The Boundaries of Mental Health Expertise in Dependency and Family Law: A Proposal for Standards of Practice

Evolving Guidelines for Divorce/Custody Evaluations

“…This article has offered adiscussion of four areas of concern that must be addressed in any future attempts to develop guidelines and standards for mental health evaluations in divorce custody cases. Many other ethical issues requiring attention have been identified in more extensive surveys of the area (e.g., Stone & Shear, 1988;Weithorn, 1987).…”

Comment on Parkinson and Cashmore's (2015) Research and Proposal for Reforming Child Custody Relocation Law: Child Custody Evaluator and Psychological Perspecitve

“…A straightforward and complementary approach is for the evaluator to describe for the court, based on careful forensic investigation, the relative advantages and disadvantages associated with relocation or the child not relocating and there possibly being a change in the residential parent, that is, custody (Austin, ). This approach can be part of a psychological cost/benefit analysis that is often used by evaluators (Stone & Shear, ) or a social capital analysis (Austin, ).…”