A Court Investigator will be appointed to the Care and Protection case under the law. They are very similar to what is called a “Guardian Ad Litem” and many times in divorces or Probate and Family Court cases.

It is the Court Investigators job to gather facts about the case and write a report for the court. The information that they gather in the reports itself will not be confidential. The original will be given to the judge and copies will be given to all the attorneys in the case.
Nobody other than the Judge and the attorneys are able to have actual copies.

The Investigator will generally write down everything that is discussed when he/she meets with you and it is more than fine to have an attorney present and sometimes it is recommended to have your attorney present while the Investigator comes to your home.

There are a lot of recommendations that can be made and it is a very important process where you should speak to your attorney before meeting with the Court Investigator to talk about different options.

It is also important to determine whether or not you will sign Releases or not and you would want to go over that with your attorney. You would also want to be able to give documents or potential witnesses for the Court Investigator to speak to, but again it is important to go over that with your attorney first.

The Investigator is supposed to be a neutral person that makes some recommendations and a summary of the case and will speak to all the different parties that are involved. It is important to know that even if they’re adversarial that they are not working for DCF; or even if they are friendly, they are not working for you. The court may give their report a significant amount of weight.