Citation

Austin WG. Fam. Court Rev. 2001; 39(4): 483-496.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.174-1617.2001.tb00627.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

How to integrate the problem of partner violence into a child custody evaluation is analyzed within a risk-assessment approach. The research literature on partner violence is reviewed to examine the issues of establishing a base rate for partner violence and its relative frequencies for both genders. Theoretical typologies of partner violence are reviewed and a new typology presented that is more suitable to the predictive task in the custody evaluation. A model of how the evaluator should approach partner violence is described, with an integration of a risk-assessment approach to child developmental outcomes as associated with custody and parenting time arrangements and a violence risk assessment of a perpetrator/parent.