More than “a few meetings at the council”
The family law service helps parents with questions of custody, residence and contact — parental responsibility, where a child lives and their contact with the other parent. Its role is not to take sides or decide who is the better parent, but to find solutions consistent with the child’s best interests.
You may think you need to convince the family law service how bad the other parent is. However, its main focus is on your child’s wellbeing, how you both manage matters concerning your child, and how much security and stability your child has in everyday life.
Cooperation talks before court proceedings
The first step is usually cooperation talks, where you and the other parent receive help to find solutions without going to court: where your child will live, how contact will work and how you will communicate in future. Sometimes this succeeds. In more entrenched disputes, it is often not enough, and the family law service then becomes an important part of the court proceedings that follow.
The preliminary report ahead of the preparatory hearing
When the dispute reaches the district court, the court often requests a preliminary report, sometimes called an expedited information report, ahead of the preparatory hearing. This is the family law service’s initial, provisional assessment, as the judge may need to make interim decisions about residence or contact before a more extensive investigation can be completed.
The preliminary report is not a full custody investigation. The family law service has limited time and seeks to establish an initial picture of your child’s circumstances, the level of conflict and any clear risk factors. Sometimes it holds brief discussions with the parents; in other cases, the report is based mainly on checks of official records and existing documentation. For example, the family law service may check:
- Whether the family has previously been involved with social services
- Whether there have been previous investigations
- Whether there are concerns about the child
- Other documentation the court needs to know about before making interim decisions
First impressions matter
The court often places considerable weight on these early assessments. It is therefore important that you remain calm, organised and focused on your child from the outset. If you behave aggressively or mainly attack the other parent, you risk creating a negative first impression.
This does not mean you should avoid describing problems or concerns: serious matters are important to raise. However, how you raise them matters. The family law service can often quickly distinguish between genuine, fact-based concerns about your child and conflict purely between adults.
The custody, residence and contact investigation
If the case continues after the preparatory hearing, the family law service is often given a wider remit through a custody, residence and contact investigation (known in Swedish as a VBU), which examines your family’s circumstances in considerably greater depth. However, the preliminary report is often the first material the court uses to make interim decisions.
Take your dealings with the family law service very seriously
Many custody cases begin to take shape at an early stage, when the court forms its first impression of which parent appears most stable, willing to cooperate and focused on the child’s security. The material provided by the family law service then influences interim decisions, investigations and, ultimately, the court’s assessment. How you conduct yourself in your dealings with the service can affect the entire process well into the future.