Child Custody Evaluations
Selecting the Right Evaluator
Provided By Allen N. Cowling
One of the most potentially damaging and controversial
areas for any mental health professional to engage in is a custody evaluation. The scientific
literature on custody determination is remarkably inadequate and in addition, for every competent
professional evaluator there will be many more who are incompetent. It is vital that attorneys, dealing
in this area, understand the strengths and weaknesses of these mental health "experts" in
their custody recommendations.
Simply put, there is no accepted scientific data
regarding many of the most basic questions that determine a custody recommendation, such as evidence
regarding precise parenting characteristics that guarantee good parenting. There is also no data
regarding the effects on the future of a child who's been placed with the wrong parent.
Because of the lack of well-established scientific data
on these issues, this leaves a "custody evaluator" with an alarming freedom regarding how
they decide to do an evaluation and how they may interpret data collected during their investigation.
As a result, what one evaluator may see as critical, another may see as trivial.
Unfortunately, this can leave the court in a frightful
dilemma and many times the court is not even aware of it. This is especially true if the "custody
evaluator" happens to have an excellent courtroom presentation style, but is actually incompetent.
The court, who has relied on the testimony of that "expert" to reach their decision, has
actually based their opinion on poor, inadequate and incorrect advice. Normally, the courts do not have
the expertise to evaluate the evaluator.
Psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers are the
"experts" that deal with mental health issues. In most cases, they are not any more competent
in making a good custody decision than an experienced family court judge, however, many times these
individuals are requested to make custody recommendations.
Of the three, the clinical psychologist is typically the
one characterized as having the most training in basic science and is usually the preferred
professional to conduct an evaluation. It is essential that the evaluator have specific training in the
area of child development. One of the real issues to making a custody recommendation is in the
"expert's" ability to predict the future development of the child if placed with a
particular parent. If the professional has only one graduate level course in child development, that
would certainly appear to be an insufficient background. At the very least, they should have
significant training in the area of child development, including a particular understanding of the
stages of development and how they interact with the positive and negative attributes of each parent.
The evaluator should also have had significant training in psycho-pathology, with particular
understanding of the factors that promote the development of mental disorders and have expertise in the
areas of personality and personality disorders. How can any evaluator, who lacks precise diagnostic
skills, possibly conduct a positive and correct evaluation for anyone? They cannot, and many times
their opinions are not based on what is in the child's best interest, but which parent they like
the best.
Any evaluator should be able to document having
accomplished a significant number of custody decisions that reflect an unbiased record. Unbiased simply
means that they did not always recommend that the mother get the children. In addition, the evaluator
should make it very clear to the court that all of their tests, interpretations, and recommendations
are potentially subject to error, including the range and degree of possible errors
involved.
Even the most reputable evaluator can find themselves
favoring a particular parent in a custody dispute for reasons that have little to do with the quality
of the parenting offered. In that this is potentially possible with even the most "objective"
evaluator, the implications for the "hired gun" are obvious. Under no circumstances should a
"hired gun" be allowed to give a custody recommendation.
It is strongly recommended that you guard against the
possibility of "dual relationships." On occasion, the evaluator may have a relationship with
one or more of the parents independent of the custody evaluation. An example would be a wife who has
been seeing a particular therapist personally and then offers that therapist's services to the
court to provide a custody evaluation. In this case, the evaluator has a clear history of being
supportive and on the side of the wife. This prior relationship cannot help but bias the
therapist/evaluator, whether they admit it or not. Under no circumstances should any individual of this
type be permitted to also then evaluate the entire family for a custody determination.
Another example of the problem of dual relationships
could occur when one of the parties enter into court-ordered therapy with a particular therapist and
then afterward, that therapist recommends that a full family evaluation be done. While the
recommendation itself might be appropriate, it is inappropriate for the court-ordered therapist of one
party to then perform the family evaluation. Trying to be therapist and evaluator at the same time
increases the risk of biased "professional" opinions.
Many psychologists are divided about the importance and
appropriateness of psychological testing in making a custody determination and the fact that there are
thousands of tests available in the psychological literature only compounds the issue.
One specific area of controversy is the IQ test. Some
consider IQ tests a requirement, while others consider these tests as highly wasteful and inappropriate
for a custody evaluation. If the intelligence of the child is at issue regarding which parent might be
best suited to enhance that child's attributes, then perhaps an IQ test is relevant.
Not only is the selection of psychological testing
controversial, so is interpretation of test data. It is not unusual for two psychologists to look at
the same data and come up with completely different interpretations. Some psychologists claim they are
more accurate because they rely on a computer interpretation, never lose sight of the fact that the
computer interpretation is limited by what the human has put into the computer interpretation program.
While a computer may well be more consistent, it does not mean that the rules it has been given are
necessarily correct. In addition, there are so many interpretive computer programs available to
psychologists these days, the amount of scientific validity evidence for them varies greatly. Because
of that fact, an evaluator who uses a computer program should be examined on this particular
issue.
