Individuals and their attorneys often experience the intersection of Family Court and Psychological/Counseling Services as unwieldy and unpredictable. This is due to the various mental health professionals involved, petitions made, allegations lodged, and evaluations conducted, all with life-altering parent-child relationship consequences.
The Men’s Resource Center’s Director and co-founder, Randy Flood, has provided psychological, coaching, and consultative services for clients, attorneys, and the courts since 1992. He and his cohort of counselors and therapists help parents and families translate and understand the language, the protocol, and the process of Family Court. Additionally, Randy’s specialized knowledge, well-crafted skills and services, and reputation among the psychological and legal community have established him as a valuable resource for attorneys and the courts. Collectively, our team continues to build upon that work.
Whether you’re a parent trying to navigate the difficult terrain of the Family Court system or an attorney working to achieve just results for your client, contact the Men’s Resource Center online or call us at (616) 456-1178 for more information or to set up your first session.
Highly Recommend His Services
In the family law context, I have personally worked with Randy in two capacities: first, as a consultant; and second, as an expert witness. Randy is a great listener, thinker, and communicator, and I highly recommend his services.
Providing Expertise and Experience
We don’t want to see parents in Family Court because of a divorce or separation. But, if divorce or separation is your reality, you want to make sure you do what’s best. Often, when children are involved, the situation becomes more complicated. Ideally, each parent loves their children and themselves more than winning, or being right, or feeling vindicated. Sometimes though, in the midst of a divorce or separation, what’s best for the children can be overshadowed by their parents’ needs.
Even if you feel as if you’re in a good space, Family Court can be intimidating, angering, mysterious, and confusing especially when you’re the one trying to navigate the system. The stress can throw idealism out the window. There are so many landmines to step on when trying to navigate the system, including encounters with a myriad of mental health and legal professionals.
Rather than walking through uncharted territory alone, where “do-overs” aren’t allowed and major decisions are made from an accumulation of data points and trends, it’s better to reach out to people who know how the system works. At the Men’s Resource Center, we can provide expertise and experience to help guide you through one of the most difficult times in your life.
Coached Me through a Contentious Divorce
I hired Randy Flood to coach me through a contentious divorce. My wife had been alienating our children from me and restricting access to them while simultaneously hurling unfounded accusations against me. Randy helped me work my way through each of these accusations in a professional way that allowed me to disprove her accusations while still maintaining my privacy and maturity. He gave me new tools to communicate with the courts and the professionals I would be working with. He coordinated with my attorney to present a united front and solid evidence to the friend of the court that allowed me to be reunited with our children. I could never have done it as well, as quickly, or as effectively without Randy.
Family Court Coaching
It’s hard to know what to expect if you’re taking part in custody and parenting time evaluations, parent-child reunification counseling, parent coordination, and/or parenting fitness evaluations. Randy Flood and his colleague Zach Flood focus on helping you understand the process, protocols, and dynamics involved. And, they’ll talk you through what you might expect in an evaluation or reunification counseling.
Few of us know how we might respond in a situation that could affect our long-term loving relationship with our children. Randy has observed countless individuals make key missteps out of emotion or naivete while participating in court-related evaluation and counseling services. And he has seen the unfortunate consequences of those missteps in how they impact the outcomes in those individual cases. His keen insight into the most common traps and pitfalls individuals run into while in Family Court serve as cautionary tales.
For instance, parents might think it’s good to say or do X, Y, Z when actually A, B, C is required in that situation and X, Y, Z at another time. Or they undermine their own self-advocacy and the best interests of their children when heightened emotions from experiencing legitimate injustices hijack their ability to communicate clearly and assertively. With the right coaching, parents can better avoid these types of situations.
This doesn’t mean that Family Court coaching can change the facts of a case. But it can help in how you present and respond to the facts of your case, as well as how you respond to allegations that are baseless or exaggerations of fact. You want to be certain you represent yourself in the best light possible always attuned to your next right step.
