Child Custody Evaluations and Domestic Violence: Case Comparisons

Abstract

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.

Civil Protective Order Outcomes

“…In addition to crafting PO stipulations to meet women's needs, more responsive enforcement and follow-up may be required depending on the situation. Previous studies of court actions in divorce and custody decisions suggests a need for closer consideration of specific case characteristicsparticularly violence history and child abuse secondary to partner violence (Logan, Walker, Horvath, & Leukefeld, 2003;Logan, Walker, Jordan, & Horvath, 2002). One policy recommendation that might be derived from this study is that a closer court involvement with parties to a PO may be indicated as required in divorce and custody cases.…”

A Framework for Addressing Allegations of Domestic Violence in Child Custody Disputes

“…Parents with a domestic violence history were as likely to be steered into mediation as those without, despite the inappropriateness of mediation in these cases. In addition, custody outcomes did not differ between families with and without this history (Logan, Walker, Jordan & Horvath, 2002).…”

Assessing Allegations of Domestic Violence

“…The risk for continued intimate partner violence increases during the separation period . The risk of exposing children to domestic violence also increases during the separation period (Cuthbert et al, 2002;Logan et al, 2002). An interesting recent finding is that men who batter appear to score higher than men engaged in separation engendered violence on measures of negative attitudes toward women.…”

“…We end by discussing a variety of factors evaluators may consider using when developing an evaluation protocol to assess allegations of domestic violence within the context of child custody disputes. doi:10.1300/J190v04n01_01 [Article copies avail-Over the past several years, the assessment of allegations of domestic violence in child custody 1 evaluations has been among the hottest topics for research and practice in both clinical and forensic psychology (Jaffe et al, 2003aJohnston & Campbell, 1993;Logan, Walker, Jordan, & Horvath, 2002;Meier, 2003) and is of great interest to family court judges (Jaffe et al, 2003b;National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, 1999;Schafran, 2003). Forensic assessment of allegations of domestic violence when custody is in dispute presents a unique challenge to forensic evaluators not only because of the complexity of the psychological variables involved in a comprehensive examination but also because of the political and social dimensions involved in judicial decisions about domestic violence (e.g., Cuthbert, Slote, Driggers, Mesh, Bancroft, & Silverman, 2002).…”