Psychologists’
Psychologists’
Child Custody
STRATEGIES
for
Men
(Updated Edition)
Dr. Barry Brickin
Dr. Gail Elliot
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Child Custody Strategies for Men
Chapter Contents:
FORWARD……………INTRODUCTION AND COMMENTS BY
DR. BRICKLIN AND DR. ELLIOT
CHAPTER 1…………..THE ROLE OF “BIAS”
CHAPTER 2…………..MOST FREQUENTLY MADE ERROR
CHAPTER 3…………..FOURTEEN KEY STRATEGIES
CHAPTER 4…………..THE SINGLE BIGGEST FALSE ASSUMPTION
CHAPTER 5…………..STRATEGIES THAT MAY BE USED AGAINST YOU
CHAPTER 6…………..IMPORTANT THINGS AN ATTORNEY SHOULD BE DOING FOR YOU
CHAPTER 7…………..STRATEGIES THAT WILL MAKE YOUR OWN ATTORNEY WORK HARDER FOR YOU
CHAPTER 8…………..THE BRIBED OR MANIPULATED CHILD
CHAPTER 9…………..A NOTE ABOUT PHYSICAL DISABILITY
CHAPTER 10…………CONTROLLING COSTS
CHAPTER 11…………WHAT IS THE BEST APPROACH FOR A PARENT TO USE IN A CHILD CUSTODY DISPUTE?
CHAPTER 12…………WHAT ARE THE COSTS OF A TYPICAL COMPREHENSIVE CUSTODY EVALUATION?
CHAPTER 13…………HOW CAN I MAKE SURE A CUSTODY EVALUATOR HAS THE PROPER EXPERTISE TO CARRY OUT A COMPREHENSIVE EVALUATION?
CHAPTER 14…………WHAT CAN I DO IF I BELIEVE AN EVALUATION WAS BIASED, INCOMPLETE OR INACCURATE?
CHAPTER 15 …………SUMMARY AND MORE
A LETTER FROM
DR. BARRY BRICKLIN and
DR. GAIL ELLIOT
Barry Bricklin, Ph.D.
Gail Elliot, Ph.D.
Consultant in Child Custody Issues
Dear Parent,
We have been involved with child custody issues since the early 1960's, and have witnessed countless examples of wrong-headed and unfair decisions, a lack of balance and precision in far too many evaluations, and the resulting heartbreak for parents and children.
As we have expanded our areas of involvement - we began by serving as expert witnesses and went on to being researchers, authors, teachers and finally consultants to attorneys, judges and parents - we are at last seeing important changes in the way the system works. These changes make options available to parents in custody disputes that were previously hard to come by.
Until recently, it has tragically and paradoxically been difficult for parents to combine two critically important positions. One position is a parent's desire to prevail in the dispute. The other is the parent's desire to be the best possible parent to the involved children.
Ironically, one main reason it is difficult to combine these two positions follows from the fact that while divorce laws have moved toward no-fault models, this is not really the model used in custody cases.
This puts a parent in the dilemma of having to combine an attempt to be the best possible parent with the need to prove the other parent is unfit. While this may not seem a dilemma to some, (many custody disputants believe the other parent is unfit,) it creates a secret and powerful force that intensifies all the many differences of opinion that already exist between the parents. Simply put, this "unfitness" model subtly influences any person involved in a dispute to take a more extreme position on each and every issue that comes along.
While the psycho-legal climate has indeed changed, things are still far from perfect. One encounters many psychological-legal "land mines" out there in the actual world.
But it is becoming increasingly possible for parents to avoid this no-real-way-to-win dilemma.
We want to share with you ways we have found that a parent can combine the desire to prevail in a custody dispute with being able to be the best possible parent.
At first glance, this may seem an obvious and easy strategy to put into action. It isn't. The nature of the system discourages it.
In the pages to follow we will give you the best and most advanced roadmap we have as yet come up with, to guide you through the forces and counterforces you will be subjected to in trying to settle a custody case.
Warmest regards from both of us,
Barry Bricklin, Ph.D. Gail Elliot, Ph.D.
Chapter 1
THE ROLE OF “BIAS”
The Role of “BIAS”
THINGS FOR MEN TO BE AWARE OF
One of the things we want to cover in this chapter is what is known in the scientific community as “bias.” Biases are behaviors (here, we speak of those we observed in the psycho-legal world) that can work against you, even though the so-called negative item does not really predict bad or poor parenting skills. A bias is much like a prejudice. We call a criticism “prejudiced” if we feel that a person is being faulted for something that does not really point to any true negative. We have observed the prejudices covered in this chapter among judges who are otherwise fairly intelligent and well meaning.
One such prejudice we have seen is the belief that watching an R rated film may be a sign of a depraved morality.
If the judge believes this (these days, it’s hard to find movies that are not R rated), a person who is reported to enjoy such movies may be unfairly faulted on the grounds of “poor morality.”
Some judges become highly incensed if a parent with primary legal custody seeks to relocate, even though that parent may have excellent reasons to do so. In fact, sometimes we think that this type of judge is just personally insulted that anyone would dare to live anywhere else other than in his or her jurisdiction.
Other biases we have seen would fall under the following heading: Some judges are absolutely unwilling to see serious psychopathology. We have been involved with cases where one of the parents was seriously impaired, and yet the judge became impatient listening to any evidence about the pathology. This is usually a judge who has a strong prejudice that parents, under all conditions, should cooperate and get along. If there is evidence that this is not the case, a judge like this does not want to hear it.
Men have to particularly watch out for the fact that some of the traits that may derive from “maleness” (the research is suggestive but not conclusive on this) may still work against them in a custody setting. A male approach to problem solving is often different than the approach of females, again on a group average basis. Male solutions tend to be more action oriented and simplistic. Men are generally not too good about dealing with psychological subtleties.
For example, one of the tests that we authored seeks to understand what a parent would say and/or do in response to typical childcare situations. One question asks what a parent would say and/or do if a child were anxious or shy. A quite typical male response is often something like; “Tell him he doesn’t have to be that way,” as if this advice, this simplistic command, will be enough to change situation. This is a little bit like telling a shorter person that he ought to try to be taller. And yet this response is common among otherwise highly intelligent men. It is normatively below average for women.
Along with this, men generally do not pay attention to psychological processes. Psychological processes are thoughts, communications and discussions that may lead to actions, conclusions, and changes. Males often try to jump right to the final step and achieve closure or action in one leaping bound. They tend to be skeptical about all things psychological. Again, please remember that we are talking about group averages here; there are countless individual exceptions.
We cited in one of our books on custody issues the fact that people ascribe greater truth value to things verbalized by other people who are similar in terms of sex, age, race, and a host of other variables. We tend to believe and assign more truth value to things said by people who are most like us. Hence accusations of abuse, which are usually investigated by women, have a tendency to work more against men then women.
An area of great difficulty for both men and women occurs when the other parent begins alienation strategies. It is very easy to get sucked into a negative game. The most commonly experienced reaction we see when a parent is being targeted for alienation strategies is for the targeted parent to strike back with the same kind of behavior. This is a deadly trap for the children in the situation.
It is extremely important for both men and women who are being targeted with alienation strategies to get expert psychological help in how to deal with it. Dealing with alienation requires a lot of specific training. We have mentioned this before, in other parts of the book. We emphasize the point because the parent who is targeted must be strengthened in his or her self esteem so as to be able to withstand the alienation strategies without resorting to similar behavior. This requires very specific therapeutic and strategic counseling.
Chapter 2
MOST FREQUENTLY MADE ERROR
Most Frequently Made Error
Maybe in life we want to work with people we have worked with before. Maybe we tend to trust the recommendations of people we have already trusted in the past. Whatever the reason, the biggest mistake people who do poorly in custody conflicts make is to have an inappropriate attorney.
Even attorneys make this mistake when they themselves are caught up in custody disputes, and from this we can conclude that the psychological forces which compel people to make this error must indeed be powerful. We believe the forces stem from the fact that people do not break "trust" down into separate categories. That is, we tend to group people as "trustworthy" or "not trustworthy," and once we have assigned a person to the "trust" group we are blinded to their shortcomings - especially if that person is a professional. People tend to go back to an attorney they have used before, even though it may have been in an area totally different from child custody. They tend to trust the recommendations of attorneys they have worked with before or the recommendations of their friends who have worked with attorneys, and end up with attorneys who did a good job for someone in the past – but not in the field of child custody.
Attorneys who have made this mistake have shared with us their reasons for doing so. They ranged from considerations like, "I wanted to work with someone I've worked with before,” through "I wanted to work with someone who is a friend of mine," to even "I picked this attorney because I new he wouldn't charge me much."
So who is the "right" attorney?
This judgment is not made on the basis of what we typically hear from people when they are evaluating their attorneys. People typically complain that an attorney "does not really care" or "never returns my phones calls," etc.
This is not what we are talking about. Most attorneys, whether truly busy or not, are notoriously unreliable about returning phone calls until they are urged to do so countless times. And some attorneys do not have a good "bedside manner" and will appear relatively disinterested. Of course, others may seem falsely over-solicitous and interested.
The right attorney is one who is thoroughly familiar with family law, including divorce, all marital property settlement issues, and especially is up to date on child custody issues. This would include knowledge of applicable custody statutes, all the case law that might relate to your issues and indeed is even up on the social science research on custody issues. In other words, your attorney must be a true expert in the issues and legal tactics that surround custody conflicts. The real power of a good attorney is not to be found in "style" or "presentation," but totally in what he or she knows and in how much time he or she invests in preparing for all of the unfolding phases of a dispute - from the moment it starts, through all of the negotiations and up to a possible or actual court trial.
When books written on this subject tell people about how to find such a lawyer, they typically say to ask the local county Bar Association for a referral, or to ask among their friends. Such books often give a long list of questions to ask of a prospective attorney. While such practices are helpful, they are by no means sufficient in a complex case.
First of all, we believe that it would be very wise to attempt to find an attorney who is a member of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. This group typically has the most talented attorneys as its members. However, we have found two other "musts" that are part of the issue of finding the right attorney.
The most important "must" is that the attorney you pick should be thoroughly familiar with the local politics in the court system in which your case will be heard and particularly enlightened as to the prejudices and beliefs systems of the judge in front of whom you may appear. The bottom line of any court case, especially in the family court system where judges have much more discretion to do as they wish as compared to what can happen in a "criminal" proceeding, is that a particular judge is going to make some sort of decision. This judge, though supposedly mandated to follow certain case law and/or statutory guidelines, is in fact pretty much free to do what he or she damn well pleases. There are relatively few procedural constraints on family court judges and it is very difficult to appeal cases lost at the trial level in the family court system. This means it is essential for your attorney to know that particular judge inside and out, from knowing what he or she considers in deciding who is going to be the "better" parent, right on down to what the judge will accept as permissible evidence, the types of evidence the judge happens to favor, and even knowing which possible mental health evaluators the judge will pay more attention to as opposed to other evaluators.
