Ethical Violations: What Can and Does Go Wrong in Child Custody Evaluations?

Child custody evaluations can have a significant impact on the adjustment and well-being of children and family members. Custody evaluators must be qualified and held to the highest professional standards. The authors of this article review custody evaluations and often witness inadequate and unprofessional evaluations. In this article, ethical mistakes seen regularly are highlighted. Many mistakes occur when cases are complex and include allegations of child maltreatment or intimate partner violence. Therefore, it is important that custody evaluators be trained in family and child psychology, attachment dynamics, psychological assessment, child abuse, and intimate partner violence. Child custody work needs to be monitored closely to ensure that mistakes can be eliminated in order to avoid unnecessary harm to children and families.     

Evaluating the Probative Value of Child Custody Evaluations

Abstract

The ultimate purpose of a child custody evaluation is to assist children and their families to restructure their family lives after divorce. A competent forensic work product is defined, in part, by the eval-uator'S use of current state of the art forensic methods and procedures applied to child custody evaluations (Gould, 1998). In this paper, a detailed structure for reviewing the reliability and relevance of a child custody advisory report is provided in order to help these professionals produce a work product of greater weight and sufficiency to the court and a work product that is increasingly useful to the families we seek to help.     

Practice Guidelines In Child Custody Evaluations for Licensed Clinical Social Workers

Child custody evaluations and decisions are often complicated and emotionally charged. The following guidelines are offered as a framework for clinical social workers who are asked by the judicial system to undertake these evaluations. The historical background of child custody and the theoretical considerations that have guided the courts are reviewed. The traditional areas of consideration and the empirical data related to these areas are examined. The guidelines present pertinent information regarding ethical considerations, parent–child relationship, parenting style, gender issues, parental conflict, parental alienation, domestic violence, race, religion, sexual preferences, geography, parental psychopathology, substance abuse, child’s preference, physical health of the child, and behavioral health of the child. A format for the evaluation process is described and includes the role of the clinician, confidentiality, fees, and review of documents, interviewing, home visits, psychological testing, and the actual written report. Making recommendations to the court regarding child custody is an area of practice that clinical social workers encounter in ever-increasing numbers. Clinical social workers are called upon to give recommendations regarding child custody in neglect or abuse cases, in termination of parental rights proceedings, and in the area divorce and of guardianship. In an effort to provide clinicians with scientifically grounded parameters for rendering these recommendations, the following guidelines are recommended. These guidelines provide a framework of scientific principles, along with established and accepted clinical practice, to enhance the practitioner’s decision making in these challenging and complicated cases. The guidelines are specifically designed for clinical social workers doing custody evaluations in cases of marital divorce and are restricted to that area of practice.     

Anger as a Frequent Factor in Custody Evaluation Complaints to Boards of Psychology

In order to provide the highest quality services when court-ordered to do child custody evaluations, it is important for mental health professionals, particularly psychologists who do psychological testing, to be clear about the ethical requirements associated with the child custody evaluation process. They should be impartial, thorough, and competent focusing on the best interest of the child. Mental health professionals have been accused of unethical and illegal behavior when doing such evaluations, in part, due to the anger associated with the outcome and/or the process. The ethical issues most associated with licensing board and ethics committee complaints and civil lawsuits focus on bias, informed consent, lack of symmetry, timeliness, finances, confidentiality, negligence, chemical dependency, multiple relationships, and failure to report/omissions.     

Child sexual abuse suspicions: treatment considerations during investigation

This article addresses what, if any, psychotherapeutic interventions should be provided to meet the emotional and clinical needs of alleged child victims of sexual abuse while they await judicial determinations from the family, dependency, or criminal courts. The discussion emphasizes that to minimize iatrogenic outcomes, professionals involved in sexual abuse allegation cases should carefully establish and maintain professional role boundaries and take on only one role in a case. Professional roles may include an investigative forensic interviewer, court appointed forensic evaluator, and therapist. Special attention is given to complex issues that arise in child custody cases with allegations of child sexual abuse in family court.     

The Responsible Use of Psychological Testing in Child Custody Evaluations: Selection of Tests

SUMMARY

The responsible use of psychological tests in child custody evaluations requires an advanced understanding of both psychological issues of test selection and legal criteria regarding admissibility of expert testimony. This paper discusses the psychological and legal issues associated with test selection and with admissibility of expert testimony pertaining to psychological test data. It is argued that the legal standards of relevance and helpfulness require the methodology underlying an expert's testimony to be both reliable and valid. Therefore, it is essential to select psychological tests with demonstrated reliability and validity. Case law regarding expert testimony and the integration of professional practice guidelines pertaining to the use of psychological tests with ethical standards will be discussed.     