Amazingly, when the two most widely used major
personality inventories, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the Millon
Multiaxial Clinical Inventory (MCMI), are given to the same person, the results in the computer
interpretations may be very different. In some cases, the evaluator's bias may quickly surface when
they examine the two incompatible personality inventories from the same individual. If, by some chance,
the evaluator has a particular choice in mind as to who should receive custody, they may examine the
test data, searching for evidence to confirm or validate their "ideas," as opposed to looking
at evidence that might not confirm it. They may selectively pull pieces of test data to present to the
court and omit the data that tends to contradict their recommendations.
Many custody evaluators do not take the time to properly
observe the interaction between each parent and each child involved in the custody evaluation. When
they fail to do this they are restricted to data that cannot possibly supply results of the
child-parent interactions, which is obviously in the best interest of the child.
By far, one of the best methods to assess the
parent-child interactions is to videotape each parent with each child independently, engaged in a
variety of tasks. This allows the evaluator to review those interactions when alone, and also obtain
opinions from colleagues when necessary. It also provides the evaluator with the ability to go beyond
the interviews, tests and records. The evaluator who does not subscribe to this method should be
prepared to defend why they elected not to do so. In addition, it also provides a permanent record that
one parent can later obtain if they believe the evaluation was biased. Keep in mind that the last thing
a biased evaluator will want to do is have a real record of anything that may expose them.
One important point to consider when the evaluator
selects a task for the parent-child interaction is that the task should not be biased toward either
parent. If one parent happens to be an artist and an expert at drawing and the other is not, it would
be unfair to have each parent to teach the child how to draw during the interaction period. Normally,
tasks like teaching the child something new, playing a game or solving a problem are suitable
indicators.
It is not unusual at all to read an evaluator's
report covering the interview and test data and then find that the recommendations being made have no
logical connection to the aforementioned data. The recommendation section should provide a clear and
valid justification as to why one parent should be named the primary custodial parent and the other
should not.
Evaluators do make errors in logic. As an example, say
that all data collected on the mother and the father are basically equal with the exception of the fact
that the father has an elevation on his depression subscale on the MMPI. To award primary custody to
the mother, purely because the father has one test score suggesting an elevation in depression,
represents an inadequate justification in itself. Any father who has been deprived of seeing his
children would certainly exhibit some form of depression. Any custody evaluator that fails to provide a
thoroughly convincing and compelling argument for their interpretation of their interviews, test data
and observations is doing no one any good, family or court.
Be aware of evaluators who misrepresent the value of
their recommendations. If an evaluator noted in his report to the court that the method they used to
conduct their evaluation was the same method used by the president of the American Custody
Evaluator's Association, that would be an attempt to imply that their report has merit. The fact
is, there would be no strong scientific evidence to support that the American Custody Evaluator's
Association president's procedure is the method of choice for performing a custody evaluation. The
scientific literature should guide custody evaluation procedures, personal opinions that may or may not
be accurate.
Any custody battle is traumatic, especially since
children's welfare and futures are at stake. Unfortunately, scientific evidence to guide custody
decisions is seriously lacking and nowhere near the level for experts who need support in making such
decisions. Until the scientific literature on custody determination does mature, any report from the
custody evaluation "expert" should be viewed with a critical eye.
We have had a great deal of experience with custody
evaluators in cases where allegations of child sexual abuse have been made. While there is no question
that most evaluators are professionals and remain unbiased as they complete a professional and detailed
evaluation, keep in mind that if you fail to retain the "proper" expert you could easily wind
up with a "validator," simply meaning someone who finds abuse allegations to be credible
simply because a child made them. Retaining the wrong evaluator could quickly destroy any chance a
parent has of getting a child out of a real abusive environment so do some research before making a
decision. Some questions you will want to address are:
- What is their educational background?
- What is their practice devoted to?
- How long have they been in practice?
- How many custody evaluations have they conducted?
- What training have they had to conduct custody
evaluations?
- What is their experience dealing with sexual abuse allegations in
custody evaluations?
- What testing do they use during an evaluation?
- What exactly is accomplished during the evaluation?
- How long would the evaluation take?
- How much would the evaluation cost?
- Is there any reason to believe they usually reach a
"stock" opinion in their evaluations.
- What Court credibility do they have?
- Are they readily available to testify?
- How many times has a Court accepted their
recommendations?
- How many Courts have rejected their recommendations?
Many times, false allegations of child sexual abuse
arise out of a custody dispute and, should that be the case, I would urge you to thoroughly read our
page, The Father and Child Custody When False allegations of Abuse
Arise. Simply click the link to reach the page.
You have accessed one of the many pages here at the
Cowling Investigations, Inc., a False Allegation Defense Website. For an explanation of how we assist
our clients who have been falsely accused, see Our Expertise, We Can Help. If you have been
falsely accused, see What to Do - What Not to Do When Falsely Accused.
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