Many kinds of evidence may be brought in front of a judge. There will be testimony from a parade of witnesses as well as the two competing main participants (the parents). There may be testimony from expert mental health witnesses. Some parents and attorneys bring videos and pictures before the judge, to convince him or her that their relation with the child is "best," or that their home environment is the better one. The expert might present psychological test data, or interview data, or observation data. It is critical that the attorney know which kind of evidence will be given the highest priority by the judge. In a survey we ran a few years ago, it became clear that most judges favor one kind of evidence over others. It is the favored evidence he or she will assign the highest truth value to, and be most influenced by.
The attorney should also know whether or not a particular judge favors joint or sole custody. You need to know if you are going to have to overcome a very strong bias on the part of the judge. Judges will often decide what they want to decide, regardless of the statutory or case-law presumptions in your state. They will give the right legal names or labels to their decisions to make them sound like they are in accord with legal regulations, but the details of the plans will reflect their biases.
Some judges will rarely change an existing visitation plan; others will. Some will split up siblings; others will not. Some are vindictive; they must not be challenged, even mildly. The "right" attorney will know these things.
The second thing we found to be important is that in seeking the right attorney it may be important for you to go the extra mile and find one who has actually won cases in the custody arena on appeal. This is very difficult to do and usually will denote an attorney who is more thoroughly familiar with all of the legalities involved than other attorneys.
Concerning the next-to-last point, if your attorney is otherwise an expert in child custody issues but is not totally familiar with the judge, before moving on to another attorney explore with the current attorney whether he or she has a plan to acquire that information. He or she could do this by a conference with several colleagues in the immediate area who have worked before the judge in question.
There are a number of other issues that should be kept in mind when seeking the right attorney.
There may be something very specific about the particular dispute in which you are involved. You might want to speak with someone who has dealt with that exact same issue before. This might involve perhaps one of the parents being engaged in a homosexual relationship, or there may be a lot of hidden money or other assets that should be considered, in which event you would want an attorney who has dealt with these same issues before. Always think in terms of what might be a special category of expertise that might be important for you to have.
There are additionally some common sense things that one would do in seeking a member of any profession. You would certainly want somebody who has been active in family law or custody issues at least at a local county level, but even better, at a state or national level. The person may have written books or articles on the subject.
Here are some additional things to think about. If you have any degree of celebrity or live in a very small town, you might be careful to see if the attorney, in telling you of his or her experience with other "satisfied clients," reveals so many details that you can tell who she or he is talking about. If this happens, the same thing might happen with you.
You would certainly also want to be wary of any professional who makes extravagant claims.
You would want to be very leery of someone who, if you are in a very angry and vindictive mood, joins you in this mood. This does not bode well. You do not want an angry and vindictive crusader; you want a calm, level-headed attorney who knows the field.
You would want someone who is very clear about the fee structure and you should know what the going rate is in your area, especially for the heavy hitters. This is really the only way to judge if you are being charged a fair price. You would certainly want someone who clearly answers your questions and is willing to offer even further explanations if you are still in the dark. If you are just entering a child custody dispute, you would want an attorney who really tells you more than you have thought to ask, since the attorney should know that you do not really know all the questions that you ought to be asking.
You might want to inquire how long it will take to resolve the particular matter, or at least a hallmark figure in this regard.
A very important question is to ask about who will do the actual work, the lawyer or some associate; for example, a paralegal.
You also want to know if other experts are going to be needed. This is especially important if there is some special matter in your case as mentioned previously. You might need a consultant who is an expert in some particular area, whether it involves homosexuality, or whether the dispute is not between two parents but between a parent and a grandparent, or if the case involves a lot of money, in which event you might want special financial consultants.
Going the extra mile might involve going to your local court house to inspect open (currently ongoing) or closed (completed) cases. You might look to see whose names come up, and who is consistently successful.
Some states certify family law specialists, among them Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.
The phone number of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers is (312)263-6477.
There are dozens of how-to-go-through-a-divorce books. One of the most recent and best is by Jenny Garden, entitled "The Almost Painless Divorce," Evanston Publishing Company, 1-800-594-5190.
Chapter 3
FOURTEEN KEY STRATEGIES
Fourteen Key Strategies
We have carefully tracked all of the factors that seem to hold true with people who do well in custody disputes. That is, we compared the strategies used by people who do well in such disputes with those who do not do well, and have identified fourteen key items that we think are of particular importance.
1.
This first point is so important that it will have its own special section later, as there are many ramifications and off-shoots of this issue. The number one thing to remember is to not use alienating strategies against the other parent. Whether you believe they are warranted or not, nowadays they will backfire and hurt you. The psychological and legal communities have become so attuned to this issue that it is almost as if a person who is alienating a child against the other parent who maybe should be doing just that, will be faulted for it and perhaps lose custody of the child and never be able to regain a fair footing again.
Whether you believe the other parent is a dirty rat, not really interested in the kids, just trying to save money or whatever, it is probably not going to be wise to continually raise these issues. It might be unwise to bring them up even if you believe you can prove them.
We have been involved in many cases where a parade of witnesses has come in to corroborate some nasty stories about the other parent. Almost always, this achieves, at best, mixed results. Often the judge simply does not want to hear this, does not want to believe it, does not want to deal with it. The so called "parent alienation syndrome" has become such a hot topic that it almost always works against the person who would seem to be doing this, justified or not. Should this be in the picture, we will point out later that it has to be handled therapeutically; there are at present only limited ways it can be approached directly through the legal system.
2.
Recognize that the rule of thumb that a judge will use in deciding who should be the Primary Custodial (or Residential or Placement) Parent, hereafter abbreviated PCP, is this: whoever has in fact been the primary caretaking parent is likely to remain the PCP. Hence, one would have to do whatever is necessary to establish this fact.
3.
Keep in mind that if you do not have the right attorney from the very outset, even the nature of a judge's temporary order for custody may give a decided advantage to one parent or the other. A temporary custody order is one that is put in place prior to some more binding determination, and often prior to any kind of evaluation.
While it is true that theoretically the temporary arrangement should not play any part in an eventual determination, this often is not the case. In other words, if a judge puts in-place some arrangement that favors one parent, the judge should then not be able to reason later that the continuity should not be broken up because the child is more bonded to this particular parent. This would be seen as unfair, since this bonding was in fact created by the judge and not by real life circumstances. Nevertheless, judges don't always do what the legal system might see as the fairest thing to do. Again, this brings up the necessity of having the right attorney in place from the very beginning.
4.
This next point is so important that it will come up again in other categories. Keep in mind that your attorney absolutely needs your help in preparing the case. However, if you get obsessed to the point where you are living, breathing, and eating this case every second of the day, and calling the attorney countless times, you will not do a good job in helping the attorney and in fact you may end up pushing him or her away. The attorney, of course, will not openly tell you this, but it is a fact.
5.
Along these same lines, a very common mistake we have found that people make over and over again is to be so blinded by emotion that they fail to pinpoint all of the weaknesses in their own position. This can be deadly, because sometimes even the lawyer will not be able to make these kinds of observations.
In a dispute which very well could end up in a courtroom, it is absolutely essential that you pinpoint every single weakness in your own position. This has perhaps been one of the most disastrous mistakes we have come to see. Bright people, indeed even attorneys who as parents are caught up in custody disputes make this mistake again and again. The more obsessed you become with the correctness of your position, the less you will spot the flaws in your own strategies.
6.
If you are going to prevail, it is typically best for you to initiate whatever the legal issue turns out to be. When a person initiates a suit, it gives him or her certain key advantages. This is something that you should definitely talk to your attorney about.
7.
Along these same lines, if you are in a hurry to settle, you are at a disadvantage. People who are anxious to move on - either to become involved in a new relationship or to relocate - should take careful note of the following. Being in a hurry to settle gives a huge tactical advantage to the other side. You are likely to make all kinds of concessions you would not ordinarily make.
8.
Never start any "traditions" on your own before the full custody determination has been made. By this we mean do not give certain amounts of money over and beyond what has been agreed upon etc. without checking with your attorney. Similarly, do not negotiate anything behind your attorney's back. This can be a very serious mistake and create tons of confusion. We are, of course, referring to cases that have already become highly adversarial and are likely to end up in court.
9.
It is HIGHLY inadvisable that you start dating or seeing other people without your attorney's advice. In fact, as of the time this is being written, one state is actually changing the statutory regulations pertaining to this issue so that a judge may indeed end up holding such behavior against the parent who does it. This can happen even after a temporary order is in place. While in many states this may not be a technical legal "error," it could be said that you neglected your children in order to do this. Further, it could increase the other parent's level of hostility and revenge-seeking. From a psychological standpoint, this should probably not be an issue, but in real life it indeed is an issue.
10.
Here is a very important tip. It goes back to the need for your attorney to know the involved judge. When judges write decisions, even at appeals levels, it is quite obvious that they do not often give the real reasons for their decisions. This is too vast a topic to go into here, but often judges know that they do not want to let themselves be open for reversal on an appeal because they have given as a reason for a decision something that legally they should not be able to use in coming to a decision. So they often disguise their prejudices behind a practice of citing other, legally-valid reasons for doing what they are doing, and do not mention what their true reasoning has been. And this is often a very personal prejudice on the part of the Judge. We have seen countless examples of where this is actually what happens in our legal system. Judges are often constrained to certain kinds of inferential reasoning sequences, and they indeed know what they need to cite to legitimatize what they are doing. Hence, it again points out the necessity for an attorney to know the hidden prejudices of any given judge.
11.
Here are some important numbers you should know in order to fully understand and appreciate the next point we wish to make. 90-98 percent of parents involved in divorce will reach a child custody settlement on their own, without litigation. Most estimates would suggest that about 10 percent of cases go on to require some kind of psychological evaluation. Also, only between two percent and five percent of cases will end up in an actual courtroom.
Essentially, most disputed cases are negotiated. So the entire process of coming to a happy conclusion involves doing things that position you so that should your case move into court it is clear that you would prevail. As part of this process, it is important to keep in mind that you should never, in anger, reveal some very important negative fact you know about the other parent to that parent (unless of course withholding this information would result in actual harm to the child). If you tip off the other side about this particular piece of evidence, you probably remove whatever power it would have as a bargaining chip for your attorney to use.
12.
