As part of an ongoing custody dispute between my wife and her ex, he continually threw anything and…read moreeverything he possibly could at us, to see what would stick, as well as try to exhaust us mentally, emotionally and financially. One of these tactics was to request a wholly unnecessary psychological evaluation of the child in question, despite there being no motivation or evidence that there was a need for such a thing.
But that's the thing about narcissists: it's not about anyone else but themselves, even for their own children. A talented psychologist should be able to spot such manipulative and self-serving behavior on their own, but *especially* when evidence is provided to them of previous incidents, some of them quite damning, and all of them documented. Lies, slander, subterfuge, all of it on paper, and presented during preliminary interviews.
Unfortunately, context and evidence apparently doesn't seem to matter here, and Dr. Jeff Lee has all of the personality and deductive reasoning of a flowchart. After a series of interviews with both parents, our son (my step son), and myself, and several thousand unnecessarily spent dollars later, the final determination in the report is that both households are healthy, safe and loving, finding neither of them in favor of the other.
Sounds great, right? At the very least, not terrible.
Here's the rub: despite our son being wholly in the custody of his mother for the five years since his birth; despite the fact that she has 90% of visitation time; despite the fact that he has two half-brothers that he has lived with his entire life; and despite the fact that *I* have spent more time as a father figure to him than his birth father, this "neutral" determination came with a recommendation for 50/50 custody, because...
...get this...
...his father's school district is rated slightly higher than ours.
So Dr. Lee recommends that our son's entire life be uprooted, gutted and turned on its head, despite him being healthy, happy and functioning, within a complete family unit? In what way is this good for the health and well-being of a developing child? Not only was all the evidence of his birth father's conniving and manipulation ignored wholesale, he failed in every possible way, to do the very minimum, and using his intellect, training and reasoning to comprehend that maybe, *just maybe*, if nothing is broke in the child's life, stop trying to fix it. Show your work. Prove that something needs to be changed *for the child*, not the manipulative narcissist who just wants to get his way.
Instead, Dr. Lee simply checked the boxes, followed the outline, and produced the most feeble, milquetoast, ineffectual report imaginable. And this is not an isolated incident; our attorney has discovered that, on at least one other occasion, Dr. Lee's reports have been challenged and thrown out of court; an expensive endeavor, but something we may consider going forward with in the future.
If you want someone to root out the truth, and provide honest evaluation with a learned and critical eye that prioritizes the well-being of children involved in custody disputes, look elsewhere.