At the Men’s Resource Center, we offer experience, expertise, and specialized knowledge of the Family Court and mental health systems including:
- Resist and Refuse Dynamics in Parent-Child Contact Problems
- Domestic Violence
- Parental Alienation
- Differentiating Parent-Child Estrangement caused by abuse/neglect from Parental Alienation Dynamics
- Parenting Fitness and Mental Health Problems
- Gender Biases in Family Court
- Understanding Targeted/Rejected Parents in Parental Alienation
For more information about Family Court Coaching you can contact the Men’s Resource Center online or call us at (616) 456-1178. We also offer an online Parental Alienation Support Group so you can receive input from our counselors and other parents. If you’re ready to schedule an appointment for coaching, you can do so online at Family Court Coaching for Parents.
Custody Evaluation
Recently, Mr. Flood was involved in a custody evaluation. Mr. Flood was given a very short amount of time to work through this situation to give a proper evaluation. On the record, Judge Thomas publicly praised the quality of Mr. Flood’s report regarding thoroughness and even handedness. Because of the time limitations and in order to have the document completed by the time of the hearing, Mr. Flood was required to participate in functions that he normally would not. Of most significance, of course, is that ultimately the (family’s) children were placed in the situation that was undoubtedly best for them.
Family Court Consultation
As an attorney, you do your best to get a just outcome for the people you represent. By leveraging the specialized knowledge, well-crafted skills, and services of Randy Flood, Zach Flood, and their colleagues at the Men’s Resource Center you can gain the advantage you need to more successfully navigate evaluations, mediation, and litigation in Family Court.
Randy’s expertise is accumulated over many years of providing an array of forensic psychological services. These include hundreds of child custody and parenting time evaluations, psychological evaluations, and domestic violence and parental alienation evaluations for the family and circuit courts. His experience as a forensic evaluator, along with providing Parent Coordination, Parent-Child Reunification Counseling, and Counseling for Parents and Children enables him to integrate this knowledge to offer expert insight, guidance, and opinions to attorneys, judges, and potential litigants involved in Family Court proceedings.
An associate evaluator, Zach works closely with Randy providing direct forensic evaluative, counseling, and coaching services, including co-parenting counseling and parenting fitness evaluations.
Working with Experts
It’s good to have confidence that you’re working with someone who is recognized for expertise in their field of practice. Randy is respected for his work providing Family Court services including trainings for legal and mental health professionals. He has been qualified as an expert in several Michigan courts for:
- Custody and Parenting Time Evaluations
- Resist and Refuse Dynamics in Parent-Child Contact Problems
- Parental Alienation
- Domestic Violence
- Parenting Fitness
- Sexual Acting Out
Randy can be called upon to serve as a non-testifying or testifying expert consultant depending on the situation. Working in these capacities he:
- Conducts product and service reviews (evaluating the work, protocols, ethics, and judgment of other professionals involved in their case)
- Provides expert advice on case management and strategy involved in mediation and litigation
- Helps compose direct and cross-examination questions of witnesses and experts
- Functions as a Custody and Parenting Time Trial Consultant
- Provides expert testimony to educate the court on psychological and family dynamics as well as what are appropriate specialized counseling and evaluation services for complex family issues before the court.
Contact the Men’s Resource Center online or call us at (616) 456-1178, if you’d like to learn more about these and other services. To schedule an appointment online visit Family Court Professional Services.
Comprehensive Psychological Report
I wanted to let you know that I appreciated the comprehensive psychological report filed with the court. Your efforts and the report prepared for my review have placed this case in a posture where, for the first time, the parties are made aware of an impartial view of their situation by an objective examiner. This has presented a framework for the beginning of a resolution of the many problems being experienced by the parties. Hopefully, the biggest beneficiary of your results will be the (family’s) children.
Family Court Expert Testimony
Judges often hear expert testimony from advocates or professionals with expertise in one area. This leads to their suspecting confirmation bias, thus putting little weight into the expert’s opinion. Randy Flood understands Family Court dynamics and is known both for his opinion not being for hire—only his time—and for expertise in sometimes competing ideologies such as domestic violence vs. parental alienation.
It is erroneous (and can prove detrimental) to assume that judges inherently know about these unique issues and specialized services. When they don’t, their opinions and judgments are compromised. And so, too, can be parental access, the improvement of parent-child relationships, or co-parenting alliance. Randy helps judges understand appropriate evaluation and counseling protocols when working with divorcing families as well as insidious parental alienation or domestic violence dynamics. At times, he provides expert testimony—education to the court—on salient issues impacting a case without knowing specifics about the family involved in litigation.
