Child Custody Evaluation Each year about 1.2 million marriages end in divorce, and many divorcing couples have children (Patel&Jones, 2008). In the year 2006 more than 1.1 million children were living with a parent who was divorced or separated. Though most parents face the challenges associated with divorce or separation in a healthy and successful manner without high-conflict interactions. However, according to Patel and Jones about 10% of divorce cases involving children disagreement on custody and visitation arrangements leads to litigation(2008). In these cases, it is often left to the court to make decisions about custody, and several custody cases are referred to court-appointed mental health experts during the process. Patel …show more content…

Thus, many court- ordered custody evaluations will suggest family therapy with all members of the family; such as, sessions with both parents, individual parent sessions, and individual child sessions (Lebow & Black, 2012). Lebow and Black (2012) write that parents that have to go through custody evaluations are a unique group of divorcing parents. The difference between these parents and others is that everyone involved is upset during the time of divorce when most parents are prioritizing the maximum amount of time they can spend with their children and their influence on their children’s lives. Yet during a divorce for most parents have to deal with the negative factors that become evoked in custody such as time with children disputes at the expense of negative effects on the children, harm to their former spouse, living with conflict, the sorts of factors about which judges frequently reminds the parents which does little to alleviate the conflict. Typically, communication tends to be very because one or both parents become emotionally flooded easily. Given an escalating divorcing process, attitudes and behavior of each readily become proof of the rightness of one’s own cause. The parent envisions his or her position as being ‘‘in the best interest of the child’’ through the rigid lens of how they see their former partner. although custody evaluators might have little trouble sorting out which parents present threats to children, their