Beyond the Best Interests of the Child Revisited

The purpose of this paper is to describe an evaluative procedure developed at the Colorado Children's Diagnostic Center. The procedure involves a team approach to divorce custody determination and direct consultation to Courts. Attempts are made during the evaluation to assess parenting attitudes and capabilities, the psychological attachment of parent and child, and the impact of the stress of the divorce on individual family members. During this time all family members are seen. The final report encompasses diagnostic impressions and recommendations for custody. This report is forwarded to the referring judge who in turn distributes the report to the attorneys involved. CDC staff members serve, therefore, as a neutral party in the litigation process and consult directly with the court.     

Misogyny in New York custody decisions with parental alienation and child sexual abuse allegations

This article analyzes 24 New York (NY) published child custody cases decided between 2001 and 2017 that contained parental alienation and child sexual allegations. It addresses whether there was a tendency toward gendered decisions and the evidence on which the decisions were based. It reveals that most decisions favored alienation allegations over child sexual abuse allegations and transferring custody from mothers communicating sexual abuse allegations in court to fathers defending against them by alleging parental alienation. On appeal, these family court decisions were overwhelmingly upheld. The analysis also shows that the decisions were based as often on implicit misogynistic cultural assumptions in the absence of allegation-specific evidence as they were on allegation-specific evidence. The article adds to the growing understanding of sources of bias by proposing four errors that support biased reasoning. It concludes with suggestions about how experts, attorneys, and judges can question themselves and others to reduce bias.     

Testing,One, Two,Three, Testing: An Attorney Perspective

SUMMARY

This article addresses the attorney perspective on the use of psychometric testing in the context of family law child custody evaluations. Although attorneys, judicial officers and child custody evaluators “use” psychometric testing in family law matters, the ways in which each discipline uses the information gleaned from the results of these tests as administered to child custody litigants can differ substantially. This article distinguishes the attorney perspective from the mental health perspective in the use of the results of such tests.     

Ethical Issues in Child Custody and Dependency Cases

Abstract

The emotional and psychological risks to children of high conflict divorce have led to the increased involvement of mental health professionals in child custody cases. Numerous service models (Greenberg & Gould, 2001; Johnston, 2000; Johnston & Roseby, 1997) have been developed to assist divorcing families in minimizing family conflict and supporting children'S needs. This underscores the need for judges and attorneys to understand the ethical and professional standards that underlie competent mental health practice in forensic cases. The practices of mental health professionals providing court-related services may have a substantial impact on the validity of their professional opinions, the effectiveness of services provided to children and families, and children'S development and adjustment. The authors suggest core ethical and clinical issues to be considered by all psychologists who work in the context of custody disputes. It is hoped that these professional practice suggestions will also be useful to attorneys and judicial officers in assessing the quality of mental health professionals' opinions.     

Use of Psychological Tests in Child Custody Assessment

SUMMARY

This article describes a functional, comprehensive approach to the use of psychological tests and measures in a child custody evaluation. I describe a conceptual framework to be used in choosing assessment techniques that are used to assess functional aspects of parenting competencies and other related variables helpful in creating a reliable foundation from which to generate opinions about custodial placement and visitation access. Finally, I provide a practical example of how psychological test data might be presented in an advisory report to the court.     

Child custody evaluations and domestic violence: case comparisons

The literature indicates that witnessing domestic violence is harmful to children, that them is a high overlap between domestic violence and child abuse, and that safety is an important issue for separating women because separation from abusive partners is a particularly dangerous time for victims of domestic violence. Further, child custody is often a contentious issue in domestic violence cases. Child custody evaluations are typically used to assist courts in deciding custody when custody is disputed and when the best interests of the child are unclear. The concept of "best interests of the child" does not specify evaluation techniques or approaches, however, and while custody evaluation standards generally address the best interests of the child, they offer little guidance in high-risk situations such as parental domestic violence. In addition, there has been limited research focused on understanding the custody evaluation process or the degree to which practitioners differ in their procedures and reporting for cases with and without parental domestic violence. This study is one of the first to examine characteristics of disputed custody cases and their custody evaluation reports differences between domestic violence and non-domestic violence cases. This study selected a 60% random sample of cases with custody evaluations in Fiscal Year 1998 and 1999 (n = 82 cases). Out of the 82 cases, 56% (n = 46) met criteria for classification into the domestic violence group and 44% (n = 36) did not. In general, results indicated that although there were some important differences in court records between cases with and without domestic violence, there were only minor differences between custody evaluation reported process and recommendations for the two groups. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

CUSTODY RESOLUTION COUNSELING: AN ALTERNATIVE INTERVENTION*

As the number of divorces increases, so does the number of families litigating child custody. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Hennepin County Domestic Relations Division, a social services arm of the Family Court, has developed Custody Resolution Counseling (CRC) as an alternative to the traditional Custody Study intervention. The CRC process helps families toward making their own decision regarding custody as opposed to the court imposed decision which follows a Custody Study. The article describes the CRC process and presents a case illustration.     