While seemingly mundane and trivial, you would be surprised by how many fall into this trap. Never speak to the other parent's attorney without specific monitoring and/or permission from your own attorney.
13.
Here is a tip, if you indeed know that you would rather negotiate than go to court. It is a good idea to use this even if you do end up in court.
Divide the issues that separate you and the other parent into as many different categories as is humanly possible. For example, you would not just have a category called "money," nor would you just have a category called "the kids." You would break each of them down into as many other separate categories as you can possibly think of.
For example, involving the children, some of the typical visitation categories that are typically used would be: weekdays, weekends, holidays, vacations, the school year, etc. Be creative; probably all of these categories can be broken further down into other categories. The general rule is, the smaller the categories are, and the more specific they are, the more likely it is that you will be able to reach some key agreements. You want to end up needing to litigate the fewest number of categories. Once you start thinking about this issue, you would be surprised at how many categories you might come up with.
What follows are some categories to consider.
School items would include: Who goes to conferences? Who takes the child? Picks the child up? Who takes the child to after-school activities? Which school does the child go to? Who is responsible for emergencies at school? Who pays- and how much for special schools or tutors? There are medical issues, e.g., Who chooses a pediatrician? Who makes medical decisions? Who handles any special needs? There are tons of money issues, like who pays for life insurance, medical insurance, pharmaceuticals, etc. These are in addition to all of the property settlement items your attorney will bring up.
Then there are everyday issues, like who chooses possible daycare settings? Baby-sitters? What arrangements will be made for interactions with new boyfriends and girlfriends? New persons who may be in a stepparent role? What happens (and when) at child-exchange points? Where should they be? Who will arrange and pay for any special transportation needed? How will scheduling changes be handled? How will vacation schedules be planned?
Remember: be creative! As an example, when you read typical how-to-divorce books, they will often suggest alternating holidays e.g., Christmas, etc. But there are several other options. First, holidays can be broken into further categories e.g., Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Also, some holidays may be more important to each parent, and so one can agree not to alternate some of them. This is what we mean when we say "Be creative in forming bargaining categories."
14.
Finally, this tip has to do with part of the mind set you should adopt to be a good negotiator. While you certainly want to be a tough negotiator (through your attorney), it is important to keep in mind that we have hardly ever seen any case where any particular parent got each and every thing he or she wanted.
Even parents who fare very well either in negotiations and/or especially in the courtroom, hardly ever get all of the things they really want. It is important for you to know this in advance, so that you don't mistake a pretty good deal, actually maybe a wonderful deal, for something you may perhaps even see as a loss for you. We have directly and indirectly taken part in hundreds of negotiations and courtroom trials. In highly disputed cases, we cannot really remember even one situation where the person who did "best" got each and every single thing he or she wanted.
Chapter 4
THE SINGLE BIGGEST FALSE ASSUMPTION
The Single Biggest False Assumption
The absolute best way to prevail in a custody dispute, especially if the dispute moves toward an evaluation, is to emphasize all of your good traits as a parent, even if still in the courtroom. At the same time, it is equally important to down-play any attempt to make the other parent look unfit. This is not to say that one should not point out the faults of the other person (especially if abuse or neglect is involved); but this should not become the focal point of your argument. As said before, the pendulum has swung so far in this area that if one is seen as an alienator or as attempting to cast the other parent as Hitler or Caligula, it is almost assumed that the person painting this awful picture, whether deserved or not, is the less adequate parent.
But here we have the horns of a dilemma, because it is the legal system itself that encourages a parent to take this very position. In many ways, the legal system speaks out of both sides of its mouth. While being very sensitive to uses of alienation strategies, the reasoning behind determining the better parent or the parent who can more frequently act in the child's best interest still rests on a fault model.
While many states have moved toward a no-fault version of divorce, "fault" reasoning still permeates custody determinations. The old fault model in marriage involved awarding custody to the parent who had been most "faultless" within the marriage and within the divorce action. Fault was typically defined in terms of the parent who either committed adultery, was a drug or alcohol abuser, was a physical abuser, or guilty of neglect or abandonment, any kind of criminal activity or even some kind of mental illness. Most judges will certainly consider that which they think they are quite expert on judging, that is, the moral character of a parent. And this can lead to a consideration of a lot of life style issues (which judges think they can correctly evaluate).
So the dilemma is this: while almost all evaluators and certainly many, many judges now almost have a negative knee-jerk reaction when they see alienating strategies on the part of a parent, and are almost always inclined to act in a negative way toward such a manifestation (even when deserved) the law itself actually encourages parents to engage in alienating strategies. As long as a prevailing thrust of the legal process is going to be based on a fault model, the legal system itself is encouraging parents to do the very thing it will punish them for if they find them doing it.
The way around all of this is to absolutely upgrade one's own parenting skills and to demonstrate everything that one has done to learn and master effective parenting techniques and to emphasize all of this in making one's argument. The major thrust of how to handle the negatives on the part of the other parent could be paraphrased somewhat as follows.
"My spouse has done xyz, and I do not think it is a good idea, but I know if I am going to emphasize this and attack him for it I am going to further destroy my child’s relationship with him, which I know is not a good thing. I would prefer that it be addressed therapeutically so that what is going on can be handled in a way that spares the child."
In other words, it is important to separate the idea of being a good parent from the idea of seeking to punish a parent seen as a bad parent. It would be best to push for some kind of psychotherapeutic intervention for whatever the bad practices may be on the part of the other parent, so that you are protected from the need to respond to the legal process by emphasizing the finding of fault. Almost always, this will involve your using what will be seen as alienation strategies, which have far too high a likelihood these days of operating like a double-edged sword. You will hurt you and the child.
Chapter 5
STRATEGIES THAT MAY BE USED AGAINST YOU
Strategies That May Be Used Against You
Of course, the major strategy that could be used against you is for the children to have been alienated from you. This may have been done in subtle ways that escaped detection, or it may have been done prior to any opportunity for a trained evaluator to spot it. This is so important that it will be dealt with in a special section. Here we want to deal with a variety of other strategies that could be used to damage your position.
One major ploy we have run into on countless occasions is where the other party makes some case in post divorce demand the central part of his or her requests; for example, we can recall a case when a mother insisted that she wanted the children to attend a certain school. This school had a philosophy and religious orientation which was not to the father's liking and where he would have felt excluded. Further, the power structure of the school was run by people under the control of the mother.
Nevertheless, it was in fact a very good school and she could make a strong case that they could well afford this school and the children would profit from attending it. The father was not helped by the children in this particular instance, because they were actually too young to express an informed opinion. While one of the children may have been old enough to express a preference, he was certainly not old enough for his testimony or his wishes to make any impact on the judge. Secondly, even if this child were to speak up, he would have taken a neutral stance, because he did not want to be put in the position of having to choose between his parents.
As the case dragged on month-after-month-after-month, the mother made this the central demand of her requests of the father. Nothing else would be settled until the father gave in on this issue. Every negotiation ended up being a discussion of this issue.
The father thought that the children attending this school would isolate them even further from him because the particular philosophy would come to dominate their lives, and actually account for most of their time. It was heavy on extra-curricular activities and it was heavy on a certain kind of "inbreeding," where the children would have been surrounded at all times by partisans of the mother.
The father pleaded over and over again with the mother to give up this demand.
He was delightedly stunned when at some point, far down the line, she indeed was willing to relent on this request... but only after he had given up most of his other requests.
The father found himself paying a very high price for his being so grateful that she gave in on a point that was never really that important to her to begin with.
He only figured out later that her demand that the children attend this school was a bargaining ploy all along, and she knew from the start that she would eventually toss it onto the table in exchange for other things which in actuality were far more important to her.
Our conclusion: Be very wary of the points that are made the central points in the demands of the opposite party. It will almost always be something that is repugnant and obnoxious to you, but something that the other party could make a good case for in front of a judge or negotiator. Be very wary that there are actually other things this parent wants, and you are dealing with a hidden agenda, and the so-called "repugnant central points" are all along merely bargaining chips.
One of the most common strategies we encounter, and one of the most difficult to fight back against, is the use of seemingly "impartial" witnesses who tell lies and/or partial truths. Of course, you might think judges are used to this and certainly expect each parent to put on a parade of witnesses in which all will be partisans for one parent or the other. Nevertheless, there is a good bit of research that reveals facts that could secretly work against you here.
It has been shown both clinically and in actual research that affinities toward people, including the tendency to believe them, are not really based on what these people say. In other words, if there is a similarity in certain characteristics between two people, they will each tend to place high credibility on the things they say to each other. These include age, gender, socioeconomic status, and other characteristics of this sort. The more similar two people are in a variety of attributes, the more they tend to believe the verbal statements of each other.
Further, there have been many disturbing studies that show that good-looking people are attributed more credibility than people who are not so good-looking. There were famous experiments in which a jury, composed of experimental subjects who were in the dark as to what was going on was brought to listen to what was said at actual trials. In other words, the words said by the lawyers and the witnesses were actually taken from real life cases. Of course, the jurors, the experimental subjects, knew that it was not a real courtroom and knew that they were part of an experiment, but they were simply instructed to listen to the testimony and come to a conclusion as to the guilt of the so called defendant.
Using the exact same words, both from the attorneys and from the witnesses, as happened in real life, the "jurors" listened to all of the testimony.
When the defendant was handsome or beautiful, the jury voted for acquittal far more often than they did when the so-called defendant was not good-looking, and note well: the jurors heard and witnessed the exact same facts in both cases.
What all this means is, unfortunately, there are a host of things that can hurt you in this respect that are very difficult to defend yourself against. The notion of truth-telling in court is a complex one. Legally, it is up to a judge or jury to assign so called credibility to a witness; that is, to come to any conclusions about who is telling the truth. For example, even a psychologist or psychiatrist is not allowed to testify as to whether or not he or she believes a particular person has told the truth.
At any rate, there are two main strategies that can be used against witnesses who deliberately lie. One is to have the attorney or your own expert somehow distinguish between conclusions, and what we call sense-based data.
A conclusion-type statement would be one like: "The father is so wonderful with the children. He is just so great. He is the best father I ever saw. The children adore him. He is such a good and caring parent."
Such a statement, if delivered with sincerity, and if all the other variables described above were true, could have great impact on a judge.
It is imperative that somewhere in the process such a witness be forced to give sense-based data. This data is best described by a person asking him or herself: "If I were actually there, watching the scene you described, what exactly would I see and what exactly would I hear?"
You will notice in the so-called conclusion type description or evidence described above, there is really no sense-based data.
