Response to Amundson,Lux and Hindmarch: Critique of Investigative Practices Article

ABSTRACT

This article responds to a commentary by Amundson, Lux and Hindmarch (2005), in which they offer a pejorative criticism about our article (Austin & Kirkpatrick, 2004) in which we described the investigative component within comprehensive child custody evaluations–something they label as “maximalist” evaluations and contrast with a model they prefer called the “minimalist” approach. We believe our approach to custody evaluations is in keeping with the current standard of practice and professional guidelines.     

Children’s Relationships With Grandparents in Married and in Shared and Sole Physical Custody Families

ABSTRACT

Grandparents can be an important source of support for their grandchildren in the often difficult time during and after parents’ divorce or separation. Grandchild–grandparent relationships can be hampered or even totally lost when parents separate, however. What happens with grandparent relationships when parents break up is closely linked to postdivorce physical custody arrangements. This article focuses on the beneficial role that grandparent relationships can play after parents separate and examines how grandparent–grandchild relationships differ in shared and sole physical custody arrangements.     

When children’s testimonies are used as evidence: how children’s accounts may impact child custodial decisions

Abstract

In child custody cases, children oftentimes provide allegations of experienced trauma against one of their parents. Such allegations can happen before any investigative interviews (e.g., by the police or child protective services) have taken place. A central theme here concerns how to appraise such allegations and make certain that children’s accounts are taken seriously. In the current special issue, the focus is on new work on the functioning of children’s memory and its relation to trauma or work on children’s suggestibility and memory when they are traumatized. Specifically, key experts in the field of children’s memory provided contributions on: (1) the impact of interviewer support and rapport building on children’s testimonies, (2) the role of parental alienation in children’s testimonial accuracy, and (3) different types of false memories in children’s memory reports.     

A Critical Analysis of Parental Alienation Syndrome and Its Admissibility in the Family Court

Abstract

Over the past three decades, parental alienation syndrome (PAS) has been proposed to explain behaviors by a child who refuses to spend time with a parent and actually denigrates that parent within the context of a child custody dispute. Although some mental health professionals and child custody evaluators, attorneys, and judges have been quick to accept and admit PAS as evidence in these disputes, there has been no consistent empirical or clinical evidence that PAS exists or that the alienator's behavior is the actual cause of the alienated child's behavior towards the target parent. This article attempts to help those working with custody issues understand how the PAS construct fails to meet scientific standards and should not be admissible in courts.     

The Investigation Component in Forensic Mental Health Evaluations

Abstract

Part of the data gathering and analysis in any parenting time evaluation involves investigation into sources of information that provide a factual basis for measuring key factors. However, this investigative function of the child custody evaluator has not been systematically described. In this article, investigative data collection is discussed in terms of holding a discriminating and skeptical eye in reviewing sources of information. The need to conduct forensic “detective work” and factfinding is discussed. The importance of the investigative mindset for the evaluator is to increase the completeness and accuracy of measurement of key variables, which increases the validity and accuracy of predictions on child developmental outcomes for the court.     

Evolution of Residential Custody Arrangements in Separated Families

Summary

This study tracks the evolution of three types of residential custody arrangements over a two-year period: sole custody with the father (n = 59 children), sole custody with the mother (n = 69 children), and joint custody (n = 69 children). Three categories of change were defined: (a) no change, (b) minor change (changing the schedule of visits or residence with a parent), and (c) major change (changing the custody arrangement). The results show that a minority of children changed custody arrangement but almost half the children in joint custody changed custody arrangements during the two years of the study. More young children and more girls changed custody arrangements, and girls who changed custody usually went to their mothers. With time, a type of polarization may be observed toward sole custody because there were less parents truly active in child custody at T2 than at Tl.     

Strategies to Address Clinical Bias in the Child Custody Evaluation Process

ABSTRACT

Researchers have explored the existence and effects of bias on decision making for decades. Studies indicate that mental health professionals are not immune from unintentional bias in judgments, including those in forensic situations. Custody evaluators should be aware of the pitfalls that exist in clinical decision-making as well as strategies to address them. This article connects existing insights from therapeutic and forensic literature to the field of custody evaluations. An overview of clinical bias in custody evaluation is offered to familiarize practitioners with the range of possible problems. Examples, such as biases inherent in the scientific process and the clinical relationship, are followed with specific recommendations regarding how to address issues of clinical bias during evaluation. Insights are offered for judges and attorneys to improve the quality of reports they receive.     

