing is a few weeks away, so I'm wondering what she can expect in terms of how they will determine whether he is fit to see the child by himself. Do they only look at medical history and then the account of any professionals he is seeing now? Would they potentially have an independent professional try to evaluate him? The concern there is that he is manipulative and may be able to act stable and "normal" during such an eval and potentially be deemed OK.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!