Here is an example of sense-based information: "I notice that when he talks with the children, he patiently waits until he has their full attention. He takes the time to allow them to express themselves before he says anything and this furthers the fact that he really gets their attention. He is careful to talk to them in words chosen to match their own level of understanding, and will frequently ask questions afterwards to make sure that they have understood what he says. When he does this, he is very relaxed, and has a facial expression that is pleasant, open, and calm."
While an intelligent liar, of course, might know to lie in this particular way, it is still a main defense against the witness who bears false information.
The second major point to keep in mind in launching a defense against false allegations is to remind all of the critical people (e.g., attorneys, evaluators) involved, that the only meaning of any kind of claim about so-called parental behavior must be referenced in terms of its impact on children.
For example, if someone says that you occasionally have a drink, or that you keep company with someone the other side does not approve of, then it must be shown that this will have some negative impact on the children. It would be wise to keep in mind that your own expert or attorney should demand proof in this regard. We have witnessed hundreds of occasions where this focus is lost.
Most of the custody statutes across the country are modeled after the so-called Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act, Section 4Q2. Here, the criteria that a decision-maker should consider in deciding situations that are in the best interest of a child are clearly mapped out. It carefully notes that parental behavior should not be considered unless it has some direct impact on the involved children. Someone on your team, at the appropriate point in the legal process, should demand some evidence that any alleged piece of behavior is having a negative effect on the involved children.
Another major strategy about which you should be super-aware involves the other party acting in little, hard-to-notice ways that are actually designed to get your goat and force you to be vindictive. We are thinking of all those cases where the other party, for example, is never quite on time about visitation, but on the other hand never so off the mark that one would go into court with a complaint. Perhaps they let the children come home dirtier than they should or they allows them to stay up a little bit too late so it could be claimed they are tired in school, etc. These actions are kept up until your tendency is to go ballistic. Once this happens, you are likely to launch some kind of vindictive attack which could work against you.
We are thinking of just such a case in which the prevailing arrangement was so-called joint legal custody, that is, where each parent was supposed to share in all major aspects of decision making and major decisions in the child's life. The father used all of the above strategies to wear down the mother's patience and nerves. Somewhere along the line, the child had a very minor accident. When mom took her to the emergency room of a hospital, the mother's negative feelings against the father were so high, she did not alert him.
This was a very bad strategy and state of affairs, because it happened in front of so-called credible witnesses. It hurt the mother's case badly when the other side was able to subpoena the emergency room doctor who came in to testify that he never had the opportunity to meet with or see the father. This not only made the mother appear to be exceedingly vindictive and to violate the spirit and meaning of the prevailing custody arrangement, it further had the disastrous effect of having a very dignified and important physician come in and be able to testify for the other party.
Summarizing, the overall format here is for the other party to do a bunch of little, annoying things which have a cumulative effect but wherein none of the "details" could be seen as being that bad to a judge or decision-maker. Maybe they would be seen as not very good, but certainly not as deal-breakers. And then, with the accumulated anger and tension building, your tendency could be to retaliate in a blatant way. This can come back to haunt you big time.
Here is a trap into which women are particularly likely to fall. For whatever reason, especially if they are salesmen, men often do a better job in making a good presentation both in court and in front of a so-called neutral mental health professional evaluator. Perhaps also it is because we hold women to a higher parenting standard, and anything that looks even like adequate parenting from a man is held in higher regard than a woman's superior parenting. Maybe it is because men are just smoother and better liars due to their sales experience.
Whatever the reason, women often fear that they will be manipulated by the legal process, which may have been how they were treated, both physically and economically, throughout the marriage. Women often pick up a shrill and defensive tone during evaluations and trials, and come across looking not as relaxed and honest as the other party. Of course this could work the other way, where the woman is the better interviewee, but we see it more in the format described. Also, we certainly note that historically mothers have held an edge over fathers in competing for the PCP role.
So here are two things to keep in mind. Don't make the assumption that the other person will be a smoother operator than you to the point where you become upset, anxious, and overly shrill and defensive. This will work against you both in the courtroom and in front of an evaluator.
If in fact the other party has managed to snow a neutral evaluator, it would be wise for you to hire your own evaluator to present your case in a more accurate way. Even if this individual is not court appointed, and does not have access to both parties, this evaluator's report still could do you some good and may be the only way to defend yourself if you have fallen into this trap. The best way to deal with this is to not fall into the trap to begin with.
Chapter 6
IMPORTANT THINGS AN ATTORNEY
SHOULD DO FOR YOU
Important Things an Attorney
Should Be Doing For You
Whether it is because an attorney may not be the proper one to begin with, or whether it is due to the attorney having too much work to do, or just plain lack of knowledge, many parents do not do well in child custody disputes simply because the attorney failed to elicit all of the necessary facts and information necessary to conduct a winning endeavor.
All of the information elicited could be potential bargaining chips as well as represent matters that should be resolved in favor of the person employing that attorney. Many things slip away simply because no one thought to ask about it or to pursue a winning effort on a given matter.
Good family law attorneys should provide you with tremendously detailed questionnaires. In cases in which we have been employed as consultants, we often, among the best attorneys, run into questionnaires 20 to 25 pages long. These questionnaires should go into such things as all marital assets, especially ones that could be hidden.
For each and every item, the questionnaire should explain how it was acquired, whether or not you want it, what it's worth, moneys that still may be owed on various items and especially what you should be doing about them, strong boxes, your expenses, alimony and support issues, what is and is not tax deductible, current and future insurance needs, medical and educational needs, social security benefits, and even how you should go about establishing your own personal credit.
They should cover issues such as what to do about bills that may continue to come to your particular home after the separation or divorce, how you can fight future cost issues, etc. Expertise in custody issues come up in the sense that a good attorney will wonder what to do and have a plan for what to do as the children get older.
We have seen a lot of cases in which the attorney simply handled matters as they existed at the time of the separation and never went into all of the things that can arise over the course of the child's life. This just invites re-litigation, that is, the parents having to go back endless numbers of times to argue issues that could have been settled at the outset. Future medical and educational issues must be carefully considered. What to do about income increases on the part of the other person maybe important.
Not only will this kind of extensive information possibly provide you with numerous bargaining chips, it also will protect you from having to squabble, fight or return to court in the future.
Chapter 7
STRATEGIES THAT WILL MAKE YOUR
OWN ATTORNEY WORK HARDER FOR YOU
Strategies That Will Make Your
Own Attorney Work Harder For You
In covering this topic, we are going to let you in on some information that your attorney would never tell you, and not even admit was true if you were to ask about it. That will come a bit later in our discussion.
Although the attorney is obviously captain of the ship, you really need to form a partnership. He or she needs your help. There are three major items to keep in mind.
Asking you to accomplish the first item might be a little bit like asking a person to "Try to be a little bit taller." It might not be something you can easily do with your willpower.
While obviously taking your own case very seriously, you must not become obsessed with it. You do not want to make this something that you obsess about each and every day, hour after hour.
We certainly know that one is fighting for one's children, and it is certainly understandable that one could easily become obsessed with these issues. Parents caught up in custody disputes typically really believe they are in a life and death struggle to save the very souls and personalities of their children.
We do understand this. As parents, we feel deep empathy for other parents caught up in these kinds of disputes. Nevertheless, it is essential that you remain clear-headed. You will not be able to give your attorney the help he or she needs if you become obsessed. If you become obsessed, you will be a poor strategist. You will make one of the most common mistakes made by people who do not do well in these disputes as mentioned under "Key Strategies" above; you will fail to recognize weaknesses in your own position. By the same token, you will over-react to things that the other parent is doing as though they are the most horrible thing in the world. Judges and negotiators will not see these items in the same manner as you do. Again, this will make you a very poor strategist.
Related to the above, you must give your attorney a tremendous amount of information, but it must be boiled down into very clear and concise, bite-size pieces.
In other words, the attorney needs to "take it in" and use it well. It must be presented in a very logical manner, and in a way that allows the attorney to grasp the essential points. You must avoid rambling and chaotic thinking, which makes it difficult for the attorney to discern what is important about any given point. Along these same lines, if you are telling a story that requires it be told in a proper sequence, make sure it is organized in a proper sequence.
Always present what we have called sense-based data. Do not make statements like: "My wife is a lousy parent." This will not be helpful. Tell specifically what the mother says and does with the children, and particularly the impact that one could notice happening within the children. In other words, for something to be custody relevant, it must have some kind of effect on a child. So you must not only detail exactly what the other party is saying and doing, but also all of the (positive or negative) effects such behavior is having on the involved children.
This third point is something your attorney would never admit. In fact, we think it involves something that is psychologically true that attorneys in this field do not even realize is true. What we are about to tell you will be shocking to you, especially in light of all the current jokes made about attorneys which picture them as deceptive sharks who do not care one bit about the law, nor about fairness nor rightness or justice, but only about making money, and secondarily, helping their clients to win cases.
We are not social commentators, but we do know, as psychologists who are used to witnessing and interpreting subtleties in behavior, that what we are about to say is true.
If you are an alienator, and you are willing to use your children as a way of getting back at the other spouse, you will emotionally turn your attorney "off." He or she will not work as hard for you as he or she would, were you perceived to be a really fine and caring parent who is not willing to sacrifice your children for the sake of getting back at the other parent. As we have said, no attorney would admit this. But we have noticed on countless occasions, that attorneys who have as clients people who are obviously negative parents will not be motivated to go the nine yards for these clients.
Even if an attorney realized this, he or she would never admit it because it would put him or her in an ethical bind. No professional in any discipline, be it a psychologist, psychiatrist, physician, educator, or whatever, would ever admit to not giving his or her all for a given client. And as we have said, even if this is what the attorney consciously believes and aspires to, there is still the unconscious to contend with. This attorney, perhaps in an out of awareness way, will not fully go to bat for a parent seen as contributing to the destruction of his or her own children. We cannot tell if this springs from the fact that almost all people have some universal instinct to protect children, or whether it is due to the fact that most attorneys are themselves parents. However, we have certainly noticed this to be true.
Now understand this: Most alienating parents do not consciously believe they are hurting their children. On the contrary, they believe they are protecting their children. However, their obsession with the case, which makes it difficult for them to view the situation from a more objective stance, prevents them from seeing what they are doing. This is why point number one, mentioned above, is so important. If you get so obsessed with the case, and so obsessed with your need to win the case, you will not objectively assess the entire situation from a bird's eye view. Once you are obsessed, you not only stand the chance of hurting your children, you will weaken your own case in countless ways, including the big fact that no attorney would ever admit; that he or she is not willing to work all that hard for you.
Another important advantage of remaining calm is that your attorney will have a lot more faith in the case and a lot more faith in the strength of your own position, because he or she will view you as coming across as a far more competent and "together" person on the witness stand, should the matter proceed to a trial.
