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.

In recent years, there have been attempts to develop "objective" measures that are specific to custody evaluations. The Bricklin Perceptual Scales claims a 90 % agreement rate between the scales and the Judges' determination. The Ackerman-Schoendorf Scales for Parent Evaluation of Custody have recently been introduced and these scales also report a 90 % agreement with the Judges' custodial decisions as well.

Any custody evaluator who does not use these tests should be queried as to why not. Those evaluators who do use these scales should be questioned regarding the research on the scales, what specific evidence exists in the research literature about them and what are the known sources of error rates in these scales.

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.

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.