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.     

Joint Physical Custody in The Netherlands and the Well-Being of Children

The frequency of contact with fathers and mothers and the amount of parental support for boys and girls is an important issue after divorce, from emotional, legal, and empirical points of view. In the Netherlands between 1998 and 2008, joint physical custody after divorce (when children actually have shared residences) has increased from 5% to 16%. It is therefore interesting to compare the effects growing up in the following different kinds of families actually has on children: (a) mother families with low contact frequency with the father; (b) mother families with high contact frequency with the father; (c) co-parenting families (joint physical custody); and (d) father families. The main conclusion is that, on average, the effects of joint physical custody for children, mothers, and especially for fathers, are slightly positive.     

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.     

Using child welfare assessments and latent class analysis to identify prevalence and comorbidity of parent service needs

Data collected through Illinois's Integrated Assessment (IA) program—an assessment and service coordination program incorporating clinical assessments of both parents following a child's placement in foster care—offers a unique opportunity to examine the service needs of parents within a family context. Between January 2007 and June 2010, integrated assessments were completed with 4089 families in which at least one parent participated in the assessment. Utilizing these data, this study employs a Latent Class Analysis approach to identify the patterns of service needs of parents with children entering foster care. Latent class models were generated for mothers and fathers who participated in comprehensive family assessments based on identified service needs. Models revealed “low need” and “high need” classes among both mothers and fathers. A distinct class characterized by substance abuse needs emerged among fathers and a similar class among mothers was characterized by both substance abuse and mental health needs. A mental health needs class was identified among fathers while a similar class among mothers was characterized by both mental health needs as well as trauma symptoms. In examining the distribution of classes among families where both parents were present, the largest groups of families were those in which both parents fell into the “low need” classes, those in which the father fell into the “low need” class and the mother fell into the “substance abuse and mental health” class, and those in which both the mother and the father fell into the “substance abuse” classes. Implications for case assignment practices, father engagement, and addressing comorbid service needs are discussed.     

Mothers living apart from their children

Following Darley's analysis of the implications for women of ascribed (e.g., motherhood) vs. achieved (e.g., career) roles, this study examined stress and coping in four areas. Seventeen women who lived apart from their children (noncustody) and fourteen women who lived with their children (custody) were interviewed. The stressfulness of the noncustody situation appeared in negative evaluations of women who do not have custody, in the difficulties of dealing with ex-husbands over custody, in the lack of support from family and sometimes friends, and in the lack of hopes for the future. Yet, mothers who lived apart from their children were as “fit” as mothers who lived with their children. Child custody appeared to be a fluid issue regardless of the current custody situation for both custody and noncustody mothers.     

Children's Postdivorce Residence Arrangements and Parental Experienced Time Pressure

Although the rise in postdivorce joint physical custody has fueled scholarly interest in its impact on children, consequences for parents remain understudied. Because children's residence arrangements determine time and coordination demands associated with child care, this study investigated the relationship between postdivorce residence arrangements and parents' time pressure. Regression analyses on 4,460 formerly married or cohabiting parents in the Netherlands showed that main residence (mother residence, father residence, or joint physical custody) is more strongly related to time pressure than is nonresident parents' visitation frequency. Compared with mother residence, joint physical custody is associated with less time pressure for mothers and slightly greater pressure for fathers, which supports the idea of higher care demands when parents spend more time with their children. The results do not support the role of coordination demands; the extent of interparental contact and the number of transitions the child makes are not related to time pressure.     

Does fathers' involvement in services affect mothers' likelihood of reunification with children placed in foster care?

Social science literature shows associations between fathers' involvement with their children and beneficial developmental outcomes of those children. A related but smaller body of research in the child welfare services arena has found measures of father involvement to be positively associated with beneficial child welfare outcomes, including child's reunification with parent after placement in foster care. However, the pathway by which father involvement affects reunification likelihood has not been determined. This study builds on the existing body of literature by testing a theoretical basis for the relationship between father involvement (measured as service use) and mothers' reunification in a model controlling for family structure. I find that fathers' involvement in services improves mothers' likelihood of reunification, independently of family structure. Results suggest that agency efforts to involve fathers in services make sense both when the aim is to prepare the father for possible custody, and when the aim is to reunify the mother.     