Chapter 8
THE BRIBED OR MANIPULATED CHILD
The Bribed or Manipulated Child
One of the saddest and most frustrating situations occurs when a child has been bribed or manipulated to turn against one of the parents. The child might previously have had a wonderful relationship with the so-called "target parent." Manipulations can range from very subtle, like the parent who looks sad and distressed when the child goes off to visit the other parent, right on through the entire spectrum to the other extreme, where the parent actively damns and condemns the target parent. The parent will say things like, "It's all his fault; he deserted us," right on through to saying that the target parent has all kinds of drug problems or alcohol problems or that he or she left us to run off with some low-life.
Unfortunately, subtle forms of bribing or manipulating a child will work as well as the more blatant strategies. In fact, the subtle ways work best, because even a savvy child, who might recognize (and better deal with) blatant alienation, will not recognize more subtle forms. It might be a mother, for example, who says: "Well you know you're father; he has a drinking problem. He tries, but he really is just an alcoholic." Or the father who says, “You know your mom; she means well but is just so uptight you can't have any fun around her." These kinds of subtle strategies might work every bit as well as the more blatant ones.
First of all, the target parent must learn to recognize situations that look like a bribed or manipulated child, but in actuality is not. It is frequent for older children, for example, say from twelve years of age and up, to basically want to have one home. It simply is a matter of convenience for them. They want to be around the friends with whom they socialize.
Also, a child of older years may simply want to switch from where he or she already lives to the other house, based on the-grass-is-always-greener-on-the-other-side-of-the-street. This is the child who believes the "other house" is the place where he or she can stay up later, where there is less discipline, less insistence on cleanliness, less insistence on chores or homework.
Regardless of the cause of a child's not wanting to see you, the core skill needed is what we call non-adversary communication. This is a skill which we also teach to businesses. It is a very powerful tool, but very subtle in its power. It will sound simple enough when we run the rules by you, but it will take a little bit of dedicated practice to use it well.
First, you must see the value in using it. It brings two main benefits. One benefit is that it will make your own communications more powerful. Second, it is tremendously self-therapeutic. It would take us too far off point to explain this fully right here, but the fact is that any piece of "output behavior," an angry face, tight vocal-cord muscles, a tense body, accesses in you your worst and most fearful memories at an unconscious level, memories of times you felt helpless and scared. You are unwittingly hurting yourself.
1.
The first principal is that whatever the issue is you are dealing with, you immediately seek a solution.
2.
This next point is extremely hard for most people to implement. It simply states that you never blame or make the other person wrong, not even in the slightest way. No matter how angry, hurt, or vindictive you feel, you do not use a time where some problem needs a solution to air your anger. There are not only blatant ways of making the other person wrong e.g., "You idiot! You never understand anything!" There are also subtle ways. The use of the word "but" is subtly making the other person wrong. If you tell me your position, and if I answer you, even in a very gentle and warm voice, with a phrase that starts with the word "but," you know that shortly thereafter I am going to make your position "wrong."
Suppose one of my children says to me: "You always talk to me in a loud voice."
Suppose I answer: "But honey, it is so hard to get your attention."
The truth is, as soon as I have uttered the word "but," the child knows he or she is going to be made wrong. I have lost good contact with the child simply by using that word. Whatever I say after that, even if in a calm and loving voice, even if what I say is very reasonable, the child is already in the position where he or she is only partially listening, and mainly thinking of ways to justify his or her position that "I talk too loudly."
3.
The third point is to learn to not give more than one (short) explanation of your own position. To do so is not only strategically ineffective, but self-damaging. When you spend a lot of motor-output time trying to justify your position, that is, trying to get the other person to accept the wisdom of your explanation, you are accessing in yourself, at an unconscious level, all of the memories of when you felt helpless, vulnerable, misunderstood and "on the carpet." Here are some brief examples of non-adversary statements. Instead of saying "You're late every time you drop Mary off,” (making the other person wrong), say: "What can we do to make drop-offs and pick-ups work better for all of us?"
We absolutely know your thinking at this point: "You don't know my ex. He wants to hurt me! He doesn't care about solving anything!" We know this might very well be true. But what you don’t know, and we do, is the subtle, cumulative power of the strategies we want to share with you. Give us a chance. Master them, and try them before judging how you think they will work. Further, our purpose here is to teach you how to use these skills with your children, especially those from whom you may have been alienated.
This skill of non-adversarial communication is necessary to make most of the other strategies that you might use work better. It is an amazingly powerful tool when used the ways we will describe. It is so subtle that the other person might not even consciously know you are using it. But it definitely moves people off of aggressive or hostile positions. Here are some other examples. Take the, child who complains the parent speaks too loudly.
The parent might respond to such an accusation with: "You may be right. Help me to find better ways to get your full attention." Now, since the child has no position to bother defending (which would have been the case had the parent said, "You don't pay attention," to which the child would have said, "Yes, I do," and the conversation would go nowhere), the child can begin wondering what options the parent may have to get his or her attention without yelling. As long as anyone has to defend a position, no creative thinking goes on. As soon as you make someone wrong, all they will do is endlessly explain to you why they're not; we are genetically engineered, one might say to "defend our territory." It is an almost irresistible urge.
The final strategy, but one which we recommend you do not use until you have thoroughly tried the others is to seek help through the legal system. This is something you definitely would like to avoid, unless there are no other options available. You will have to initiate these steps through your attorney. There are two important pieces of information you may need, since not all attorneys are aware of the mental health options that may be available and not all options will be available in every state.
The best overview of all the helpful roles of a mental health professional may be court-ordered to perform, are summarized in a paper by Lynne M. Kenney and Diana Vigel, entitled "A Lawyer's Guide to Therapeutic Interventions in Domestic Relations Court" (Arizona State Law Journal, Vol. 28, No.2, pp. 629-672).
NOTE: This article is in both of our two larger Custody Packages.
Here are some of the roles mentioned in this article:
1. Consultant to the Court
Helpful at the lowest level of conflict, in this role the mental health professional (MHP) develops a working relationship with the court and consults about procedural issues, family dynamics, psychological risk factors, making referrals to mental health experts, and evaluating the work of other mental health experts.
2. Special Master
The Special Master is appointed by court order, and performs as a case monitor to whom the parents go with disputes that arise after the case has been decided in a court. The Special Master is charged with collecting data, evaluating its worth, and making decisions after hearing all sides of a dispute. The Special Master's decisions generally are binding unless appealed by either party.
3. Arbitrator
An arbitrator serves as a binding decision maker without serving in the fact finding and evaluative role.
4. Mediator
A mediator serves as a neutral person with the goal of assisting parties in reaching mutually acceptable agreements.
5. Conciliation / Divorce Counselor
A conciliation/divorce counselor is a MHP who serves with the aim of helping couples navigate issues at the time of separation, dissolution, and divorce. The conciliation/divorce counselor does not play a formal role in the legal process.
6. Treating Clinician for Parents or Children
The treating clinician is a licensed MHP who provides assessment and treatment to families and children. This role may be court ordered depending on what is going on in the case.
7. Therapeutic Re-contact Clinician
The therapeutic re-contact clinician is a MHP experienced in child maltreatment, which assists families in re-establishing contact between caretakers, siblings, and children after some form of separation.
8. Therapeutic Reunification Clinician
The therapeutic reunification clinician is a MHP with training and experience in child and adult maltreatment, child trauma, adult psychopathology, child psychopathy, offender dynamic, and family therapy. The MHP treats and manages the family during the reunification process. The aim is to move the family toward being able to follow the visitation plan as written in a court order. This would be a legally mandated response to a situation where a child has been bribed or manipulated to shun a particular parent.
9. Therapeutic Supervised-Visitation Clinician
The therapeutic supervised-visitation clinician is a MHP who supervises visits so as to insure the child's physical and emotional safety. It may also involve therapeutic intervention, such as teaching a parent how to be a better parent.
10. Case Stabilization (“ECS") Clinician
The ECS clinician has the highest level of training and expertise of all of the previously defined therapeutic roles. In order to serve in an ECS role, the clinician needs to be a good therapist, and thoroughly understand all the legal issues involved. The MHP here operates under an emergency order from the court, and advises the court regarding the necessity for further evaluation or treatment or other intervention.
Another article that directly addresses a whole graduated series of interventions for use with bribed and manipulated children is by Peggie Ward, Ph.D. and J. Campbell Harvey, J.D.; it is entitled "Family Wars: The Alienation of Children" (The Custody. Newsletter, Issue No.9, Village Publishing. The strategies offered are "strong" and very specific.
NOTE: This article is in both of our two larger Custody Packages.
For now, we have had such tremendous success with people who have truly mastered the art of non-adversary communication that we believe this is the way to start.
Chapter 9
A NOTE ABOUT
PHYSICAL AND/OR MENTAL
DISABILITY
A Note About Physical and/or Mental Disability
It is heartbreaking to be involved in cases where a parent is denied primary custody based on some physical disability when there is either no evidence to support that the disability will have a negative impact on child care skills, or where appropriate help is available to the disabled parent such that the disabilities are compensated for in regard to parental responsibility skills. There is one main strategy to use here. Your attorney must show that the physical disability does not impair child care responsibilities. Some very important research on this topic is cited by Richard L. Wanlass, Ph.D. in Issue No.1, of the Custody Newsletter (see above, for reference).
NOTE: This article is in both of our two larger Custody Packages.
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Chapter 10
CONTROLLING COSTS
Controlling Costs
There are four essential ways to control costs. The first involves breaking down the number of issues into the absolute highest number of categories prior to having to go into court. The more you can divide the issues into tiny issues, the more likely it is you can agree on many of them. Please refer back to Item 2, point 12, for a suggested list of "bargain-able" items.
Second, find out what social service agencies will do free of charge in your area. There are all kinds of counseling centers, there are groups that will carry out specific investigations on abuse, and there are almost always members of professional groups, such as clinical psychologists, who will do low fee or pro-bono work depending on a person's income.
The biggest way to control costs is to find a method of solving disputes that keeps you out of the courtroom. We, for example, believe that this can be approached in ways that are unique and creative. In highly disputed cases, the mission can rarely be accomplished by mediators because the numbers of issues involved are often too many, and the powers given to a mediator too weak.
We have developed a model that has the following features. It contains some of the elements of mediation, evaluation, and arbitration and usually leads to much more detailed parenting plan than those yielded by traditional approaches - one that is more sensitive to a child's unique needs. It is designed to deal with all of the many issues and events that come up in a child's life, some of which were detailed in Item 2. The court is unable to address all of the details of a custody arrangement and is unprepared to anticipate the specific changes in children's lives (e.g., developmental changes, changes in interests, special events in their lives, emergent special needs, etc.).