Critiquing a Colleague's Forensic Advisory Report

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide a protocol within which to frame a critique or critical review of a colleague's custody evaluation. While we think that the structure and logic of the following protocol may be applied to other forensic evaluations, our focus here is on the specific forensic specialty area of child custody and parenting access evaluations (CCEs).     

Lesbian Mothers

Abstract

Discrimination persists in courts' consideration of lesbian mothers' petitions for custody of their children. Courts often have assumed that lesbian women are emotionally unstable or unable to assume a maternal role. They also often have assumed that their children are likely to be emotionally harmed, subject to molestation, impaired in gender role development, or themselves homosexual. None of these assumptions is supported by extant research and theory.     

Decision-Making Criteria in Child Custody Disputes That Involve Requests for Overnight Visits with Infants and Toddlers: Derived from a Review of the Literature

ABSTRACT

The court, child custody evaluators, and mediators are often faced with difficult decisions regarding how to best meet the needs of children from families who are involved in child custody disputes. In some cases, the court, child custody evaluators and mediators are asked to make decisions about parenting plans for infants and toddlers. When decision makers are faced with actual cases, they are likely to be assisted by lines of inquiry that help them gather the most relevant data to answer the question at hand. A review of the literature has led to the development of 13 criteria that decision makers can use to reach conclusions about whether overnight visits would be advisable with a given infant or toddler. The criteria are considered neutral and are not based on any bias or preconceived opinion about whether overnights with infants and toddlers are or are not advisable. Instead, the criteria proposed provide the decision-maker with an objective way of structuring their thinking about a particular case to insure that all pertinent information has been considered before reaching a conclusion about whether overnight visitation is in the best interest of a given child.     

Child Custody Evaluations in Cases Involving Sexual Abuse: A View from the Bench

SUMMARY

Psychological evaluation and testimony play a critical role in child sexual abuse cases, especially in custody and visitation cases. While the evaluation generally cannot determine whether sexual abuse has occurred, it can provide useful information to assist the court in deciding matters of custody and access in the face of the allegations. Judges need to know the standard of practice for the development of expert opinion in order to be able to evaluate testimony offered by custody evaluators. The informed judge can develop useful input by outlining expectations within the order for evaluation and actively regulating the gate for admission of expert testimony. Elements of a model order for custody evaluations addressing allegations of sexual abuse are proposed.     

How Can the MMPI-2 Help Child Custody Examiners?

SUMMARY

The paper explores what hypotheses we can infer from the MMPI-2 regarding parenting behaviors and what are the significant limitations on our inferences. The first half looks at the MMPI-2 from a child custody view: is there a foundation from which the test can generate expectations regarding five basic issues, i.e., the quality of attachment and bonding, potential for antisocial behavior, temper control, alienation of affection, and chemical abuse and dependence. The second half looks at custody from an MMPI-2 point of view: what is the range of possible variables that will generate useful hypotheses regarding parent-child interactions and family systems? The effects of the circumstances of litigation on score elevations are considered, including recommended limits as to how much elevation can be dismissed as only contextual. “Occasion validity” (are these scores trustworthy) is distinguished from “Attribute validity” (what do the scores tell us). The clinical application of an objective interpretation system is discussed, including the courtroom credibility of explicit convergent validity.     

Post-Divorce Father Custody

Summary

This study examined the effects of different custodial arrangements following divorce and the impact they have on the adult romantic functioning of the children. It used 72 undergraduate participants coming from mother custody, father custody, or non-divorced backgrounds. Results indicated that custodial arrangement had largely no significant effect on the satisfaction felt in relationships, or in general attachment style. The gender of the participant was found to be a factor, with females exhibiting more security in romantic relationships and males showing a tendency to place relationships as secondary in their lives. While non-significant findings for the custody main effect seem discouraging at first glance, a discussion ensues speculating as to the utility of parental divorce as a useful sole independent variable in future studies. With divorce becoming commonplace in America today, it seems that studying parental styles may yield results more germane to current issues.     

