Citation

Kernic MA, Monary-Ernsdorff DJ, Koepsell JK, Holt VL. Violence Against Women 2005; 11(8): 991-1021.

Affiliation

University of Washington, Seattle, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1077801205278042

PMID

16043583

Abstract

Although most states mandate considerations of intimate partner violence (IPV) in child custody proceedings, little is known about how often a preexisting history of IPV is effectively presented to the courts in dissolution cases and, when it is, what effect it has on child custody and visitation outcomes. This retrospective cohort study examined the effects of a history of IPV, further categorized by whether substantiation of that history existed and whether the court handling the custody proceedings knew of that history, on child custody and visitation outcomes. The findings from this study highlight several issues of concern regarding the reality of child custody among families with a history of IPV. These include two primary concerns: a lack of identification of IPV even among cases with a documented, substantiated history, and a lack of strong protections being ordered even among cases in which a history of substantiated IPV is known to exist.

Language: en