Evaluations for the courts in child custody cases

Abstract

To understand how parental alienation fits into the child custody evaluation process, we will discuss what child custody evaluations are, their history, who conducts such evaluations, what training (or lack thereof) custody evaluators have, how they are appointed, how they generally conduct their evaluations, the reports that they provide to the courts, and how the reports are used. With that background, we approach the question of how evaluators who enter the child custody evaluation field believing in parental alienation or who have become proponents of parental alienation are able to turn custody cases away from the better parent and toward awarding custody to an abusive, neglectful, or simply angry and vengeful parent. This result is especially concerning in cases in which domestic abuse is an issue.