“…Importantly, there is no formal evaluation of the utility of CCEs in the court system to date (Kelly & Ramsey, 2009), although Maccoby and Mnookin (1992) have found that, of the nine percent of custody cases that were not settled by negotiation or mediation (n = 84), more than 50 percent (n = 49) settled after the custody evaluation. This suggests that the custody evaluation may have been partly instrumental in facilitating settlement where negotiation and mediation had not succeeded.f cre_1375 336..347 Over the past 20 years, experts have raised incisive criticisms of the science behind CCEs, including the limits of custody-relevant psychological knowledge (Tippins & Wittmann, 2005), the practice of focusing on adults rather than the child, the indiscriminate use of psychometric tests, evaluators in dual roles (Bow & Quinnell, 2004;Emery, Otto, & O'Donohue, 2005), the limits of mental health assessment practices (Trombetta, 1991), and the biases of evaluators (Pickar, 2008). While these are valid criticisms of the empirical science of CCE, the demands of custody disputes make CCEs necessary.…”