Judgments regarding parental alienation when parental hostility or child sexual abuse is alleged

Abstract

Allegations of Parental Alienation (PA), the systematic disparaging of one parent by the other parent aimed at alienating their child’s affections, as a basis for child custody decisions are highly controversial. Claims of parental hostility or allegations of child sexual abuse in custody cases may trigger concerns about PA. Family court professionals (N?=?280) rated young children’s accuracy of report (e.g., suggestibility, honesty) in general and also read three custody scenarios varying as to whether or not they included allegations of parental hostility or child sexual abuse, or no such allegations. For each scenario, the alleged alienating parent’s gender was experimentally varied between subjects. Participants rated the likelihood that each case involved PA. For the scenario that included allegations of child sexual abuse, professionals who viewed young children as more inaccurate reporters or who read about the mother (rather than a father) as the alleged alienator were more likely to rate the scenario as involving PA. For the scenario that described parental hostility but no child sexual abuse allegations, professionals who were older or female were more likely to judge the scenario as involving parental alienation when a mother (rather than a father) was the alleged alienator, whereas there were no significant predictors of responses to the no-allegation scenarios. Findings are discussed in relation to the difficult task of evaluating custody cases for PA when parental hostility or child sexual abuse is alleged.     

Alternatives to the Stork Fatherhood Fantasies in Donor Insemination Families

Reproductive technology has presented a challenge to families and clinicians alike in making sense of the psychological experience when a child is born with the use of donated sperm or ova. This article addresses one specific aspect of this challenge: father imagos and fantasies for parents, donors, and children in donor insemination families. Pour psychodynamic issues are explored: denial of reality and denial of the Unconscious, the power of die unconscious and the “unthought known,” reversion and resistance to part-object thinking, and paradoxical psychic construction and destruction of the father. In extension of Winnicott's theory dial there is no infant without a mother, the author concludes dial there is no infant without all the parties who make die child and all the parties who raise die child.     

Health-Related Adjustment of Adolescents in Various Postdivorce Family Structures With Main Focus on Father Custody With and Without a Stepmother

It is well established that adolescents living in father custody are more likely to be involved in antisocial behavior and substance use, as compared to adolescents living in mother custody. This study assessed whether these differences also pertain to a wider spectrum of health-related outcomes. A second aim was to investigate the role of a stepparent on adolescents' health-related adjustment. A total of 6,447 Norwegian adolescents between ages 11 and 16 participated in the study. The findings revealed that the differences between adolescents in father versus mother custody might be somewhat more comprehensive than previous studies have observed, indicating increased risks for adjustment problems among adolescents living with a single father on various health-related outcomes. Generally, a stepmother does not seem to compensate for the risks of adjustment problems, but might have a positive influence on certain health-related behaviors.     

Shared Physical Custody: Summary of 40 Studies on Outcomes for Children

One of the most complex and compelling issues confronting policymakers, parents, and professionals involved in making custody decisions is this: What type of parenting plan is most beneficial for the children after their parents separate? More specifically, are the outcomes any better or worse for children who live with each parent at least 35% of the time compared to children who live primarily with their mother and spend less than 35% of the time living with their father? This article addresses this question by summarizing the 40 studies that have compared children in these two types of families during the past 25 years. Overall the children in shared parenting families had better outcomes on measures of emotional, behavioral, and psychological well-being, as well as better physical health and better relationships with their fathers and their mothers, benefits that remained even when there were high levels of conflict between their parents.     

The Stability of Child Physical Placements Following Divorce: Descriptive Evidence From Wisconsin

This study uses administrative data from the Wisconsin Court Record Database, linked with survey data collected from mothers (n= 789) and fathers (n= 690), to describe the living arrangements of children with sole mother and shared child physical placement following parental divorce. Contrary to prior research, results provide little evidence that children with shared placement progressively spend less time in their father’s care. We find that, over (approximately) 3 years following a divorce, their living arrangements are as stable as those of children with sole mother placement or more so. To the extent that shared physical placement is associated with increased father involvement and positive developmental outcomes, recent increases in shared physical custody following divorce may benefit children.     

Factors Influencing Custody Decisions in Contested Adoption Cases

In a number of recent controversial adoption cases, courts have been forced to decide if an unwed father should be granted custody of his child when the mother purposely fails to inform him of the child's birth or of her intention to place the child for adoption. The current study utilized three bi-variate independent variables from which eight vignettes were created depicting scenarios modeled on actual court cases. It was conducted as a preliminary investigation intended to examine the factors which are important to people when making custody decisions, to see if the importance of these factors varies with circumstance, and to examine their concurrence with factors utilized in judicial decisions. The results suggest that although subjects stress the importance of characteristics associated with being a good parent, the specific circumstances of each separate case and also the subject's gender have influential effects on custody decisions.     

