ABSTRACT
While the majority of clinicians might never want to have anything to do with the legal system, I believe that working ing in the area of divorce and custody litigation can in fact be one of the most exciting and gratifying professional experiences that one can have. After more than twenty-five years of conducting custody evaluations, I still find this work to be extraordinarily fascinating, complex, and stimulating. It is an arena that taps into and expands many of the clinician's natural interests and skills and can be filled with intellectual and emotional challenges. Each time an evaluation begins, the clinician is confronted with an unfolding drama in which multitudes of variables are operating. Not only do the parents and the children have major roles in what is taking place but the personalities, proclivities, and belief systems of the attorneys and caseworkers are also often just as critical to the final outcome of a case. And, each time, it is the clinician's task to understand the wide range of forces at play in the family, both internal and external, and to make sense of all the available information. No matter how many similarities and themes we can recognize from one case to the next, each divorcing family is unique. As such, each one also deepens our understanding of what parents and children are experiencing in this most stressful of life situations.
