By Advocate Karan Dua | Vintage Litigation, New Delhi | Published: July 2026

If you’re in the middle of a custody dispute in Delhi, there’s a good chance the other side — or their lawyer — has already raised the idea of sending your child for a “psychological evaluation.” It sounds neutral, even scientific, almost like something that could settle the argument once and for all. In practice, it has become one of the most misused tools in Indian custody litigation: a way to drag out proceedings, pressure the other parent into a settlement, or put a child through repeated, invasive assessments that end up serving the litigation strategy more than the child.

Parents on both sides tend to have strong, conflicting instincts about this. One parent wants an evaluation because they believe it will “prove” what they already know about the other parent’s fitness. The other parent resists because they fear the process itself — repeated interviews, unfamiliar clinicians, questions a five- or eight-year-old shouldn’t have to answer about which parent they love more — will do more harm to the child than any custody order ever could. Family courts, caught between these positions and under pressure to appear thorough, have often defaulted to ordering evaluation almost automatically, sometimes more than once, sometimes from separate experts nominated by each side.

In June 2026, the Supreme Court of India stepped directly into this problem. The Court did not ban psychological evaluation. What it did was far more significant for how custody litigation is actually conducted: it made routine, unreasoned, automatic ordering of these tests a thing of the past, and it built a structured framework that every family court in the country — including every court here in Delhi — must now follow before subjecting a child to this kind of assessment. This guide walks through exactly what changed, why it happened, and what it means if you are currently in, or about to enter, a custody dispute.

The backdrop: why psychological evaluation became so contested

To understand why this ruling matters, it helps to understand how psychological evaluation requests were typically handled before it. Custody proceedings in India are usually filed under one of two frameworks — the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890, which governs guardianship and custody applications generally, or the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956, which applies specifically to Hindu families and works alongside the 1890 Act. Both frameworks share the same central principle: the welfare of the child is the paramount consideration, above the technical or competing legal rights of either parent.

The difficulty has always been in applying that principle. “Welfare of the child” is deliberately broad, and courts have looked to all sorts of evidence to try to fill in what it actually means in a given case — schooling, stability, the child’s own wishes where the child is old enough to express them, each parent’s conduct, financial capacity, and, increasingly, expert opinion from child psychologists or psychiatrists.

That last category is where the trouble started. Once psychological opinion became an accepted form of evidence in custody matters, it also became a tactical one. A parent who suspected they were losing ground on the facts could request an evaluation, hoping either to delay proceedings, to generate a favourable report through a hand-picked expert, or simply to put pressure on the other side through the disruption an evaluation causes to a child’s routine. Courts, wary of being accused of failing to consider all available evidence, often granted these requests with little scrutiny — sometimes ordering separate assessments requested by each parent’s own expert, leading to two competing psychological reports that contradicted each other and added months of delay without resolving anything.

By the mid-2020s, family law practitioners across the country — including here in Delhi’s family courts — had flagged this as a systemic problem. There was no consistent, binding standard for when evaluation was actually necessary, what form it should take, or how many times a child could reasonably be subjected to it during the course of one dispute. That gap is exactly what the Supreme Court closed in June 2026.

The case: Sheetal Vasant Thakur v. Chirag Arora (2026)

The ruling arose from a bitter, cross-border custody dispute that had been working its way through multiple jurisdictions for years. The couple married in 2015 and relocated to the United States shortly after, where their daughter was born in 2016. The marriage broke down amid serious allegations — the mother alleged domestic violence, and separately alleged that the child had been subjected to abuse. Following an incident in 2019, the mother returned to India with the child, and criminal complaints were subsequently registered in more than one Indian jurisdiction.

What followed was years of contested custody and visitation litigation, moving between different courts, with each parent seeking either sole custody or, at minimum, meaningful access to the child. Over the course of this litigation, both sides made competing requests for psychological and psychiatric evaluation of the child — requests that, taken together, risked subjecting a young child to repeated clinical assessment as an ordinary feature of a dispute that had already stretched across years and continents.

Deciding the matter on 11 June 2026, a bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and N. Kotiswar Singh used the case to lay down a general framework — not limited to the specific facts before it — governing how psychological evaluation of children should be handled in custody and visitation disputes across India. The judgment draws on, and is meant to be read alongside, the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890, the Family Courts Act, 1984, and the constitutional principle that a child’s welfare, not a parent’s legal entitlement, is the supreme consideration in every custody matter.

What the Supreme Court actually held

The judgment sets out several concrete, practically applicable rules that reshape custody litigation strategy going forward. It’s worth going through each one in detail, because the value of this ruling for someone actually navigating a custody dispute lies in the specifics, not just the headline.

1. No routine or automatic testing. The Court held that a family court cannot order psychological evaluation of a child simply because the parents are in dispute, or because one side has asked for it. This is arguably the single most important part of the ruling. Until now, an evaluation request often succeeded almost by default — courts were reluctant to refuse a request that, on its face, looked like it was “for the child’s benefit.” Under this ruling, that default is gone. The court must record specific, case-based reasons showing that evaluation is genuinely necessary in that particular matter, not simply available as an option.

