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 research findings are distributed through peer-reviewed scholarship, presentations to lawmakers, judges, attorneys, and advocates, and direct engagement with policymakers at the state and federal level. 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.
Research that helps kids.
The Research Behind the Reform
Custody Evaluator Influence and Parental Alienation
These infographics are drawn from a landmark study funded by the National Institute of Justice and led by Joan S. Meier, Esq. of George Washington University Law School. The study analyzed over 4,300 published child custody cases involving allegations of abuse or parental alienation, making it one of the most comprehensive examinations of family court outcomes to date.
The findings reveal significant and consistent patterns in how courts respond to abuse allegations, how custody evaluators and other court-appointed experts influence outcomes, and how parental alienation cross-claims affect the likelihood that mothers' abuse claims will be believed. This research has been instrumental in shaping policy and legislative reforms aimed at improving how family courts handle domestic violence and child abuse.
Family Court Outcomes Study
Between 2015 and 2019, NFVLC Director Joan Meier led a federally-funded, five-year national study, Child Custody Outcomes in Cases Involving Abuse and Alienation Allegations (2019), that produced the first empirical data on family courts' national responses to abuse allegations. See the full study description below.
About the 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 consults on policy development at the state, national, and international levels, including on the recently issued UNSRVAW Custody Report, presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in June 2023.
Additional Research by Center Staff
Denial of Family Violence in Court: An Empirical Analysis and Path Forward for Family Law
The most comprehensive treatment of the Family Court Outcomes Study data to date, this article also examines why family law and legal scholarship have been slow to reckon with the systemic failure to address abuse in custody litigation.
Dangerous Liasons: A Domestic Violence Typology in Custody Litigation
This article examines a widely used typology of domestic violence and analyzes how it has been misapplied and distorted in the context of custody proceedings.
Domestic Violence, Child Custody, and Child Protection: Understanding Judicial Resistance and Imagining the Solutions
This article analyzes the structural and jurisdictional silos that cause child abuse to be overlooked in custody proceedings, and proposes an integrated approach to legal response.
Articles by Other Scholars
Abusers Gaining Custody in Family Courts: A Case Series of Overturned Decisions
Drawing on an analysis of appellate decisions, this article documents how family courts consistently underweight evidence of domestic violence in custody determinations.
When Coercive Control Continues to Harm Children: Post-Separation Fathering, Stalking and Domestic Violence
This article examines how abusive parents extend coercive control to their children following separation, drawing on post-separation fathering, stalking, and domestic violence research.
Child and Maternal Sabotage (CAMS) has been proposed as a more precise and accurate alternative to the term 'parental alienation' in cases where an abusive parent systematically undermines a child's relationship with the victim-parent. NFVLC filed an amicus brief in the D.C. Court of Appeals in a case illustrating this dynamic. Notably, courts in France have recently recognized CAMS in custody proceedings.