Conceptualisations of fatherhood and socio-contextual dynamics influencing father involvement in informal settlements in Durban,South Africa

Many men living in informal settlements are unemployed and many do not live with their children. Nevertheless, these men can play a critical role in their children’s lives. In this paper, we explore the extent to which fathers in informal settlements manage or aspire to do this. We explore how they appreciate the social and familial role of “the father” and how they seek to translate these ideas into actions. Findings are based on three FGDs and 19 IDIs with young men in two informal settlements in South Africa. In this setting, father involvement is predicated on financial provision, yet lack of economic opportunities for men condemns them to the undesirable status of “failed fathers.” Men’s involvement in childcare is contested with some men supporting father involvement that goes beyond financial provision. Notions of traditional masculinity, praise and recognition by community, and the view that looking after your own child is tantamount to looking after your own future, are factors that enhance father involvement. Unemployment or precarious work, alcohol abuse, gender ideologies, and maternal and cultural gatekeeping are socio-contextual dynamics that undermine father involvement. For interventions to be effective in promoting father involvement, they should address critical context-specific issues.     

Behavioral Science Criteria in Child Custody Determinations

This is an investigation of the relationships between the characteristics of lawyers, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers and the criteria they employ when they are involved in child custody legal proceedings. The findings reveal disciplinary distictions, equity for the mother and father, and influence from demographic variables regarding the preference for criteria to be applied for child custody determination.     

Where Influence and Authority Were,Inquiry and Authenticity Shall Be A View of Stephen Mitchell's Journey

Taking as a horrifying example a 1993 triple child homicide in West Memphis, Arkansas, in which bitemark evidence figures prominently, this article explores some ramifications of “the Oral Father”—a figure of paternity associated with the most primitive appetite and aggressivity. The Oral Father is the preoedipal, anti-(or ante-) genital paternal analog of that familiar image of polymorphous maternity known as the “Phallic Mother.” Although the image of the Phallic Mother has, almost from the inception of psychoanalysis, embodied the tropology and aetiology of perversion, she cannot and should not represent alone the dark side of the parental unconscious. Furthermore, psychoanalysis has always used the Phallic Mother to represent the eros of the (usually male) child (of whatever age), not that of the parent. The Oral Father does not work alone; the term refers not only to an actual father or custodial male who breaches what should be the boundaries between himself and his children in particular ways, but to the entire network of paternalist, patriarchal, oedipal practices, discourses, and institutions that support and cover for him. In too many cases, however, physical evidence testifies to the fact that little boys have reason to fear being eaten up, and even emasculated, by their father—his appetite is not a figment of their imagination.     

From the Glory of Hera to the Wrath of Achilles: Narratives of Second-Wave Masculinity and Beyond

Second-wave psychoanalytic feminism understood masculinity through theories that converge in seeing masculinity in mother-son terms. The dread of women, primary femininity, disidentification, father absence, and society without the father all portray an overpowering mother. Men’s reaction is to define masculinity as the not-feminine and as superior, to deny and deprecate femininity in themselves and in women. After Slater, I call these dynamics the “Glory of Hera.” I suggest that they more accurately describe the generic conflicts of men than Freud’s Oedipus. Here, I suggest a third classical narrative. Masculinity is equally, perhaps more basically, understood in terms of the “Wrath of Achilles.” The fundamental developmental and psychic challenge for men is how to be the senior male who humiliates rather than the junior male who feels humiliated and inferior. These dynamics are widespread clinically, and we find them not only in The Iliad but also throughout the literary and operatic canon.     

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.     

Life Satisfaction Among Children in Different Family Structures: A Comparative Study of 36 Western Societies

This paper examines differences in life satisfaction among children in different family structures in 36 western, industrialised countries (n = 184 496). Children living with both biological parents reported higher levels of life satisfaction than children living with a single parent or parent–step‐parent. Children in joint physical custody reported significantly higher levels of life satisfaction than their counterparts in other types of non‐intact families. Controlling perceived family affluence, the difference between joint physical custody families and single mother or mother–stepfather families became non‐significant. Difficulties in communicating with parents were strongly associated with less life satisfaction but did not mediate the relation between family structure and life satisfaction. Children in the Nordic countries characterised by strong welfare systems reported significantly higher levels of life satisfaction in all living arrangements except in single father households. Differences in economic inequality between countries moderated the association between certain family structures, perceived family affluence and life satisfaction.