2. “Minimum intrusion” as the guiding principle. Even where the court finds evaluation is justified, it must choose the least invasive method reasonably available, and must avoid repeated or duplicate assessments of the same child by different experts over the course of the litigation. This directly targets the practice of each parent producing their own psychologist, which had become common and which routinely produced two contradictory reports rather than one clear, independent assessment.

3. A single independent expert, not a panel or dueling experts. Instead of allowing each parent to nominate their own psychologist — a structure that almost guarantees an adversarial, “battle of experts” outcome — courts should ordinarily appoint one independent expert whose findings both sides must work with. This shifts the incentive structure significantly: there is no longer an obvious tactical advantage to seeking an evaluation, because the resulting report isn’t something either parent gets to shop for or control.

4. Parental fitness gets examined first. Before subjecting the child to evaluation, courts are now expected to first assess the mental and emotional state of the parents themselves. This reflects something family law practitioners have argued for years: in most contested custody matters, the real disputed issue is parental conduct — stability, capacity to provide a safe environment, history of the relationship with the child — not some hidden psychological problem in the child that testing needs to uncover. By requiring courts to look at the parents first, the ruling redirects the evidentiary focus toward where it usually belongs.

5. The child’s welfare remains the only real test. None of the above changes the underlying legal standard. The judgment reaffirms, in strong terms, the long-standing principle under the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890 that the welfare of the child — not the competing legal rights of either parent — is the paramount consideration in every custody decision. What changes is the evidentiary process used to get there, not the ultimate legal test itself.

Taken together, these five principles convert psychological evaluation from a tool that was almost automatically available to any parent who asked for it, into a tool that must be specifically justified, kept minimally invasive, administered through a single neutral expert, and used only after the court has already looked closely at the parents’ own conduct and circumstances.

Why this matters if you’re fighting a custody case in Delhi

Delhi’s family courts — Saket, Dwarka, Rohini, Karkardooma, and Tis Hazari — handle an extremely high volume of custody and guardianship litigation every year, and requests for psychological assessment of children had, by 2025, become close to routine in genuinely contested matters. This ruling gives both parents a clearer, more predictable framework to work within, and it changes practical strategy in a few concrete ways.

If you’re worried about your child being subjected to repeated testing: You, or your advocate, can now directly challenge a psychological-evaluation request that isn’t backed by specific, documented reasons. A generic request — along the lines of “let’s get the child evaluated to understand their preference” — should no longer succeed on its own. The party requesting evaluation now carries a real burden to explain, on the specific facts of the case, why it is necessary.

If you believe evaluation is genuinely necessary: For example, where there are credible, specific allegations affecting the child’s safety, emotional wellbeing, or where a child has expressed distress that needs professional assessment — the judgment doesn’t shut this door. It requires the request to be reasoned and proportionate, and it directs that the assessment be handled through a single independent expert rather than a contest between two hired reports.

If you’re a father seeking custody or expanded visitation: This ruling sits alongside a broader pattern visible in 2025–2026 Supreme Court and High Court decisions recognising that a father’s role in a child’s life carries weight equal to a mother’s, and that natural guardianship under Section 6 of the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956 cannot be treated as automatically secondary. Courts in several recent matters have made clear that a father’s parental rights, and his standing as a natural guardian, cannot be diminished simply because there is litigation between the parents, or because of an assumption — sometimes called the “Tender Years Doctrine” — that a mother is inherently the more suitable caregiver for a young child. That assumption is increasingly treated by Indian courts as a factor to weigh, not a rule to apply mechanically. This ruling reinforces that trend by requiring courts to look at documented parental conduct and specific facts, rather than defaulting to broad assumptions about either parent.

If you’re a mother defending against an evaluation request used as pressure: The same protections apply regardless of which parent is on which side of the request. If an evaluation request is being used strategically — to delay proceedings, generate leverage in settlement talks, or simply to unsettle you and the child — this ruling gives you a concrete legal basis to insist the requesting party show specific cause before the court grants it.

What this ruling doesn’t change

It’s worth being precise about the limits of this decision, because overstating its effect can lead to poor litigation strategy.

• It does not create an automatic right to custody or visitation for either parent. The underlying custody test — the welfare of the child — is unchanged.
• It does not prevent evaluation altogether. It prevents unreasoned or repeated evaluation. Where genuine facts justify assessment, courts retain full discretion to order it.
• It does not override existing protective mechanisms in cases involving genuine allegations of abuse or safety risk. The welfare of the child remains paramount, and courts can and will order evaluation where the specific facts of a case justify it.
• It does not apply retroactively to reopen assessments that were already conducted and relied upon in a final custody order. Its practical impact is on pending applications and future requests, not on settled matters.
• It does not replace the need for strong documentary and testimonial evidence about parental conduct, the child’s actual living situation, schooling, and daily stability — if anything, this ruling makes that kind of evidence more important, not less, since courts are now expected to look at the parents’ circumstances closely before even considering evaluation.