Parents who have decided to participate in this program sign an agreement which outlines the details of the plan (purposes, goals, limitations, payment arrangements, etc.) The therapist then conducts sessions in which scheduling and other issues are negotiated. One of the therapist's roles is to serve as expert on which of the proposed courses of action is most likely to be in the child's best interest.
Not only must the therapist be expert in negotiation and mediation skills, but he or she must also have expertise in child development, family dynamics, effective parenting techniques, special child assessment techniques, child and adult psychopathology, education, developmental disabilities, child custody research, the-pluses and minuses of various visitation plans, crisis management, educational psychology, and statutory and case law guidelines, so that the proposed plan provides for each child's unique needs, accounting for strengths, weaknesses, and developmental level.
When an issue under discussion becomes an area of disagreement between the parents, it may be necessary to move to an evaluation of the child and/or any involved adults in order to resolve the conflict.
A unique strength of this approach follows from all of the skills the guiding therapist is seen to have, for from this comes the trust each parent has in the therapist to be a "tiebreaker" in areas of disagreement.
Parents truly desiring to avoid the pitfalls and enormous expense of the legal system are asked to, stipulate in their signed agreement that the therapist's decisions will be binding if the parents are unable to reach agreements through negotiation and mediation. If this becomes necessary, the decisions of the therapist will be based on the child's best interests, not parental convenience factors. Convenience factors may be considered, but only after "best interests" determinations have been made.
Chapter 11
WHAT IS THE BEST APPROACH FOR A PARENT TO USE IN A CHILD CUSTODY DISPUTE?
What Is The Best Approach For A Parent To Use In A Child Custody Dispute?
We usually hear this question in the following form: "How do I go about winning the courtroom custody battle?"
This is indeed a complex, even tricky issue, because the legal system actually sends parents a treacherously mixed message.
While warning them not to downgrade, attack or "alienate" the children against the other parent, the underpinnings of child custody decision-making in largest part rest on a fault model. Even though divorce decisions have moved towards a no-fault model the child custody area is still mired in a "parental fitness" (or really "unfitness") model. This ends up encouraging each parent to prove that the other parent is "unfit."
We have elsewhere addressed in detail some ways a parent can deal with this dangerously mixed message.
Here, we want to make another even more important point.
The best way for a parent to get more of what he or she wants in a custody situation is to try to solve it outside of the legal system.
Court should be reserved for only the most highly adversarial situations that have been resistant to other approaches. Of all divorcing couples, only 10 percent require an evaluation, and only about 2 to 5 percent end up in a courtroom. Try to be among the roughly ninety percent of divorcing parents who settle things out of court.
Make use of a mental health professional with a background appropriate to child custody issues. For help in forging financial agreements, very specialized monetary knowledge is required of a professional.
We offer a huge caveat to our own advice. The background required of a professional who would work in the child custody field goes far beyond the capabilities of most psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers and even mediators.
Consider the breadth of the list of areas two blue ribbon committees suggested mental health professionals should have education and/or training and/or experience in to be involved merely in "ordinary" child custody cases (let alone those of the high conflict variety): child development, functional and dysfunctional family dynamics, child psychopathology, adult psychopathology, effective parenting techniques and behaviors, the effects of divorce and remarriage on families, applicable methods of psychological assessment, applicable state statutes and common laws, typical custody and visitation arrangements, ethical standards in child custody evaluations, life-span developmental psychology, mental retardation and developmental disabilities, child psychotherapy and behavior change, and parent, family and school intervention.
Only with this kind of information and training will a mental health professional be able to assist in devising a good and workable arrangement.
What Is A "Good" Custody Evaluation?
If the parties cannot come up with a workable arrangement (i.e., agree on who should have legal custodial rights, and agree on the details of a time-share plan,) the parties may find themselves taking a part in a custody evaluation.
Here is what we believe must be true for an evaluation to be really complete and really effective.
First, we will list the necessary ingredients of a comprehensive evaluation. Second we will detail what we as heads of a national organization of highly educated, trained and experienced custody experts (The Professional Academy of Custody Evaluators or PACE,) see as the major flaws in many of the reports that cross our desks.
* The evaluation should be conducted by an individual or team who (or which) has been court appointed to serve in an independent, neutral, bilateral capacity. If this cannot be obtained, the evaluation should be mutually agreed upon by both parties (and their attorneys). Whoever conducts the evaluation should not have served in any other professional capacity for either (or both) of the involved parties in the past.
* A comprehensive evaluation should gather information from a wide variety of sources, including data from interviews, observations, psychological tests and documents. As we will show later, these sources should not all be considered equal in ability to elicit meaningful data.
* The evaluation should seek lines of information which are confirmed in several of these sources of data.
* A main focus of the evaluation should be not just on what parents know and do, but on the impacts or consequences of parental behavior on the specific children involved in the evaluation.
* The evaluator should be aware of the statutory guidelines and case-laws relevant to child custody decisions in the court of jurisdiction.
To give some idea of just how comprehensive a good custody evaluation should be, we will describe one such approach, ACCESS, or A Comprehensive Custody Evaluation Standard System. Whatever assessment tools are used in a given case should be able to duplicate and address the measurement areas covered by ACCESS. Since it is quite important ethically, legally and from a perceived procedural fairness perspective that parents understand in advance just what is involved in a comprehensive evaluation, ACCESS provides a lengthy and explicit contract which should be read and signed by each party. It details all of the procedures to be used, and insists that should there be an existing time-share (visitation) arrangement it must be modified to accommodate fair and balanced observation sessions during the evaluation.
Interview forms are provided for parents, children, stepparents, live-in companions, grandparents, pediatricians, psychotherapists, educators, and neighbors. Observation formats that utilize non-verbal behaviors as scoring areas discern not just what parents do, but the impact of parental behaviors on the children. Information pertinent to parenting knowledge and skills are gathered.
The Parent Perception of Child Profile (PPCP) and the Assessment of Parenting Skills: Infant and Preschooler (APSIP) reveal the degree to which a parent is attuned to the developmental and unique needs of a particular child. Traditional tests e.g., the Rorschach or House-Tree-Person test are used on an as-needed basis, to confirm (or challenge) information gathered from other sources.
The Bricklin-Elliot Home Visit Booklet guides home studies, including the investigation of complex topics, like relocation.
Two data-based tests are used to investigate the range of impacts each parent is having on each child.
A Critical Targets form organizes ACCESS information in about 40 custody-relevant areas formulated from a review of state statutory guidelines, case law and the opinions of experts in the field.
An Aggregation Booklet presents a formal model to assist the mental health professional to prioritize the gathered information. In suggesting a primary custodial (or placement) parent (PCP), it is essential that the decision maker distinguish between issues relevant to selecting a legal custodian as opposed to those germane to the time-share arrangement. Certain parts of ACCESS are directly relevant to the time-share arrangement only, while other parts address the former issues.
Next, we will list what we see as the most commonly encountered weaknesses in custody evaluations.
The greatest flaw in assessment reports is a failure to address in any meaningful way the impact each parent's range of styles is having on each child. Early in our research (the early 60's), it was already obvious that there was no reliable correlation between what a given parent did and the effects on a particular child of these behaviors. Long parental explanations could be helpful and nurturing to one child, and confusing and anxiety-arousing to his or her sibling, who perhaps cannot take in and assimilate large amounts of information at any one time.
Further, the latter child may experience long explanations to mean "My parent never trusts I can figure anything out on my own," while to the former child it may take a long explanation, may mean "Gee, my parent takes all the time needed to make sure I understand this issue."
Sometimes a parent's range of styles is an excellent match-up for one of his or her children, and a relatively poor one for another of the children. In fact, we came to realize that it makes no sense (except at "extremes," excellent and terrible) to assume that a given parent can be assigned any across-the-board index of competency.
In our "impact tests" - two of the most frequently used child custody tests nationally - we say that "parental competence," does not reside in a parent, but can only be understood as the property of a specific dyad (a specific relationship, e.g. mother/son or father/daughter.) This conceptual world allows the child to say to us: "Given my age, my developmental needs, the ways in which I process information and assign meaning to my world, Mom's/Dad's range of styles is a better match for me." The tests also seek ways to understand useful trade-offs e.g., a learning impaired child may require a parent who is highly organized even if that parent is on the cold side emotionally, while this trade-off, organized but emotionally cold, could be a disastrous trade-off for another child.
This goes beyond an "interactional model," where it is presumed some stable trait in one individual is interacting with a stable trait in another person. Suppose, in the Bricklin tests, a seven year old boy experiences his father as "warm and supportive." Suppose also, say by means of interviews or a traditional test, that the father is identified as "emotionally cold." What is happening here? Since personality is layered, is the lad seeing something others cannot see? Or is he seeing something that in fact does not exist? But what if there is something in the child's behavior that elicits warmth from the father, and what if no one else in the whole world can do this? Would it matter to the child? Probably not.
Consider this case. There were parents, a seven year-old son, and a nine year-old daughter. On test, interview and observation data, the father was seen as authoritarian and distractible. He fared more poorly than the mother in every assessment area. However, the tests revealed that while he was having an extremely negative effect on his son, he was having a beneficial effect on his daughter. We were able to obtain follow-up data seven years after the evaluation. The mother, who was definitely no champion of the father, reported that her daughter still enjoyed visitation with her father and seemed to profit from them. A "standard" approach that concentrated on discovering parental "competencies" rather than on the special qualities of specific dyads could entirely miss seeing the nurturing qualities this father could offer his daughter.
The second biggest flaw in evaluations is an over-reliance on interview data. There is a good bit of research (especially by Ekman, Ekman & O'Sullivan, and Grove & Meehl) that shows how unreliable interview data is in either establishing diagnoses or detecting truth telling. All of this leads to huge subjectivity on the part of evaluators, who seem to assume they can tell whose "story" to trust, even though the research evidence shows this is awfully hard (if not impossible) to do.
Further, since most evaluators use free-form interviews rather than those guided by the kinds of standard forms provided in a comprehensive system like ACCESS, there is no good way the evaluator can profit from his or her own experience. In a decision science like psychology, "expertise" comes from the gradual accumulation of a data base. This data base does not have to be published to be useful; it can be in a person's head. Only with a database can one reliably tell a superior response from a less good one, a deviant response from a typical response, and so forth. A database can only be gathered if one uses (at least somewhere in an evaluation) the same set of questions. "Deviance" (in psychology) has its most important meaning only in reference to a standard. And yet what we see over and over again are evaluators who ask each party in a dispute a different set of interview questions.
