Parental gatekeeping refers to parents’ attitudes and actions that serve to affect the quality of the other parent's relationship and involvement with the child. It captures a common statutory best interest factor that often becomes the center of child custody disputes, especially in relocation cases. Gatekeeping research is reviewed for its relevance to family court and child custody evaluation. Divorce conflict and litigation is expected to be associated with negative, restrictive gatekeeping. A conceptual framework for gatekeeping is presented for child custody evaluation. Scholars have proposed a gatekeeping continuum varying from very restrictive to very facilitative in coparenting attitudes and actions. Research allows for a general prediction of potential harm to the child when there is substantial restrictive gatekeeping. The concept of social capital is proposed as an efficient explanation of the “gatekeeping effect” on children of divorce. Evaluators are cautioned not to confuse restrictive gatekeeping attitudes and behaviors. Restrictive/negative attitudes are normative among custody litigants. Children's adjustment will be affected more by the level and quality of parental involvement than by parental gatekeeping attitudes. Evaluators are encouraged to identify specific gate‐closing and gate‐opening behaviors in a gatekeeping assessment. Implications for crafting parenting plans are discussed. Keypoints Gatekeeping varies along continuum from facilitative to restrictive gatekeeping. Maternal gatekeeping attitudes influence father's involvement and affects child adjustment. Restrictive gatekeeping fosters parental conflict. It is important to distinguish between restrictive gatekeeping attitudes and behaviors.

An emerging forensic service is that of conducting a work product review of a court-appointed child custody evaluator's evaluation and report. If the reviewer determines there are serious deficiencies in the work product, then the reviewer will provide consultation to the retaining attorney and expert testimony. The reviewer usually is in a hybrid role of consulting/advising the retaining attorney, testifying, and educating the court. Ethical issues in providing forensic services and rebuttal testimony as a reviewer are discussed. Both reviewers and evaluators have a duty to be objective and balanced in their analyses of data and issues. Both types of experts should strive to be helpful to the court and try to serve the best interests of children. Ethical nuances involving review work are discussed. Evaluator and reviewer share the same dataset. Evaluators need to take care to keep a high quality case record with legible interview notes. Reviewers provide a monitoring function for the court or a function of forensic quality control so the court will not be misled by expert testimony of evaluators that is based on flawed data collection and/or analysis. A list of questions is presented for reviewers to use in scrutinizing the quality of the custody evaluation. A list of questions is presented for examining the quality of the reviewer's own work product. The importance of a case analysis and use of conceptual frameworks by evaluators and reviewers is discussed.

Courts determining the best interests of children in custody disputes frequently request help from mental health experts. This article addresses the three expert services typically provided to the court (evaluator, reviewer, and instructor) as well as the trial consultation services offered to attorneys for the parties. After noting recent developments in scientific methodology and processes that evaluators use to inform and instruct the court, we examine the work product review and consultation services that have emerged to help the court understand the scientific relevance and reliability of the evaluator's work product. But reviewers, instructional experts, and consultants are retained by attorneys, not the court. Ethical reviewers and consultants remain objective and loyal to the data and facts of the case. While others have suggested ethical and professional standards based upon "role'' designations, we advocate for recognizing the overlapping nature of these four services and argue that reducing these services to their "role'' obfuscates the complexity and multiple facets within each service. Establishing best practices and minimum standards should revolve around the expert's loyalty to the data, the ability to develop opinions based upon this factual basis, and the ability to resist pressures that bias or distort this process.

This article has three primary objectives: 1) to examine what the authors believe are some important psycholegal and ethical considerations for work product reviews of a child custody evaluation; 2) to make suggestions to custody evaluators and retained reviewers to incorporate the concept of “helpfulness to the court” as a fundamental, guiding principle; and 3) to offer some suggestions about how and why a custody evaluator might derive some positive value from a competent and ethical review of his or her work product. The role of a reviewer of the work product of the court's appointed child custody evaluator is becoming more common in custody litigation. The functions and ethics of this evolving role are discussed. The inherent tension between a retained reviewer's obligation to provide ethical and helpful testimony to the court, while in the role of a retained expert, is examined. The psychological perspectives of both evaluator and reviewer are presented. This article discusses the commonly held, but erroneous, belief that a psychologist (as a retained reviewer) has an ethical duty to discuss his/her concerns with the psychologist whose work was reviewed. The legal and ethical reasons why the APA ethics code (2002) does not apply to review work are presented.

This study explored psychologists' procedures for administering, scoring, and interpreting the MMPI-2 and MCMI-III in forensic cases. A national sample of 137 forensic psychologists responded to an online survey that focused on their use of the MMPI-2 and MCMI-III. The survey results reaffirmed some troubling practices found in a past study with child custody evaluator, such as lack of verification of data entry, inadequate knowledge of significance cutoffs, and over-reliance on computer-generated interpretive reports. Each of these may significantly impact the accuracy of scoring and/or interpretation. Implications for forensic practice are discussed.

An Internet survey was conducted to examine the views of mental health and legal professionals about parental alienation (PA) in child custody cases. Findings from 448 respondents revealed much awareness about the PA concept and controversies, along with the need for further research in the field. In general, respondents were cautious and conservative/moderate in their view of PA and very reluctant to support the concept of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). Also, they did not view PAS as meeting admissibility standards. Respondents viewed domestic violence (DV) as an important issue to assess, although they did not usually find/suspect DV in such cases. Further, respondents varied according to professional role (evaluators, trial attorneys/judges, and court facilitators) on the relative importance attributed to various assessment factors. Moreover, evaluators' assessment procedures and the frequency of recommended interventions by trial attorneys/judges and evaluators closely paralleled those typically used in child custody cases. Results are compared to past literature in the field, with hopes of clarifying misconceptions.

ABSTRACT A survey of psychologists (N = 89) was conducted examine issues regarding test selection, usage rates, and Daubert admissibility in child custody evaluations. Findings revealed that respondents used selection criteria commonly cited in the forensic literature. They viewed the major purposes of testing as ruling out psychopathology and assessing personality functioning. Interestingly, less emphasis was placed on generating and testing hypotheses. In general, a limited number of tests and inventories were endorsed as meeting the Dauber standard. Implications for practice are addressed, particularly strategies for defending child custody testing practices against Daubert challenges.

This study provides normative data on the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (MCMI-III) among 259 child custody examinees who were obtained from private practice settings in four different states. The mean MCMI-III profile in this sample was an elevation on Scale Y (Desirability), with subclinical elevations on Scales 4 (Histrionic), 5 (Narcissistic), and 7 (Compulsive). Females scored significantly higher than males on Scales 4,5, and 7. Moreover, mean Base Rate (BR) scores were very low for most scales. With the exception of Scales 4 and 7 for females, the frequency of clinically significant elevations (i.e., BR > 75) on MCMI-III scales was very low among child custody litigants. Results from this study provide empirical support for the position that the MCMI-III does not overpathologize child custody examinees. Some interpretive guidelines are offered to reduce the likelihood of false positive diagnoses on those few scales where such errors may arise. This study provides support for continued use of the MCMI-III in child custody evaluations.