Total Credits: 1 including 1 American Psychological Association, 1 Association of Social Worker Boards, 1 National Board of Certified Counselors, 1 State Bar of California
The first study to ever assess custody case outcomes across the U.S., the 2019 Custody Outcomes in Cases Involving Abuse and Alienation Allegations study was federally funded by the National Institute of Justice. It gathered electronically published court opinions from across the country during a ten-year period, and coded which parties alleged abuse or alienation, what judges believed, and what judges did regarding custody. Cases were broken down by types of abuse alleged and whether parental alienation was claimed. Findings regarding courts' skepticism of abuse allegations by mothers, the power of alienation cross-claims, and gender bias will be reported.
After this training, participants will be able to:
1. Explain how the Meier study findings were obtained.
2. Describe trends in family court responses to mothers' and children's allegations of abuse and crossclaims of alienation.
3. Explain how gender bias manifests in family court cases involving abuse and alienation.
| Article Handout: U.S. child custody outcomes in cases involving parental alienation and abuse allegations: what do the data show? By Joan S. Meier (1.3 MB) | Available after Purchase | ||
| Handout: CHILD CUSTODY OUTCOMES Inforgraph (192.5 KB) | Available after Purchase | ||
| PowerPoint Handout (665.3 KB) | Available after Purchase | ||
Joan Meier, Esq. is the founding director of the National Family Violence Law Center and the NFVLC Professor of Clinical Law at George Washington University Law School. She has been teaching, litigating, researching and educating professionals nationally and internationally for over 30 years. While directing the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project (DV LEAP) from 2003-2019, she litigated numerous appeals in the U.S. Supreme Court and state appeals courts. Her team’s 2019 federally-funded empirical study is the first-ever national study quantifying family court responses to abuse and alienation claims.