Psychological consultations for family court are unique, because the psychologist is ethically required to represent the best interests of the children, whether asked to provide consultation and assessment services by either parent, an agency (such as DYFS), or by the court. Most often, psychologists are asked to provide custody and/or visitation evaluations (now called parenting time evaluations), to determine what custody arrangement is best for the children. This may also include an assessment of risk factors relating to potential abuse. Psychologists also provide many other services for family court:

• Psychologists mediate custody and visitation issues between parents;
• Psychologists provide services as a Parent Coordinator to assist families post-divorce;
• Psychologists assess parent-child conflict areas and propose remediation plans;
• Psychologists supervise visitation when a parent has an emotional or substance abuse problem;
• Psychologists evaluate the potential risk to a child when a parent has emotional or substance abuse problems;
• Psychologists assess the impact of the grandparent relationship, and determine the appropriateness of grandparent visitation when the parents object;
• Psychologists screen potential foster parents and/or adoptive parents;
• Psychologists complete domestic violence evaluations;
• Psychologists assess the potential impact of termination of parental rights; and
• Psychologists provide psychotherapy and counseling, parent-child family counseling, parenting skills training, therapeutic supervised visitation, anger management, divorce adjustment counseling for children and/or adults, and parental communication skills training to family members as indicated.

Follow these links for more information about these services: 

• Child Custody Evaluations
• Visitation Risk Assessment
• Grandparent Visitation
• Parental Mediation
• Child Abuse Evaluations
• Termination of Parental Rights
• Adoption Readiness Evaluatuions
• Psychotherapy and Counseling for Family court issues

Psychologists also provide evaluation and consulting services for family court matters that overlap with criminal court. Included are child abuse investigations leading to criminal charges, domestic violence evaluations, assessment and counseling of individuals who violate restraining orders, juvenile waiver evaluations, evaluating the credibility of child witnesses, evaluations of juveniles accused of criminal acts, juvenile pre-sentencing evaluations, juvenile probation evaluations, and counseling juveniles on probation . These psychological consulting services are described in the Criminal Court section of this website.

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Donald J. Franklin, Ph.D. is a NJ licensed psychologist (#2244)
providing Forensic Psychology services for Family, Civil and Criminal court cases.
My offices are located in Bridgewater, Flemington, Princeton and East Brunswick, NJ.
Please call about psychological evaluations and testing, consultations and court testimony:
Bridgewater - (908) 526-8111   ***   Flemington - (908) 806-7344
Please Note: I do not provide online counseling or consultations
copyright, 1999 - 2010 all rights reserved