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Family Law Quarterly

Family Law Quarterly 57:1 (2024)

Coercive Control in High-Conflict Custody Litigation

Gillian Rowley Chadwick and Steffany Sloan

Summary

  • The universal legal standard for child custody determinations is the “best interest of the child.”
  • Coercive control can include emotional, psychological, sexual, physical, and economic abuse, as well as threats, intimidation, stalking, and the use of children to obtain dominance.
  • All legal professionals involved in high-conflict custody litigation should implement corrective measures to ensure they are not advancing incorrect assumptions.
  • Current approaches to custody conflict are failing domestic violence victims and their children.
Coercive Control in High-Conflict Custody Litigation
Jason Deckman via Getty Images

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Introduction

Family law professionals and scholars have been concerned about the effects of high-conflict custody litigation on children for decades. These difficult cases pose serious challenges for the professionals tasked with helping to resolve them through the family courts. Those professionals include parents’ lawyers, guardians ad litem (GALs), custody evaluators, mediators, and judges. This article examines the danger of conflating intimate partner abuse, particularly “coercive control,” with mutual high-conflict behavior in child custody disputes. Drawing from relevant social science and legal literature as well as our own professional experience, we argue that when legal professionals fail to accurately decipher coercive control from mutual conflict, custody orders unwittingly expose children and parents to unsafe and potentially harmful circumstances.

Children’s interests are best served through an analytical and informed approach to high-conflict child custody disputes. Current approaches to child custody disputes too often fail to integrate a robust understanding of coercive control dynamics and the effects of trauma on both adult and child victims. Family law professionals must be aware of how to identify patterns of coercive control in child custody cases, which requires a careful, individualized, and evidence-focused approach to each case. Professionals must take active steps to overcome misconceptions and biases that harm abused parents and children and result in less safe custody outcomes.

This article proceeds in four parts. Part I briefly reviews relevant legal standards operating in child custody litigation. Part II draws upon domestic violence and family conflict literature to elucidate how coercive control harms both adult victims and their children and demonstrate how coercive control is too often misunderstood as mutually high-conflict behavior. Part III connects relevant themes emerging from current literature to coercive control in high-conflict child custody litigation. Finally, Part IV offers the authors’ recommendations for legal professionals, such as judges, custody evaluators, GALs, and parents’ attorneys, to implement as they engage with high-conflict custody litigation.

I. Legal Framework for Custody Disputes

A. Best Interest of the Child

The universal legal standard for child custody determinations is the “best interest of the child.” Most states have attempted to concretize this abstract concept by creating specific “best interest” custody factors, such as “[e]ach parent’s role and involvement with the minor child before and after separation,” “the emotional and physical needs of the child,” and “the school activity schedule of the child,” as well as “evidence of domestic abuse” and “the willingness and ability of each parent to respect and appreciate the bond between the child and the other parent and to allow for a continuing relationship between the child and the other parent.” The best interest factors are generally considered non-exhaustive, meaning that courts may consider other points besides those included in the enumerated factors. Although courts may be broadly bound to consider “best interest” factors when making custody decisions, there are few to no prescriptive standards as to how the factors will be applied and custody judges enjoy extensive discretion in implementing the best interest standard. Some states incorporate custody presumptions, including rebuttable presumptions favoring joint custody and/or against awarding custody to a perpetrator of domestic violence. However, overall, custody law remains highly flexible. Flexibility offers the benefit of accommodating and adapting to many different family situations to meet the needs of each individual child. However, with flexibility comes inherent subjectivity, which may allow value judgments, stereotypes, and biases to dominate child custody outcomes. Lawyers and judges are not immune from cognitive error, stereotyping, or bias. As such, it is particularly important that professionals apply a truly analytic approach and eschew “gut” feelings and focus on concrete evidence and the best available social science when making custody determinations.

B. Friendly Parent Doctrine

One best interest factor that has been the focus of significant attention is the so-called friendly parent factor, which is rooted in the “friendly parent doctrine.” The friendly parent doctrine is the expectation that each parent should facilitate the child’s relationship with the other parent. Willingness to facilitate a relationship with the other parent is considered “friendly” parenting. Parental friendliness is generally believed to be a critically important element of co-parenting in the best interest of the child. When one parent is deemed “unfriendly” towards the other parent, a judge may restrict or even eliminate that parent’s custody or access to the child.

