Abstract
There are important and longstanding controversies in the field regarding what principles or models ought to be used to decide custody. The best interest of the child (BIC) is the predominate legal standard across states. However, state law often does not define this construct thoroughly and there is considerable variation across states. Mental health professionals also have published vague guidelines and do not show uniformity regarding how to conduct custody evaluations. The reliability and validity of custody evaluations are unknown at this time, and this is a very disturbing state of affairs. This chapter also reviews common assessment practices used by mental health professionals when conducting a custody evaluation.
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Tolle, L.W., O’Donohue, W.T. (2012). Past and Current State of the Field. In: Improving the Quality of Child Custody Evaluations. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3405-4_2
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