Tips On How To Select The Right Therapist In Serious Custody Cases
I have been asked repeatedly what is meant by “qualified” when selecting a therapist to deal with issues related to contentious custody situations. Too often much valuable time is wasted on counselors who have no experience dealing with the ramifications of custodial interference, parental alienating behaviors and repeated false allegations. Too many people just look at the words “family counseling” and don’t go the extra interview step to discover what experience the counselor has in custody issues and whether the person has even been qualified to testify in court. Often the random selection of therapists does more harm than good and the client finds himself back at square one after the therapist finally admits the situation is outside his/her abilities and expertise.
Now that DSM-5 has finally included these behaviors, the effect on the parent-child relationship and the devastating psychological effects on the children, it is extremely important to select well skilled and qualified therapists. This means the first “list” should be comprised of those psychologists and psychiatrists who have experience with these serious custody issues. Attorneys have a “list” of those psychologists whose expertise and qualifications make … Read More... “Custody Issues: Finding a “Qualified” Therapist”
In recent years there has been a steady and alarming increase in the use of false allegations of vague, unsupported claims of domestic violence and even vaguer claims of child abuse, used solely in an attempt to find a shortcut to a presumed better position in custody cases. What is more alarming is the observation that more often than not the attorneys of record for the litigants making these claims have been those unschooled in and relatively new to the family law arena, who have chosen to step outside their actual specialty and add a minor “division” of family law to their practices. Often, a new, young, unskilled associate is added to the practice to handle these family law issues.
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It is important that family law attorneys remain aware of the patterns of behavior found in cases involving possible parental alienation and pay heed to ongoing complaints by clients experiencing even the early stages of alienating behavior. Early in a custody case it can be very apparent that one parent is extremely angry, bitter or feels betrayed, by both the other parent and by expectations of the “system”. Having to share custody may only intensify the anger due to having to continue the relationship with a person they despise. Then a campaign begins to align the children to his or her side and together with the children work to destroy any viable relationship with the target parent.