The paradox of the friendly parent doctrine is that highly contested child custody cases are inherently adversarial—each parent is battling for their desired custody arrangement. The friendly parent doctrine has also been criticized as encouraging conflict and being harmful to victims of abuse. These critiques will be revisited in the analysis offered in Part II.B below.

II. Understanding Conflict in Custody Litigation

A. Coercive Control

Intimate partner abuse, commonly called domestic violence, is a phenomenon that affects millions of families and has devastating, long-term consequences for children. Researchers and theorists have proposed a number of models to describe domestic violence. While domestic violence was initially recognized as physical abuse, experts now understand that domestic violence can encompass a variety of behaviors, which does not always include physical violence. These abusive behaviors often continue after separation or divorce.

Coercive control, a term popularized by Evan Stark, is a pattern of behaviors—which may include “violence, intimidation, isolation, and control”—used to achieve domination over a current or former intimate partner. Coercive control can include emotional, psychological, sexual, physical, and economic abuse, as well as threats, intimidation, stalking, and the use of children to obtain dominance. Strategies of coercive control are distinguishable from routine use of control in relationships in that they aim to dominate and restrict the “autonomy, liberty, and personhood” of the victim. Physical violence is often present in a coercive control dynamic. However, nonphysical coercive control has been found to yield similar negative emotional or psychological consequences for victims as physical domestic violence.

Domestic violence, particularly coercive control, is poorly understood within the legal system. Several states specifically recognize “coercive control” as a form of domestic violence, and other states define domestic violence to include financial crimes or other offenses that do not involve physical violence or threats of violence. However, domestic violence laws generally place a disproportionate emphasis on physical violence and fail to recognize coercive control tactics such as intimidation, isolation, and control, which can be deeply harmful even when not physically violent. Many legal professionals still think of domestic violence as predominantly physical and fail to recognize a myriad of coercive control strategies such as financial and economic abuse, stalking, sexual coercion, psychological manipulation, and threats of violence.

There can be serious and prevalent consequences for abused parents and children when the family court system does not systematically evaluate for and attend to the full range of coercive control tactics. Failure to appropriately consider and evaluate for the presence of coercive control increases the likelihood that such tactics will persist after divorce, leading to continued victimization for children and parents, particularly mothers. Inappropriate or uninformed assessments of domestic violence can lead to a variety of negative consequences, including victim parents losing custody, children being exposed to coercive controlling parenting, and protracted exposure to post-separation abuse. Continued exposure to coercive controlling parenting and post-separation abuse can have devastating consequences for children. Separating a child from a secure and nurturing parent is similarly harmful. Certainly, these outcomes are adverse to the best interest of the child.

B. “High Conflict” Cases

Many parental separations resolve out of court. Those that stay in court and move towards litigation inherently involve some level of conflict. The most contentious of those are labeled high-conflict cases. That label alone can carry an implication that both parties are at fault for being involved in a conflict-ridden relationship. Unfortunately for victims of intimate partner abuse, the assumption of mutuality that accompanies the high-conflict label can be incredibly difficult to overcome, even when the conflict arises from a pattern of coercive control orchestrated by one party.

Data regarding high-conflict custody cases are limited. However, a history of domestic violence has been found to be present in a significant majority of high-conflict divorce cases. Some researchers have taken issue with the validity of the term “high-conflict divorce” due to a failure to distinguish high-conflict behavior from domestic violence. According to a judicial guide published by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the high-conflict label is often incorrectly assigned to cases involving intimate partner abuse. In contested child custody litigation, coercive control perpetrated by one parent is often misperceived as mutual parental conflict. Custody evaluators may fail to identify and document coercive control, and may label victims of abuse as “unfriendly” or “alienating.”

Another element of the coercive control abuse dynamic in contested custody cases is litigation abuse. Coercive control frequently persists beyond separation and divorce, and often manifests as excessively adversarial litigation that can cause psychological and financial harm even if the abuser is unsuccessful in court. Perpetrators can have rigid ideals about what the workings of post-divorce life should look like, subsuming the need for a constructive co-parenting relationship tailored to serve the best interest of the children. Coercive controlling perpetrators may attempt to maintain control over victims by demanding access to children. In fact, some research suggests that fathers who are domestic abusers may be more likely than non-domestically abusive fathers to seek sole custody of their children.