Randy knows how sometimes evidence (i.e., children refusing parenting time with an alleged bad parent or an act of aggression) can have face validity and provide the courts with good data but other times the data can be specious and misleading to the more enduring truth of what is going on in an individual, a relationship, or family. It’s in these types of cases where he can assist attorneys in understanding and explaining complex psychological and family systems theories, divorce and co-parenting dynamics, and parent-child contact problems due to alienation or abuse. He can also speak to the appropriation of evaluation and counseling services. This allows attorneys to better represent their clients and judges to better understand the situation.
When judges have good and reliable information, they are more likely to have good and reliable opinions, rulings, and judgments. In this way, cases can be processed and managed appropriately rather than the court system creating and perpetuating myths and problems.
Thorough and Spot On
Mr. Randy Flood prepared a custody evaluation for one of my clients. This evaluation was extensive, thorough and spot on. Because I represented that particular client for the following 14 years, I received the opportunity to evaluate Mr. Flood’s predictions and insights, and Mr. Flood’s insights and predictions were proven to be remarkably accurate. Since 2002, I have referred many of my clients to Mr. Flood and the Men’s Resource Center. Mr. Flood’s reports are not always appreciated by all of my clients, but Mr. Flood’s expert opinions are to be reckoned with and widely accepted by judges and other attorneys. I highly recommend Mr. Flood.
Family Court Evaluation and Counseling Services
- Custody and Parenting-time Evaluations: Psychological testing, collateral data, and assessment interviews are carefully used to determine the best interests of the children related to child custody and parenting time factors.
- Parenting Fitness Evaluations and Risk Assessments: Psychological testing, collateral data, and assessment interviews are carefully used to determine the parenting fitness of an individual when allegations of mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence, sexual acting out, child abuse, etc., are lodged in the context of custody and parenting-time disputes. Risk levels in co-parenting and parenting domains are explained in proper scope, context, and typology.
- Parent-Child Contact Problem Evaluations: Resist/Refuse Dynamics (RRDs) are complicated for courts to understand and manage during high-conflict divorce. These evaluations assess RRDs on a spectrum to determine the causes by exploring multiple hypotheses. For example, on the spectrum, are the children displaying RRDs due to estrangement dynamics from abuse, neglect, and parental unfitness or from parental alienation dynamics due to specious allegations and unwarranted reasons. Recommendations are made to address and resolve the actual reasons for the RRDs.
- Parenting Coordination and Co-parenting Counseling: The best predictor of children’s adjustment to divorce is a positive co-parenting relationship. Unresolved and chronic co-parenting conflict not only stresses children, it stresses parents and costs significant money in litigation. This is a specialized service for divorced parents who are experiencing unhealthy co-parenting conflict. You will learn new co-parenting skills, how to better communicate, resolve conflict, and get help on decisions you can’t agree upon.
- Parent-Child Reunification Counseling: When parent-child contact problems persist over time, children will display entrenched resist and refuse dynamics (RRDs). This counseling addresses the parent-child relationship by focusing on the whole family system including the children, favored and rejected parents, and influential step-parents.
- Non-Testifying Expert Consultant: Assists in working with attorneys and litigants in the background to assess and discern strategy when working with co-parents, children, and various professionals within the Family Court and Mental Health Systems.
- Testifying Consultant: Provides the court a better understanding of complex family dynamics, such as RRDs from estrangement versus parental alienation, and proper forensic evaluation and counseling protocols so that court orders can more effectively forward the best interests of children in their parent-child relationships.
Contact the Men’s Resource Center online or call us at (616) 456-1178 for more information about Family Court Coaching and Family Court Professional Services.
The Man Has Integrity
As an attorney who litigates complex divorce cases involving parental alienation and other mental health issues around the country, I have found Randy Flood to be a consummate professional. Parental alienation is complicated for courts to understand and manage during high-conflict divorce. Randy’s unique background in domestic violence, abuse and estrangement cases makes him a good candidate to skillfully evaluate and treat cases involving parental alienation and/or abuse. More importantly, the man has integrity and does not fear to speak his truth. That’s what sets him apart.