Family Courts and Child Custody

Decades of work by the domestic violence (DV) field have resulted in improvements in the family court system’s capacity to handle cases involving DV. However, survivors still too often lose custody to abusive partners, and in other cases, survivors may have primary custody but an abusive partner is awarded substantial visitation or parenting time. In these cases, children are placed in the full- or part-time care of someone who has used violence in their presence, despite the documented long-term traumatic effects on children of witnessing violence in the home.