C. Parental Alienation

“Parental alienation” theory purports to explain contact resistance, contact refusal, or parental rejection exhibited by a child in the post-separation or divorce context. The term “parental alienation” originated from the widely discredited “Parental Alienation Syndrome” (PAS) theory coined by Richard Gardner, which was based on Gardner’s personal impressions from his own clinical practice. Gardner sought to establish PAS as a pathology exhibited by mothers attempting to use fabricated allegations of child sexual abuse as a means to win custody. The reliability and validity of Gardner’s PAS theory have been thoroughly debunked.

Despite a lack of scientific validation, PAS and its derivative, parental alienation theory, continue to influence custody litigation. Some argue that parental alienation can be separated from the debunked PAS. Importantly, this distinction is easily lost in practice as many in the legal system conflate PAS and parental alienation theory. Even if parental alienation could, in practice, be reliably distinguished from PAS, the evidence base for assessing parental alienation and parental alienation theory is debated. In particular, research on parental alienation theory does not distinguish cases of unjustified contact refusal from cases of contact refusal due to child abuse, seriously deficient parenting, or domestic violence. Nor is there any published research examining the effect of coercive control on contact refusal behaviors or parental alienation.

The absence of a credible evidence base—particularly the absence of a systematic method for identifying, considering, weighing, and distinguishing unjustified contact-refusal from the effects of abuse—means that the parental alienation label is inherently subjective and particularly poorly suited for practical application in family court. Abused and protective parents are far too vulnerable to being improperly labelled as alienators. In fact, research indicates that the concept of parental alienation is inappropriately applied to cases in which abuse and child maltreatment are present. This inappropriate application harms victims of child abuse and victims of domestic violence and their children, and leads to child custody outcomes that are not in the best interest of the child.

Notably, the American Psychiatric Association declined to include Parental Alienation Syndrome in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) due to insufficient scientific support. Furthermore, it is worth noting that some have a financial interest in bolstering the theory of parental alienation. Undeterred by a lack of sound scientific evidence, a cottage industry of reunification camps has capitalized on the popularity of the concept of parental alienation, charging thousands of dollars to allegedly deprogram children who have been alienated from a noncustodial parent.

Restrictive gatekeeping is another theory that seeks to describe one parent’s interference with the other parent’s relationship with their child-in-common. Again, in the context of domestic violence, particularly coercive control dynamics, a victim parent’s efforts to keep themselves and their child safe are too easily interpreted as gatekeeping behavior. Regardless of the term used to describe contact refusal and related behaviors, family law professionals must be keenly aware of the danger of mischaracterizing justified contact refusal as nefarious parental interference. This risk is compounded by the way trauma affects domestic violence victims, which is discussed in more detail in Part III.D below. Domestic violence victims rarely present with tidy, linear narratives that easily identify themselves as victims. Thus, family law professionals must always look for evidence of domestic violence when examining contact refusal and resistance behaviors.

D. Misuse of the Friendly Parent Factor and Shared Parenting Preference

Parental alienation claims made in child custody litigation are generally filtered through the friendly parent factor or policy preferences (either explicit or implicit) or presumptions for shared parenting. When an abused, protective parent discloses abuse by the other parent and seeks protection for the child, the protective parent can be classified as “unfriendly” in violation of the friendly parent doctrine. Victim parents “may be seen as undermining the other parent by even raising concerns about domestic violence.” This can have devastating effects for the victim parent, who may lose legal and physical custody as a result. Statutory or normative preferences for shared custody can drive a court’s expectation of “friendly” coparenting.

As one lawyer put it, “‘friendly parents’ are those who do not make allegations about the other parent. . . . ‘Unfriendly parents’ are those who make allegations. . . .” We would refine this assertion to say that so-called unfriendly parents include those who make abuse allegations; alienation allegations do not appear to be seen as unfriendly. Even if allegations of abuse are true, making those allegations can be considered unfriendly. Empirical research indicates that custody courts sometimes assign more weight to claims of parental alienation than substantiated instances of child or partner abuse. Moreover, it appears that gender plays a significant role in the success of alienation claims made in response to abuse allegations, favoring fathers over mothers.

Courts, lawyers, and other family law professionals may or may not use the phrase “parental alienation” when invoking friendly parent doctrine or shared parenting preference. However, the troubled concept of parental alienation is infused into friendly parent doctrine, which creates in one parent a legal responsibility for the child’s relationship with the other parent. While parental harmony is an admirable ideal, the law should not expect parents to be “friendly” towards a co-parent who has been abusing them or their children. Despite a lack of sound scientific basis for parental alienation theory, the concept and label continue to play an outsized role in custody litigation—through the friendly parent factor and the strong policy favoring shared parenting.

