Dr. Liz Stilwell: Inside a Collaborative Custody Evaluation

When a child pulls away from one parent, the instinct is to look for who caused it. Dr. Liz Stilwell starts somewhere less satisfying and more useful: the whole family system, and what it is actually doing to that child.

Dr. Liz Stilwell is a licensed psychologist in New York and New Jersey who specializes in forensic psychology as it relates to family court. She has more than a decade of clinical experience with children and families, which she brings into her custody evaluations, risk assessments, and treatment. She practices with West Essex Psychology, and this is one of her first long-form interviews.

In this conversation, Dr. Stilwell walks Lisa through the roles families are often confused by: the custody evaluator, the guardian ad litem, and the attorney for the child, and what a psychologist specifically adds. She explains structural family therapy, a decades-old method the psychologist Salvador Minuchin pioneered, which maps a family's boundaries and asks whether they still serve the child, and why she insists on involving the entire family system rather than a single parent-child pair.

They also cover the parts that hurt: how a divorce changes a child's world no matter how carefully parents try to shield them, why children so often take the path of least resistance instead of voicing a preference, and how a parent can separate their own feelings from their child's. Dr. Stilwell is careful and precise about the difficult questions, what the research actually supports on abuse allegations and alienation defenses, and how she thinks about reunification camps versus therapy, and she closes with what to ask before you trust any professional to evaluate your family.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• What a custody evaluator does, and how the role differs from a GAL or attorney for the child
• What structural family therapy is, and why it treats boundaries as the problem to fix
• Why a good evaluator involves the whole family system, not just one parent and child
• When a therapist should refer allegations back to evaluation before treating a family
• Why children often take the "path of least resistance" instead of stating what they want
• How to hold your own feelings when your child sides with the other parent
• What the research actually says about abuse allegations and alienation "muddying the waters"
• What to ask before you trust an evaluator with your family

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Meeting Dr. Liz Stilwell, forensic psychologist
3:00 Custody evaluator vs GAL vs attorney for the child
7:00 Structural family therapy: "a boundaries approach on steroids"
9:00 Why the whole family system has to be involved
11:00 Allegations of alienation, and when to refer back to evaluation
13:00 How a divorce changes a child's world, even when you shield them
15:00 Why a child takes the "path of least resistance"
17:00 When your child sides with the other parent, and not taking it personally
21:00 Abuse allegations, alienation defenses, and what the research really says
27:00 Reunification camps vs therapy, and choosing the right evaluator

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.