Guest editors' introduction to the 2023 special issue on parenting plan evaluations

• Published date: 01 October 2023
• Author: Philip M. Stahl,Robert A. Simon,Kathleen McNamara
• Date: 01 October 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12757

INTRODUCTION

Guest editors' introduction to the 2023 special

issue on parenting plan evaluations

Philip M. Stahl

1

|Robert A. Simon

2

|Kathleen McNamara

3

1

San Diego, California, USA

2

Strategic Asset Management Group, Inc., San Diego, California, USA

3

Fort Collins, Colorado, USA

Correspondence

Philip M. Stahl, 10451 4S Commons Drive, # 166-543, San Diego, CA 92127, USA.

Email: philipstahlphd@gmail.com,

KEYWORDS: child custody evaluation, family forensic evaluation, parenting plan evaluation

We are honored to be the special issue editors of this October 2023 Family Court Review publication, and it has been

our privilege to work with the contributors to prepare this special issue. This is the 71st Special Issue of the journal,

with more on the way. AFCC has been at the forefront of scholarship regarding parenting plan evaluations, formerly

known as child custody evaluations, since the early 1990s. AFCC published their first Model Standards for the Practice

of Child Custody Evaluation in 1994, and their first Child Custody Evaluation Symposium was held that same year.

The first special issue on child custody evaluations was published in 2000, when the journal was known as Family

and Conciliation Courts Review. In 2005, there was a symposium issue of Family Court Review focusing on the issue of

custody evaluators and the basis for them to make recommendations. The Model Standards was revised in 2006, and

in 2012, the AFCC Guidelines for Brief Focused Assessments was published. The new and current AFCC Guidelines for

Parenting Plan Evaluations in Family Law Cases was approved in 2022, and this special issue follows. Along with this,

Family Court Review has published a multitude of articles over the decades related to parenting plan evaluations,

focusing on a wide array of issues, including complex issues such as relocation, domestic violence, and parent–child

contact problems. Family Court Review (FCR) has published articles about the use of psychological testing in parenting

plan evaluations, observations with parents and children, child development, and so on. The list is exhaustive and

comprehensive, and the scholarship demonstrated in the pages of FCR is world class. In the earlier years, while par-

enting plan evaluations were in their infancy, there was a need to guide practitioners in how to conduct evaluations

and learn about the above mentioned challenging topics. Now that the field is in its adulthood, there is a need to

consider where we are and how to move the field forward. In considering what content would be useful to readers

in this current special issue, and what topics would help move the field forward, we approached this special issue

with this 30-year history in mind, and a desire to address the critical issues of our times with an eye toward the

future. Our hope is that this special issue will provide guidance that will be helpful to the field over the next 10 years.

We hope you, the readers, find this approach a smart one.

With AFCC's recently revised Guidelines for Parenting Plan Evaluation, we are changing the language in the

articles to be consistent with those guidelines. Whereas in the past, evaluations were consistently referred to as

DOI: 10.1111/fcre.12757

© 2023 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts.

Family Court Rev. 2023;61:687–690. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fcre 687