Further, we have written elsewhere of the huge number (at least 15) of factors that can invalidate interview data, and a whole host of others that affect witness credibility (but are rarely considered by either evaluators or courtroom judges.)
Another flaw we see in custody evaluation reports is a failure on the part of the assessor to observe a significant number of combinations of participants e.g., the two parents together with each child, each child with each parent, etc. It is only with all of these data available that certain conclusions can be considered.
Chapter 12
WHAT ARE THE COSTS OF A TYPICAL COMPREHENSIVE CUSTODY EVALUATION?
What Are the Costs of a Typical Comprehensive
Custody Evaluation?
Not counting fees for courtroom testimony and/or depositions, the average cost in the United States is about $2,500.
However, there is huge regional variation. In relatively rural settings, costs may be as low as several hundred dollars, and in other regions (e.g., Manhattan, NY, Los Angeles, CA), costs can range to $30,000.
Of course, a major cost determinant is the number of participants who need to be seen and the number of documents that need to be read (e.g., transcripts of depositions and/or prior courtroom testimony, educational, medical and psychological reports, etc., etc. Participants can include not only parents and children, but stepparents, new half brothers and sisters, live-in companions, grandparents, live-in baby-sitters, etc.
Also, if new allegations or developments come up during the course of the evaluation, costs can go up even more.
Chapter 13
HOW CAN I MAKE SURE A CUSTODY EVALUATOR HAS THE PROPER EXPERTISE TO CARRY OUT A COMPREHENSIVE EVALUATION?
How Can I Make Sure A Custody Evaluator Has The Proper Expertise To Carry Out A Comprehensive Evaluation?
If you go back and read part of our answer to the first question, you will see how extensive and specialized the backgrounds of those doing comprehensive custody evaluations should be.
While there are several organizations that could attest to a mental health professional's education - for example, in forensic assessment or child development - we only know of one national organization (which we chair) that looks into the many needed areas of expertise specific to custody assessment. Education and the extent of training, and courtroom experience directly relevant to custody issues, are all investigated for each member, as is the professional standing of each member. The organization can further break its database down into number of custody evaluations performed, years of experience, geographic areas served and many others.
The organization is called the Professional Academy of Custody Evaluations or PACE. Their extensive website is at .
Chapter 14
WHAT CAN I DO IF I BELIEVE AN EVALUATION WAS BIASED, INCOMPLETE OR INACCURATE?
What Can I Do If I Believe An Evaluation Was Biased, Incomplete or Inaccurate?
The short answer to this question is: Ask your attorney. He or she will usually recommend challenging the report by a series of questions to the evaluator and/or bringing in lay witnesses to challenge areas of the report and/or hiring another mental health expert. The aim here is to share our own extensive experience in dealing with this issue, to help pinpoint the kinds of challenges that are frequently successful and those that usually are not.
Hundreds of parents have asked us to review reports with the hope that we could aid them to challenge what they see as flaws in them.
The margins of each of the reviewed reports are covered with (literally) dozens and dozens of lengthy, meticulously detailed accounts of inaccuracies.
These inaccuracies are almost always about interview data, things people have said against them which are supposedly untrue.
The problem is that, of the three "measures" used in forensic assessment; credibility (the believability of the information source), accuracy (the "truth" of what is said) and relevance (the degree to which the information is pertinent to some important issues), there is frequently no way a reviewer of a report - as well as the initial evaluator - can check up on the first two of these areas.
Hence, there is usually nothing reviewers can really do with the huge majority of material sent to them (other than suggest that other witnesses or data sources be located that challenge these types of inaccuracies.)
It is also difficult to launch a successful challenge against what is seen as evaluator bias (unless it can be proven that the evaluator has or had some close "prevailing" ongoing or past relationship with the participant).
A biased methodology is not necessarily the same as a flawed methodology. A biased procedure would be one in which the evaluator has knowingly or unknowingly created an uneven playing field. This could occur when each side was asked a different set of questions or subjected to a different set of assessment procedures, or where a test or tool was used that led to the same thing e.g., an English language test was given to a person who had a poor grasp of English.
Successful challenges to existing reports are best maintained when the evaluator does things that lead to methodological or procedural flaws. These would include items like the following:
1. A failure to gather information from multiple sources e.g., from interview data gathered from all key players in a child’s life, from observations and documents, and from relevant psychological tests.
2. A failure to observe the child within many configurations.
3. A failure to spell out the implications of psychological test data to issues related to the ability to engage in adequate parenting.
4. A failure to conduct a home-visit (or "home-study").
5. A failure to get data from educators and pediatricians.
6. A failure to rule out the possibility that a child's opinions and/or behaviors were manipulated by one of the parents.
7. A failure to recommend psychotherapeutic procedures that can be successful if there is evidence of the Parent Alienation Syndrome (i.e., evidence not only that one parent is trying to manipulate a child's affections to be against the other parent, but that the child is "embellishing" these negatives on his or her own). Standard individual psychotherapy is rarely (probably never) successful in such cases. In fact, it usually makes things worse.
Chapter 15
SUMMARY AND MORE
SUMMARY AND MORE
In the following section, we want to take you back over some of the other points we made earlier in this book, and share with you our experiences on how they play out in the real legal world.
If you will recall, we said that one of the most frequent mistakes made by all people caught up in custody disputes is having the wrong attorney. In our experience, men are more likely to fall into this trap than women. Our belief is that they are a bit more cost-conscious. We also covered the idea of seeking to understand what kind of evidence is likely to (unjustifiably often) impress a judge. That is, often there is no real difference in truth value between different forms of evidence, for example; testimony from pediatricians, grandparents, teachers, etc.
All interview information is difficult to verify, and professionals can be just as wrong as lay people. Again, prejudiced judges often tend to believe one source rather than another source. Women are more likely to make the mistake of believing that their evidence will be uncritically accepted by a judge. It would be interesting to speculate on the possible causes of this. It may be that women are more likely to believe that their side of the story is the correct one. Men might be more aware of when they are bending the truth. This is pure speculation on our part.
If you will recall, we said that one rule of thumb among attorneys in child custody disputes is that whoever has been the primary custodial parent (or primary placement parent) is likely to remain in that role following a custody evaluation and/or custody hearing.
There is probably an inherent bias toward women here, since on a national basis women are more likely to gain custody than men (although this figure changes from year to year.) But we encounter wide variability on this point. Many judges believe that a father becoming interested or more involved with his children later in their lives shouldn't have that fact held against them. In other words, women will frequently say to evaluators: "Their father got interested in the children about two weeks before the custody evaluation began, and his interest is likely to last only as long as the custody evaluation lasts. Then he will go back to his more usual role, which is to more or less take the children for granted." This is a very interesting point and often leads women to believe that they should definitely have an edge, since they have more often been the primary custodial parent throughout the years.
Judges, however, believe (or at least many of them do) that even if a man's interest came late it still could be sincere and it is still in the child's best interest to have the father actively involved. Hence, it is not always a sure thing that whoever has been the primary custodial parent will remain the primary custodial parent. Again, one should concentrate on continually upgrading ones own parenting skills. At the same time, one should avoid damning and denigrating the other parent. Flaws in the other parent should be dealt with psychotherapeutically, not by alienating attacks.
You will recall that we said that your attorney desperately needs your help. This help should be in the form of very well organized and brief accounts of factual information. In our experience, men tend to be better at this kind of organized presentation than women. Also, remember that your attorney needs sense-based factual information, not conclusion-based thinking. You must help your attorney by telling them exactly what he or she would have seen and/or heard were that attorney to be present at some incident that you are describing.
Women are more likely than men to not see weaknesses in their own positions (although men are not too terrific at this either).
If either the mother or father involved in a case is overly anxious to see the proceedings end, either to begin a new relationship or move to a new area, they will find themselves in a compromised position.
Men are more likely than women to modify an agreement and to start practices that have not been approved by their attorney without checking with their attorney.
Both men and women are vulnerable in terms of being anxious to begin dating other people.
Women are more likely than men to expect perfect results in custody evaluations. Fathers are more likely than mothers to do this when they occupy very moneyed and powerful positions in the business world.
These people are used to getting their own way and having others defer to them.
Both men and woman are equally likely to get caught up in alienation scenarios nowadays. Both are poor at coping with a child who has been programmed to be hostile and rejecting. When an alienated child is encountered, mothers are more likely to experience despair and depression, while men are more likely to become angry and/or withdrawn.
In our experience, men are more likely to make a better physical presentation in a courtroom situation.
Women are more likely than men to be seduced into making obvious mistakes that will work against them. Because women have been more likely to have been victimized and/or abused by money and/or physical power, they are more likely to explode in anger when confronted by things that they think are basically unfair. Accumulated anger will break out, and often work against the people who erupt in this fashion.
When men do dopey things, they are more likely to do this openly and all the time. Women tend to do it sporadically, but more noticeably.
________________________________
We wish you well.
Dr. Barry Bricklin and Dr. Gail Elliot
PS: Please do not forget to order your free BONUS ITEMS. They provide important additional help for you. All states have subtle differences in the way that they handle custody cases - it is very important that you are aware of these differences - that is why we have prepared a State Supplement for all 50 states plus the District of Columbia.