III. Focusing on the Evidence

The following is information family law professionals need to understand and bear in mind when dealing with highly contested custody matters. While not all of the science discussed in this section is new, much of it seems to be unknown, forgotten, or disregarded by those in positions to influence the outcomes of custody battles. By understanding the complexity of custody cases that involve coercive control, family court professionals will be able to practice more efficiently, reduce resource and time strains caused by a failure to identify the true source of conflict in a case, and improve decision-making accuracy and the welfare of children.

A. Co-Victimization of Children and Longitudinal Harm

Many children are exposed to domestic violence. Given that the presence of coercive control in the home is not situation-reliant or incident-specific, but is an ongoing and persistent dynamic, children who witness coercive control have been found to demonstrate trauma symptoms similar to children who are directly subjected to physical or sexual abuse. The web of abusive strategies is internalized by the victim and their children, resulting in constant elevated stress and hypervigilance.

One longitudinal study measured children’s exposure to coercive controlling domestic violence behaviors such as witnessing name calling or put-downs, threats of violence, or acts of physical violence. Higher frequencies of witnessing such violence resulted in greater levels of youth depression at multiple time points. Findings of this study highlight the ongoing nature of the ramifications of witnessing domestic violence, as child depression scores remained elevated even when there were reductions in the frequency with which they witnessed abuse. This study also highlighted gender differences among the child sample, with girls showing consistently higher depression symptoms than boys.

In addition to negative consequences of exposure to coercive control, children can also be harmed through direct engagement in coercive controlling tactics. For instance, using threats to kidnap or harm the children, or manipulating the children to repeat coercive controlling behaviors, can result in undermining the victim’s parental authority, prevent the victim from enacting protective strategies, and interfere with help-seeking.Moreover, coercive controlling strategies can also include constant derogation of the protective parent or deliberate creation of conflict between the non-abusive parent and child as a means to undermine the parent-child relationship and the victim’s parental authority. Children who are triangulated in coercive controlling dynamics can also feel personally responsible for mitigating violence perpetration. Studies examining child responses to witnessing or being involved in coercive controlling abuse highlight that children may engage in de-escalation behaviors and strategies to buffer coercive controlling tactics employed by the perpetrating parent.This kind of co-victimization, also known as secondary exposure or secondary victimization, is too often overlooked by family law professionals, who, on the whole, fail to reliably identify and adequately address coercive control tactics.

In addition to the harmful implications of witnessing and being involved in coercive controlling dynamics, perpetration of violence directed at a partner or ex-partner is a statistically significant predictor of child abuse. Parents who use coercive controlling violence against the other parent are also likely to use similar strategies with children. Moreover, coercive controlling behavior involving the children may increase upon separation or divorce, as the children may have increased unmediated contact with the perpetrating parent. Coercive controlling violence perpetration is also strongly associated with authoritarian or rigid parenting, which also has detrimental effects for children. Perpetrators of coercive control can view children as objects to be owned or controlled, and lack empathy or awareness about the child’s needs. As a result, perpetrators may use parenting approaches that prioritize obedience, hold rigid beliefs about children, and utilize harsh and verbally abusive disciplinary styles.

Children who experience coercive control are also at higher risk of internalizing poor relationship skills that harm their current or future relationships. For instance, exposure to domestic violence can contribute to sibling conflict and violence. Additionally, children who witness and experience coercive controlling violence are also at higher risk of becoming perpetrators or victims of domestic violence in adulthood. Given that children learn about how to engage in relationships by observing their caregivers, coercive controlling abuse, even when not aimed directly at a child, models and condones such behaviors for children.

Numerous studies have found that children are considerably aware of coercive control and negatively impacted emotionally, cognitively, and socially. Importantly, coercive control often continues after the relationship has ended. In those cases, separation and divorce do not halt the abuse; rather, upon separation, co-parenting arrangements for children may become the vehicle for the abuser to assert coercive control. As such, it is vital that family court professionals assess for coercive control and utilize approaches that seek to limit further exposure to such tactics.