Evaluating Families With Custody or Visitation Problems

The mental health professional is increasingly being called upon by the courts to assist them in evaluating and intervening in families involved in disputes over custody or visitation of children. The evaluation requires the participation and cooperation of the entire family; assessing only individual dynamics and competencies is inadequate. In intervening in the family and making a recommendation to the court, the interviewer should take into account the well-being and perspectives of all family members, especially the loyalties of the children and the responsibilities and roles of the parents .     

A Court Appointed Child Advocate (Guardian Ad Litem) Reports On Her Role In Contested Child Custody Cases And Looks To The Future

Divorcing parents who cannot agree on custody and visitation look to the judge for an answer. To whom does the judge look for assistance in making the determination? This guardian ad litem, a lawyer and marriage counselor (family sociologist), frequently appointed by the court as a child ad. vocate, reports on how she sees her role, to whom she talks, and what kind of report she files. Since there are generally no guidelines for a guardian ad litem. eachsuchguardianinterprets the role in a personal way.     

THE ROLE OF THE MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL IN CONTESTED CUSTODY:

Two different roles for mental health professionals in contested custody cases are presented. The first, the evaluator of competence model, is the more traditional one; its underpinnings are individually-oriented concepts: the clinician is a diagnostician and evaluator, making a recommendation to the court, and the family's input in the decision-making is minimal. The second role, a facilitator of change, comes out of family therapy theory; its focus is on helping the family to change and resolve their issues so that custody can be decided fairly: it is evaluative only secondarily, that is, if the family is unable to resolve the dilemma themselves. When working with contested custody cases, which are really unresolved family problems, the second approach is more promising.     

Broadening Our View

Summary

The growth in child welfare caseloads and the increasing use of kinship foster care has raised new questions about effective permanency planning. The majority of children in kinship foster care are children of color and have been less likely to exit the custody of the child welfare system than children placed in traditional foster care. Permanency planning which ensures the long-term protection and well-being of children from diverse cultural backgrounds requires a broad view of family, ongoing striving for cultural competence, collaboration between the formal child welfare system and the kinship systems of children in state custody, and a long-term view of permanency planning and child-rearing that builds on the case-management capacities of kinship networks to support permanent plans, looks beyond the child's exit from state custody, and helps families and larger kinship systems make long-term plans for the protection, permanence, and well-being of children.     

Joint Custody

Research results on joint custody have changed and a consensus has emerged in the psychological literature which suggests that joint custody should be a rebuttable presumption of the court. Twenty states currently have joint custody as either a presumption or a preference. The available literature also supports the following conclusions: (1) Non-custodial parents are often intentionally victimized through visitation denial, and children are hurt when the relationship with either parent is broken in that manner; (2) Children adjust much better to divorce in joint custody compared to sole custody situations; (3) Children's attachment bonds to both parents are essential for healthy development, and those bonds should be protected by the courts; (4) Joint custody leads to much higher compliance with financial child support obligations; (5) Mothers are much better adjusted and supported more in joint custody situations; (6) Litigation and relitigation is lower in states which have a presumption for joint custody; (7) Joint custody is the preferred option in high conflict situations, because it helps reduce the conflict over time-and that is in the best interests of children.     

Competence and African American children in informal kinship care: The role of family

African American children are more likely than any other racial or ethnic group to live in kinship care, yet there is little empirical knowledge available to help understand the attributes of these families that contribute to children's development of competence. This study analyzed existing longitudinal data to explore the family-level factors that promote these children's competence. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that average quality of the biological mother's relationship with child, the quality of the biological father's relationship with child, and kinship care family functioning predicts children's average competence. Additionally, changes in family resources and family functioning over time are related to corresponding changes in children's competence levels. Results from this study highlight that African American informal kinship care families possess the strengths and resources that contribute to children's competence.     

Exploring Three Functions in Child Custody Evaluation for the Relocation Case: Prediction,Investigation, and Making Recommendations for a Long-Distance Parenting Plan

SUMMARY

The psycho-legal dilemmas posed by child custody relocation cases are discussed in terms of the four decisional alternatives facing the court and evaluator. Different legal contexts for relocation are reviewed in terms of their implications for the custody evaluation. Complexities involved in the evaluator's function of making predictions for the court are presented. The need to conduct careful investigation on both risk and pragmatic factors is highlighted by case illustrations. The obstacles of crafting of long distance parenting plans that will be in the best interests of the child are presented as governed by the goal of harm mitigation.