Your choice of STATE SUPPLEMENT (15 to 17 pages) plus
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|EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATIONS |
|Custody Evaluation is a critical element in the decision-making process of your child custody case. What can you |
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|Evaluation? Information prepared by experts. [CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|CHILD CUSTODY Q and A |
|NOW! THE 77 MOST-FREQUENTLY ASKED (AND MOST IMPORTANT) CHILD CUSTODY QUESTIONS WITH EXPERT ANSWERS! "YOU WILL FIND |
|YOUR ANSWERS HERE!" [CLICK TO SEE THE QUESTIONS] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|GRANDPARENTS' RIGHTS MANUAL |
|ARE YOU HAVING DIFFICULTIES VISITING WITH YOUR GRANDCHILDREN? DO YOU HAVE A GRANDCHILD WHO IS BEING TREATED POORLY OR|
|EVEN ABUSED? DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS ARE AS GRANDPARENTS? THIS IS THE ULTIMATE PACKAGE OF INFORMATION FOR |
|GRANDPARENTS INVOLVED (OR TO BE INVOLVED) IN A CHILD CUSTODY DISPUTE. YOUR EVERY QUESTION IS ANSWERED! [CLICK TO READ|
|MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|GRANDPARENTS ASSERTING THEIR RIGHTS IN CUSTODY COURT |
|A TOTALLY INTEGRATED PUBLICATION, HELPING GRANDPARENTS WITH: (1) THEIR DECISION TO GO TO COURT TO ASSERT THEIR RIGHTS|
|FOR VISITATION OR CUSTODY; (2) HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT ATTORNEY TO HANDLE THEIR CASE; (3) 25 KEY STRATEGIES TO HELP |
|THEM ACHIEVE A SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION TO THEIR COURT CASE; (4) THINGS THAT GRANDFATHERS (MEN) AND GRANDMOTHERS (WOMEN)|
|SHOULD BE AWARE OF WHILE IN COURT; (5) A CHECKLIST TO MAKE CERTAIN THAT THEY ARE FULLY PREPARED FOR THEIR |
|CUSTODY/VISITATION CASE; (6) GRANDPARENT COURT CASES FROM COAST TO COAST (A GREAT HELP FOR YOU AND YOUR ATTORNEY); |
|(7) EXAMPLES OF THE LEGAL FORMS AND THAT WILL BE FILED ON YOUR BEHALF BY YOUR ATTORNEY. [CLICK TO READ MORE] |
|[pic] [pic] [pic] |
|GRANDPARENTS' RIGHTS PACKAGE |
|CONTAINS THE TWO PUBLICATIONS LISTED ABOVE AT A SPECIAL PRICE AND WITH AN IMPORTANT BONUS! |
|[CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
| |
|EMANCIPATION HANDBOOK: |
|WHAT CONSTITUTES EMANCIPATION AND RELEASES A PARENT FROM A CHILD SUPPORT OBLIGATION? THE MOST-COMPLETE VOLUME OF |
|INFORMATION ON EMANCIPATION EVER OFFERED. INFORMATION ON EVERY STATE AND DC! |
|[CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME (PAS) |
|WHAT IS PAS? HOW CAN YOU COMBAT IT? EXPERTS PRESENT THE MOST COMPLETE VOLUME OF INFORMATION FOR PARENTS ABOUT |
|PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME. [CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT ATTORNEY TO HANDLE YOUR CUSTODY CASE |
|THE MOST IMPORTANT "PIECE OF THE PUZZLE" IN WINNING YOUR CUSTODY CASE IS SELECTING THE RIGHT LAWYER! DR. BARRY |
|BRICKLIN AND DR. GAIL ELLIOT, NATIONALLY-KNOWN CHILD CUSTODY EXPERTS, HAVE USED THEIR 40 YEARS OF CUSTODY EXPERIENCE |
|TO HELP YOU SELECT THE ATTORNEY WHO WILL DO THE BEST JOB FOR YOU! |
|[CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|RELOCATION WITH CHILDREN AFTER DIVORCE |
|Can you move out of state with your kids? Can you stop your ex from moving out of state with your kids? What are your|
|legal rights and options in regard to relocation? This publication covers relocation from every aspect. IT IS THE |
|MOST-COMPLETE VOLUME OF INFORMATION EVER OFFERED TO PARENTS! [CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|VOLUNTARY TERMINATION OF PARENTAL RIGHTS |
|First time offered! 62 pages of information about voluntarily terminating your parental rights. What are the effects |
|of giving up your parental rights? What is the legal process? Is the termination FINAL? What are the specific rules |
|for each state? PLUS MORE… MORE… MORE! Every question is answered. [CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|CHILD CUSTODY CHECKLIST |
|There are many items to think about and consider as you prepare to get involved, or re-involved, in any custody |
|dispute. This list will help you better organize these items. If you energetically follow the Checklist you will |
|significantly help your case! |
|[CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|THE CHILD SUPPORT HANDBOOK |
|Includes ALL states and D.C.--- the most complete volume of information about child support ever offered! Answers |
|questions about every aspect of Child Support, "You will find your answers HERE!" Support guidelines for every state |
|PLUS the rules that let you deviate from these guidelines. YOUR OWN PERSONAL CHILD SUPPORT CALCULATOR---Use it over |
|and over again…forever! YOUR CHOICE OF ONE 15 to 17 page STATE SUPPLEMENT IS INCLUDED! [CLICK TO READ MORE] |
|[pic] [pic] [pic] |
|THINGS FOR MEN TO BE AWARE OF DURING A CHILD CUSTODY COURT CASE |
|By nationally-known and respected child custody experts, Dr. Barry Bricklin and Dr. Gail Elliot. MEN AND WOMEN ARE |
|TREATED DIFFERENTLY DURING CHILD CUSTODY COURT CASES AND IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO BE IN A POSITION TO COUNTERACT |
|THESE JUDICIAL BIASES. THIS REPORT HAS BEEN WRITTEN SPECIFICALLY FOR MEN! |
|[CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|THINGS FOR WOMEN TO BE AWARE OF DURING A CHILD CUSTODY COURT CASE |
|By nationally-known and respected child custody experts, Dr. Barry Bricklin and Dr. Gail Elliot. MEN AND WOMEN ARE |
|TREATED DIFFERENTLY DURING CHILD CUSTODY COURT CASES AND IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO BE IN A POSITION TO COUNTERACT |
|THESE JUDICIAL BIASES. THIS REPORT HAS BEEN WRITTEN SPECIFICALLY FOR WOMEN! |
|[CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AS A CONSIDERATION IN CHILD CUSTODY AND VISITATION DECISIONS An Important Discussion About How |
|Court Systems Handle the Problem of Domestic Violence When Making Child Custody and Visitation Decisions. [CLICK TO |
|READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|THE CUSTODY NEWSLETTER ARCHIVES [pic] |
|Free access to hundreds and hundreds of pages of helpful information. The articles have been written by Mental Health|
|Professionals who are involved on a day-by-day basis with helping men and women who are involved in child custody |
|issues of all types. [CLICK TO READ MORE] |
|UNMARRIED PARENTS AND CHILD CUSTODY |
|Once you slip on a wedding ring, the law has you covered-- most state statutes outline rights and responsibilities |
|for married couples. Few comparable statutes exist to guide the unmarried. As an unmarried parent, (alone or with a |
|partner) you have a bit more work to find out: ~ Who has custody of the child? ~ What are your legal rights as a |
|parent? ~ How to enforce those rights? ~ What are your responsibilities as a parent? This Publication covers |
|EVERYTHING you need to know about having children while not being married. [CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|INTERFERENCE WITH VISITATION AS GROUNDS FOR MODIFYING CUSTODY |
|“I worked out a visitation plan with my ex when we got divorced, but now she never lets me see the kids.” “The court |
|gave me every-other-weekend and all day Wednesday to be with my daughter but I haven’t seen her in over a year!” How |
|do courts handle custody cases where the custodial parent has continually interfered with the custody and visitation |
|rights of the noncustodial parent? [CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|ENFORCING YOUR CUSTODY AND VISITATION PLAN WHEN IT IS INTERFERED WITH |
|"What good is it to have court-ordered custody and visitation rights if they are always being interfered with by your|
|ex?"THERE ARE LEGAL PROCESSES AVAILABLE IN ALL 50 STATES THAT WILL HELP DEFEND YOUR CUSTODY AND VISITATION RIGHTS! |
|Learn what they are and how you can use them! "It's time for your ex to do what the court says!" |
|[CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|PARENTING AGREEMENTS/PLANS: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW |
|A Parenting Agreement (also called a Parenting Plan) is a written statement of how the needs of your children are |
|going to be met after divorce. Parenting Plans cover EVERY important area of a child’s life. |
|Each item that should be included is discussed, PLUS our editors have developed a detailed “fill-in-the-blanks” |
|Parenting Agreement that is ready for you to use. [CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|[pic]EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CHILD CUSTODY AND CHILD SUPPORT IN CANADA |
|This Publication presents the largest volume of pertinent information about Child Custody in Canada ever developed. |
|There are 232 total pages, divided into six different sections, that can be viewed and printed individually. You will|
|be able to return to the Download Site again and again. [CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|FATHERS GOING TO CUSTODY COURT IN CANADA |
|This Publication presents the largest volume of pertinent information about Child Custody in Canada ever developed. |
|There are 330 total pages, divided into eleven different sections, that can be viewed and printed individually. You |
|will not be rushed--- you will be able to return to the Download Site over and over to view or print the information |
|as you need it (including any new information that is added). THIS PUBLICATION IS DIVIDED INTO THREE CHAPTERS: 1. |
|What You Need To Know About Child Custody and Child Support In Canada 2. Specific Help For MEN Involved in a |
|ChildCustody Case 3. Custody Cases and Legal Summaries In Canada [CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|MOTHERS GOING TO CUSTODY COURT IN CANADA |
|This Publication presents the largest volume of pertinent information about Child Custody in Canada ever developed. |
|There are 330 total pages, divided into eleven different sections, that can be viewed and printed individually. You |
|will not be rushed--- you will be able to return to the Download Site over and over to view or print the information |
|as you need it (including any new information that is added). THIS PUBLICATION IS DIVIDED INTO THREE CHAPTERS: 1. |
|What You Need To Know About Child Custody and Child Support In Canada 2. Specific Help For WOMEN Involved in a Child |
|Custody Case 3. Custody Cases and Legal Summaries In Canada [CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
| |
|CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCES AS GROUNDS TO MODIFY CUSTODY |
|Courts have the power to modify child custody arrangements to meet the needs of the child and to respond to changes |
|in the parents' lives. A parent seeking to change custody through the court usually must show that the conditions |
|have changed substantially since the last custody order. This report discusses in detail everything that you need to |
|know about seeking to modify a custody order because of a "change in circumstances." [CLICK TO READ MORE] |
|[pic] [pic] [pic] |
|EVERYTHING WOMEN SHOULD KNOW BEFORE TESTIFYING IN CUSTODY COURT |
|TIPS AND STRATEGIES DESIGNED TO "Give You the Edge" WHEN TESTIFYING IN FAMILY COURT. This publication will also help |
|your children and your other witnesses be more effective when testifying. (Using this information may very well prove|
|to be the difference between a happy and an unhappy conclusion to your case.) |
|INCLUDES A SPECIAL CHAPTER FOR "WOMEN ONLY" (See Chapter 9) |
|[CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|EVERYTHING MEN SHOULD KNOW BEFORE TESTIFYING IN CUSTODY COURT |
|TIPS AND STRATEGIES DESIGNED TO "Give You the Edge" WHEN TESTIFYING IN FAMILY COURT. This publication will also help |
|your children and your other witnesses be more effective when testifying. (Using this information may very well prove|
|to be the difference between a happy and an unhappy conclusion to your case.) |
|INCLUDES A SPECIAL CHAPTER FOR "MEN ONLY" (See Chapter 9) |
|[CLICK TO READ MORE] [pic] [pic] [pic] |
|CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT OUR AFFILIATE PROGRAM |
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