B. Importance of a Protective Parent or Caretaker Parent

A critically important fact for family law professionals to bear in mind is that a child’s positive nurturing relationship with a non-abusive parent can mitigate and heal damaging consequences of traumatic stress experienced by the child as a result of domestic violence. In fact, a nurturing attachment with a non-abusive parent is profoundly important to the well-being of a child co-victim of domestic violence. Research shows that certain protective factors can help buffer toxic childhood stress, such as that caused by domestic violence. These protective factors can reduce or eliminate the harmful impacts of toxic childhood stress or “adverse childhood experiences.” Protective factors include nurturing and attachment between the child and at least one parental figure.

While maintaining a strong relationship with both parents is generally assumed to be a paragon of the best interest of the child, that assumption should not apply when one parent abuses the other parent. Such abuse is profoundly harmful to the child, as discussed in Part III.A above. When one parent abuses the other, the child needs protection from further abuse. Without that protection, the child is likely to continue to experience the harms explained above. Further, safe, stable, and nurturing relationships are vital for children’s healthy socioemotional development and may help to buffer against negative effects from exposure to risk factors like abuse. Thus, a child’s relationship with their non-abusive parent should be prioritized and protected so as to preserve access to this potential protective factor.

C. Gender Bias in Custody Litigation

Gender bias against women has been documented in various parts of the legal system. Women may suffer a “credibility discount,” particularly when relaying experiences of domestic violence. Expectations about behavior seem to play a central role in credibility assessments. For example, having a “pleasant” demeanor has been correlated to better custody outcomes and higher assessments of credibility for mothers. In custody litigation, mothers may be met with heightened skepticism when raising allegations of domestic violence or child abuse. In fact, a growing body of research indicates that mothers fare worse than fathers in child custody cases that involve cross allegations of abuse and alienation. Importantly, gender bias can compound with other biases, such as racial bias.

D. Truthfulness, Credibility & Trauma

Judges, custody evaluators, and GALs understandably place a great deal of emphasis on credibility in high-conflict cases. Often the parties present diametrically opposing pictures of the facts, and allegations of abuse may be met with skepticism, particularly when made by mothers. However, that skepticism is disproportionate to the true risk of false allegations of abuse. Data on child abuse allegations made in the context of parental separation indicate false reporting rates are relatively low, with noncustodial parents more likely to make false reports than custodial parents or children. It is critical that the legal system not overestimate rates of false reporting of abuse, particularly on the part of custodial parents and mothers.

Often, custody judges, GALs, and custody evaluators rely upon child welfare agency substantiation to determine the credibility of abuse claims. This approach is highly flawed because the child welfare system has a distinct purpose and operates on fundamentally different parameters than custody court. Substantiation by a child welfare agency is a preliminary procedural and policy-based threshold, and is often used for the purpose of service provision and determining whether to seek judicial intervention. In fact, unsubstantiated does not mean “untrue,” but, rather, that the agency was unable to obtain sufficient information to accurately determine the truth of an allegation. The process of substantiation involves some subjectivity, and the outcomes of this process do not necessarily predict future risk. Child welfare is generally siloed from the field of domestic violence. Many child welfare workers lack training and procedural guidance, and face additional barriers to investigating abuse claims that occur in the context of custody litigation. Substantiation by a child welfare agency is therefore not a reliable indicator of credibility of abuse claims in custody court, particularly in instances of coercive control.

Meanwhile, child welfare agencies often defer to custody courts and close investigations on the belief the court will determine the truth of any abuse. This mutual deferral can create a vacuous cycle in which welfare agencies close cases without investigation, while custody judges, evaluators, and GALs interpret a child welfare investigation that ends without a finding as an indication that abuse did not occur. The latter conclusion reflects an incorrect belief that substantiation is the validation of the truth of an allegation and unsubstantiation reflects a false allegation.

Custody judges, evaluators, and GALs are also highly susceptible to error when it comes to identifying whether claims of intimate partner violence are true. Typical criteria by which credibility is weighed, such as consistency, coherence, and stable emotionality, are in conflict with how domestic violence victims present abuse allegations. Trauma symptoms can be inappropriately viewed as signs of poor credibility. Given the cognitive and emotional consequences of domestic violence, victims may present allegations in a disjointed, inconsistent, and emotionally fraught manner. Domestic violence victims may appear angry, unstable, and highly anxious. As such, allegations can be discredited by court professionals lacking specific training in working with victims of domestic violence.

IV. Recommendations

Given the information discussed above, we propose that all legal professionals involved in high-conflict custody litigation implement corrective measures to ensure they are not advancing incorrect assumptions, specious science, or implicit bias to the detriment of children and families.

