SPARC Forums

My custody rights are awful, mostly due to the bad psych eval I got during my divorce 2 years ago.  I'm far from perfect, but this was a biased hack job.

Now, I'm in a much better place and would like to get a fair, unbiased evaluation of my fitness as a parent.

I have 2 big questions:
1) How do I identify a GOOD forensic psychologist (in Seattle)?
2) How can I be assured that they won't defend their colleague's findings out of professional loyalty, rather than doing an honest job?

Thanks.

You can't.  In my experience, it's a crap-shoot.  You can get a world of glowing reviews and ultimately find that even the "professionals" have their inherent biases and they are usually titled towards the mother, as they often are in every other aspect of high-conflict divorce and custody.

It's all about the interview process and one of the top few questions should be...

- How often have you made a recommendation that favor shared parenting (equal or close to it)?

- How often have you recommended in favor of mothers?

- How often have you recommended in favor of fathers?

The answers to those three questions will usually tell you where you stand, assuming they'll be honest with you about it.