As legal advocates and lawyers, we may work with survivors whose abusers use their mental health history to discredit them as parents in custody cases. Working with survivors to build on their parenting strengths can reduce the chances that tactics that rely on mental health stigma will be successful. This document offers three practice scenarios in which a legal advocate or lawyer can use trauma-informed strategies to build on a survivor’s parenting strengths while a custody case is pending.
In each scenario, we will examine (1) which factors the court might consider important to deciding custody, (2) how knowledge of trauma, mental health, and domestic violence can help us understand what might be happening from the survivor’s perspective, and (3) how to use trauma-informed strategies to help survivors build on their strengths in areas that are relevant to the court’s decision.