  1. Screen and evaluate for domestic violence, including coercive control. Recalling that coercive control has been found in 75% of so-called high-conflict divorces, it is vital to systematically screen for the presence of coercive control in cases that present as high-conflict. Given methodological challenges of assessing for coercive control, it may be necessary to use a multi-method approach, such as a combination of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Professionals in the field must be aware that coercive control tactics include a wide range of behaviors, and each abuser employs a unique combination and application of coercive control behaviors. Information used to assess for coercive control must be gathered through a variety of sources as methods.
  2. Understand how domestic violence affects victims. Given how common and devastating for children domestic violence is, family law professionals have a responsibility to stay informed on this important topic. Education about domestic violence, including coercive control, is a key part of basic competency for professionals who work on custody matters. In light of the research discussed above, it is important to remember that domestic violence victims commonly present with trauma symptoms that cause them to be perceived as less credible, even when telling the truth. Importantly, protective and defensive actions by victims are easily mistaken for vexatiousness, alienation, gatekeeping, and high-conflict behavior in a litigation and dispute resolution context. Terms like “alienation,” “gatekeeping,” and “high-conflict” are easily misapplied in custody conflicts by well-meaning professionals who use these terms without fully appreciating their complexity and narrow applicability.
  3. Prioritize addressing the harm of co-victimization. Professionals must prioritize child safety and minimize the harms that children experience as a result of domestic violence, including coercive control tactics. Children should be considered as co-victims, rather than witnesses or secondary victims of abuse. Child (and adult) exposure to coercive control does not end with divorce or separation. As discussed above, post-separation abuse—including litigation abuse—is common, and children suffer significant harm as a result of that abuse. Continued co-victimization from coercive control gives rise to serious cognitive, emotional, psychological, and social consequences that will affect children’s short- and long-term mental and physical development. These risk factors must be prioritized in custody decision-making. Custody arrangements that expose adult and child victims to coercive control tactics include joint custody, shared decision-making, frequent and/or unsupervised custody exchanges, and unrestricted contact between abuser and victim. Custody arrangements should be carefully designed with safety and child well-being in mind.
  4. Address bias. In light of the research discussed above, the court system still has a lot of work to do to address gender bias, as well as other forms of bias, and confront incorrect assumptions about domestic violence and coercive control. Family law professionals must actively work to identify and combat implicit biases to avoid bias-related errors. Specific education and training are available from organizations that identify and address gender bias in detecting and appraising credibility of domestic violence and coercive control, such as the Safe and Together Institute. Custody evaluators should utilize a systematic approach to hypothesis testing to ensure appropriate identification and appraisal of coercive control evidence.In addition, they should utilize rigorous, evidence-based approaches to investigate cross allegations of coercive control, parental alienation, and restrictive gatekeeping.

Conclusion

Custody conflict presents a significant challenge for family law professionals seeking to act in the best interest of each child who is the subject of a custody dispute. The most contentious cases, often labeled high-conflict cases, can be the most vexing. These cases often involve the highest stakes for children and families, and lawyers, judges, and custody evaluators are keenly aware of those stakes. Current approaches to custody conflict are failing domestic violence victims and their children in important ways. Though domestic violence is common in so-called high-conflict custody cases, many family law professionals are unable to accurately distinguish abuse, particularly coercive control, from mutual high-conflict behavior, and account for that abuse and its effects on children.

In particular, victims’ defensive and protective responses to abuse are too readily categorized as unfriendly, uncooperative, or hostile. Even when professionals recognize abuse, many fail to adequately respond to the realities of that abuse—including the risk to co-victim children, risk to adult victims, and challenging behavior from adult victims. The latter may be presumed to be evidence of parental alienation, when it may, in fact, be a result of trauma, self-protection, protection of a child, or frustration with a system that can be used by an abuser to further coercive control.

This article analyzes some of the pitfalls of existing child custody doctrine and practice that contribute to this problem and offers some critical context for professionals who are in a position to influence custody assessments and adjudications. While there are no easy answers in child custody conflicts, we offer some suggestions for family law professionals. These suggestions are intended to ground professionals in the evidence of each case and help them overcome incorrect assumptions, implicit bias, and questionable or overinterpreted science. By implementing the recommendations above, legal professionals will be better equipped to navigate these challenging cases and ultimately improve outcomes for children and families.

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