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Analyzing Child Custody Reports

By Jeffrey P. Wittmann, David A. Martindale and Timothy M. Tippins
August 02, 2014

This is the third installment of a four-part series offering a model for attorneys to use when faced with the task of analyzing a custody assessment. Trial preparation requires that a thorough dissection of the forensic work-product be done to determine how to counsel the parent-litigant about the next step in his or her case. A small body of literature has developed that suggests some of the areas most important to consider when analyzing a child custody report, including articles by Austin, Kirkpatrick, & Flens, (2011, Family Court Review), and by Gould, Kirkpatrick, Austin, & Martindale (2004, J Child Custody.

More recently, the Custody Assessment Analysis System, or CAAS, provided a comprehensive system for the pre-trial analysis of CCEs by attorneys (Wittmann, 2013, MatLaw Corp.). The inspection of an evaluator's report, focusing on the factors outlined below, produces a “red-flag” analysis; that is, a catalog of threats to reliability that compromise the usefulness of a particular evaluation. The ways in which an assessment may be sturdy and unlikely to yield under attack can also be determined through attention to the assets or strengths of a particular child custody evaluation (CCE).

The CAAS model suggests four broad lenses for such an analysis, lenses that give structure to our four installments: Management of Professional Relationships, Data Adequacy, Technique Adequacy, and Reasoning Adequacy. The third of these dimensions (technique adequacy) is the focus of this installment.

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