Allegations of abuse are common in contested custody cases.  There are often questions about whether the allegations are trumped up to gain an advantage in a divorce proceeding.  While this undoubtedly occurs in some cases, we must also understand that denials of abuse may also be falsely insisted upon.  Domestic Violence is a very difficult dynamic to assess and the "evidence" we seek for corroboration (i.e. police reports, hospital records) usually doesn't exist.  To further complicate matters, violence in a relationship is not a "one size fits all", and recent research (Kelly, J & Johnson, M, 2008) shows that there are four distinct patterns of intimate partner violence.  Coercive-controlling violence, the type that has most often been associated with domestic violence, is more of a dynamic in a relationship than an event and, because of this, the correct identification of this and other types of violence is extremely difficult to determine, substantiate and defend by professionals without expertise in this area.