A friend of mine is wanting to get a divorce, is there anything she can do in advance to help insure she gets child custody?

Lots of issues to discuss. First, she should discreetly open her own bank account. Second, she should keep a daily log as to all interactions she has with her husband and the interactions between the husband and the kids. Third, she will need to have a job, so she should start looking now to convince the court that she is trying to support herself, i.e. send out resumes and keep e-mails of contacts she makes over the internet with potential employers. And lastly, she needs to spend as much time with the kids to establish that she has been the primary custodial parent for the last six months, i.e., doing the majority of the child rearing by making meals, doing laundry, helping with homework, taking kids to appointments, etc. By doing these things and documenting it all in a diary, she will have a head start if the divorce degenerates into a custody dispute.

Hope this helps