Research, Scholarship, and Public Education
The Center’s core mission is to provide pioneering, evidence-based analyses that support urgently needed reforms in the nation’s family courts.
The Center’s and affiliated professionals’ powerful new research findings are regularly distributed in print, online, and through in-person or virtual presentations to lawmakers, judges, attorneys, advocates, and other professionals. The Center also brings scholars and policy professionals together to ensure these populations are informed of the new findings, and to discuss their implications for scholarship, policy, and system-reform work – in particular, the compelling need to create an integrated legal response to adult and child maltreatment.
Family Court Outcomes Study
Between 2015 and 2019, our Director led a team in a federally-funded five-year national study, “Child Custody Outcomes in Cases Involving Abuse and Alienation Allegations” (2019) (“Family Court Outcomes Study”) that produced the first empirical data measuring national trends in family courts’ responses to abuse allegations. It is also the first research study to assess courts’ responses to child abuse as well as intimate partner violence claims. This new data proves quantitatively what many experts and survivors have reported anecdotally, that family courts adjudicating custody and access are failing to take seriously reports of a parent’s dangerousness, frequently reject mothers’ and children’s reports of domestic abuse, and award custody to alleged – and known - abusers at surprising rates.
About the Child Custody Family Court Outcomes Study
Experts in the field of family violence know that the best predictor of future violence is past violence, yet family courts continue to make child endangering custody decisions.
Between 2015 and 2019, the NFVLC Director led a team in a federally-funded five-year national study, “Child Custody Outcomes in Cases Involving Abuse and Alienation Allegations” (2019) (“Family Court Outcomes Study”) that produced the first empirical data measuring national trends in family courts’ responses to abuse allegations. It is also the first research study to assess courts’ responses to child abuse as well as intimate partner violence claims. This new data proves quantitatively what many experts and survivors have reported anecdotally, that family courts adjudicating custody and access are failing to take seriously reports of a parent’s dangerousness, frequently reject mothers’ and children’s reports of domestic abuse, and award custody to alleged – and known - abusers at surprising rates.
NFVLC leadership regularly presents at national and international conferences and events, and provides trainings for professionals, to raise awareness about the systemic problems in family courts. We consult on state, national, and international policy development, including on the recently issued UNSRVAW Custody Report, presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in June 2023.
Additional Research and Scholarly Articles
Denial of Family Violence in Court: An Empirical Analysis and Path Forward for Family Law
The most recent and comprehensive article containing the FCO study's data, as well as extensive qualitative discussions of why and how family law and the family law academy have missed the boat when it comes to abuse in custody litigation.
Dangerous Liasons: A Domestic Violence Typology in Custody Litigation
This article is about a common typology of domestic violence and how it is over-used and distorted in custody cases.
Domestic Violence, Child Custody, and Child Protection: Understanding Judicial Resistance and Imagining the Solutions
This article discusses how and why silos between the child welfare legal system and custody courts result in child abuse being ignored, especially by custody courts.
Abusers Gaining Custody in Family Courts: A Case Series of Over Turned Decisions
This article describes how family courts give too little weight to domestic violence in custody cases, drawing on an informal survey of appellate cases.
Articles by Other Scholars
When Coercive Control Continues to Harm Children: Post-Separation Fathering, Stalking and Domestic Violence
Cutting-edge research documenting how coercively controlling abusers continue to harm children and their mothers after the parties separate
Abusers Gaining Custody in Family Courts
An important article documenting the harms to children whose abuse was disbelieved by a court, the factors that contributed to the erroneous decision, and the factors that contributed to the children's belated protection.