Practical steps if psychological evaluation comes up in your case

1. Ask the other side — or the court — to specify the reason. Under this ruling, a bare or generic request is not enough. The reason for seeking evaluation must be specific to your case and must be recorded by the court.
2. Push for a single independent expert if evaluation is genuinely warranted, rather than agreeing to separate assessments commissioned by each side. A jointly appointed, court-nominated expert is both more consistent with this ruling and generally more persuasive to the court than a report either side is seen to have shopped for.
3. Document parental conduct, not just the child’s behaviour. Since courts must now examine parental mental and emotional stability before turning to the child, evidence about your own conduct — and, where relevant, the other parent’s conduct — is often more directly relevant to the outcome than a psychological test result.
4. Keep the child’s day-to-day stability central to your case. School records, consistency of routine, the primary caregiving history during the marriage, and the child’s ordinary living environment typically carry significant weight with family courts, often more than a one-time clinical report.
5. Avoid using evaluation requests as a tactic yourself. Courts are now specifically alert to unreasoned or strategic requests. A request that isn’t well-founded on the facts may weaken your credibility with the court on other issues in the case.
6. Get case-specific advice early, before the request is made or responded to. Custody strategy in Delhi varies depending on which family court the matter is filed in, whether criminal proceedings are running in parallel, and the specific facts alleged by either side. A general understanding of this ruling is a starting point, not a substitute for a strategy built around your particular file.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can my ex-spouse still request a psychological evaluation of our child?

A: Yes, but the request must now be supported by specific, documented reasons — not simply because the parents disagree, or because one side believes it will help their case. The court must record why evaluation is genuinely necessary in that particular matter before ordering it.

Q: Does this ruling favour fathers over mothers in custody cases?

A: No. The ruling is gender-neutral and applies equally to requests made by either parent. Its core focus is limiting unnecessary or repeated psychological testing of the child, not shifting custody outcomes toward either parent specifically.

Q: What if there are genuine abuse allegations involving my child?

A: The ruling does not prevent evaluation in cases involving credible, specific safety concerns. Courts retain full discretion to order assessment where the facts justify it — what has changed is that the request can no longer be treated as routine or automatic without that justification.

Q: Which courts in Delhi will apply this ruling?

A: All family courts in Delhi — including Saket, Dwarka, Rohini, Karkardooma, and Tis Hazari — as well as the Delhi High Court, are bound by this Supreme Court framework in any pending or future custody or visitation application involving a request for psychological evaluation.

Q: Does this affect an existing custody order that already relied on a psychological report?

A: Generally, no. The ruling primarily governs how future and currently pending requests for evaluation should be handled going forward. If you believe an existing order was based on a flawed or unnecessary evaluation process, that raises a separate legal question worth discussing directly with your advocate.

Q: How many times can a child be sent for psychological evaluation during one custody case?

A: The ruling does not set a fixed numerical limit, but its “minimum intrusion” principle specifically discourages repeated or duplicate assessments of the same child within the same proceeding. Courts are expected to avoid subjecting a child to multiple evaluations where one, conducted by an independent expert, is sufficient.

Q: If both parents agree to a psychological evaluation, does the court still need to record specific reasons?

A: The safer and more defensible approach — consistent with the spirit of the ruling — is for the court to still record why the evaluation is considered necessary and beneficial to the child, even where both parents consent. Mutual agreement between parents doesn’t automatically override the child-welfare-first framework this judgment establishes.

Q: Does this ruling apply to visitation disputes, or only to full custody battles?

A: Both. The judgment specifically addresses evaluation requests made in the context of custody and visitation disputes, since psychological assessment requests have historically arisen in both types of proceedings.

Q: What law does this ruling sit alongside?

A: It is decided within the existing framework of the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890, the Family Courts Act, 1984, and, for Hindu families, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956. It does not replace any of these statutes — it clarifies how courts should apply psychological-evidence procedures within them.

Conclusion

For years, psychological evaluation requests in Indian custody litigation were often used strategically rather than sparingly — a way to delay proceedings, generate leverage, or put children through repeated assessments that had more to do with litigation tactics than genuine welfare concerns. The Supreme Court’s 2026 ruling in Sheetal Vasant Thakur v. Chirag Arora doesn’t eliminate psychological evaluation as a tool available to family courts, but it fundamentally changes how that tool can be used: it must now be justified with specific reasons, kept to the minimum intrusion necessary, conducted through a single independent expert wherever possible, and used only after the court has already examined the parents’ own conduct and circumstances.

If you’re facing a custody dispute in Delhi and the question of psychological evaluation has come up — whether the request is coming from you or from the other side — this framework is now central to how it should be raised, responded to, and argued before the court. Getting the strategy right at this stage can materially affect how long your case takes, how much your child is put through during it, and ultimately, the outcome itself.

Facing a custody dispute in Delhi? Speak to a family law advocate about your specific case before responding to any evaluation request.

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Written by Adv. Karan Dua, practising in Delhi, focuses on matrimonial and family law matters, including child custody disputes.