Clinical Ratings of Parenting Capacity and Rorschach Protocols of Custody-Disputing Parents: An Exploratory Study

SUMMARY

In this study, the Rorschach protocols of 98 parents undergoing custody evaluations were correlated with clinical judgments of their alienating co-parenting behavior, parent-child role reversal, lack of warm and involved parenting, and abuse of the child. The results indicate that this personality assessment instrument, scored according to the Comprehensive System, is likely to provide a relatively rich source of data relevant to assessing parenting skills and capacities in custody-disputing families that are convergent with clinical assessments drawn from clinical interviews, parent-child observations, and substantiated histories of child abuse.     

A Move in the Right Direction? Best Interests of the Child Emerging as the Standard for Relocation Cases

SUMMARY

Relocation cases have become more common in our increasingly mobile society. After a divorce the parent with primary residential custody of a minor child may seek to move to a new location for a new partner, spouse, job, or family. The nonmoving parent objects and the courts have to decide whether to allow the child to move. This article explores the various legal approaches taken by American courts in trying to solve these difficult custody cases. While some courts presume it is not in the best interests of a child to move, others presume that it is. The majority trend, however, appears to be toward a best interests of the child standard with no presumptions.     

The Lingering Debate Over the Parental Alienation Syndrome Phenomenon

ABSTRACT

It's been more than a quarter century since the Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) phenomenon was first observed yet it remains a highly debated concept in the legal and mental health professions. In the years since its inception, judges have relied on PAS to make both short and long-term decisions in custody and visitation cases. Those who support PAS claim that there is scientific evidence to prove its existence, while those who oppose it suggest that it is pseudoscience and should not be relied upon in court to make binding decisions in custody and visitation cases. The critics believe that other factors must be considered in these cases and that PAS is too simple an explanation for complex behaviors seen in parents and children during custody and visitation proceedings. This paper presents both sides of the argument and suggests that the PAS debate lingers on and remains unsettled. It presents the position that there is scientific evidence to support a clinical claim that PAS is observed in some cases, and it presents the argument that not enough rigorous experimentation has been done to prove once and for all that PAS is a diagnosable phenomenon.     

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.     

Abusers gaining custody in family courts: A case series of over turned decisions

Abstract

This article presents findings and recommendations based on an in-depth examination of records from 27 custody cases from across the United States. The goal of this case series was to determine why family courts may place children with a parent that the child alleges abused them rather than with the nonoffending parent. We focused on “turned around cases” involving allegations of child abuse that were at first viewed as false and later judged to be valid. The average time a child spent in the court ordered custody of an abusive parent was 3.2?years. In all cases we uncovered the father was the abusive parent and the mother sought to protect their child. Results revealed that initially courts were highly suspicious of mothers' motives for being concerned with abuse. These mothers were often treated poorly and two-thirds of the mothers were pathologized by the court for advocating for the safety of their children. Judges who initially ordered children into custody or visitation with abusive parents relied mainly on reports by custody evaluators and guardians ad litem who mistakenly accused mothers of attempting to alienate their children from the father or having coached the child to falsely report abuse. As a result, 59% of perpetrators were given sole custody and the rest were given joint custody or unsupervised visitation. After failing to be protected in the first custody determination, 88% of children reported new incidents of abuse. The abuse often became increasingly severe and the children's mental and physical health frequently deteriorated. The main reason that cases turned around was because protective parents were able to present compelling evidence of the abuse and back the evidence up with reports by mental health professionals who had specific expertise in child abuse rather than merely custody assessment.     

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.     

Does Joint Physical Custody “Cause” Children’s Better Outcomes?

ABSTRACT

Policymakers and researchers are concerned with whether joint physical custody (JPC) produces better outcomes for children than sole custody. Although several review articles summarizing up to 61 empirical articles demonstrate very positive answers, many of the research designs used compromise the ability to claim that it is JPC per se—and not selection effects—that causes the effect. We discuss several research design issues, such as propensity score analysis, that can more powerfully probe the question of causality. Some studies have already been conducted employing these strategies and more are recommended and likely to soon be forthcoming. On the basis of this comprehensive review we conclude that JPC probably does cause benefits to children on average, and that social scientists can now provisionally recommend rebuttably presumptive JPC to policymakers.