Barter, Baseball, and the Only Psychologist in Sixty Miles
Dr. Nadia Osei is the only licensed psychologist within 60 miles of a western Kansas town of 2,400. The district court asks her to perform a custody evaluation in Miller v. Miller for a $2,800 fee. Her son plays on the same baseball team as the Miller boy; the father has serviced her truck for years; the mother cuts her hair. The Millers have no insurance coverage for the evaluation, and the father proposes to pay by doing $2,800 of repair work on her truck and giving her a lien until the work is complete. The family's attorney then asks her to also take the boy into therapy so that she can 'testify as the treating therapist as well as the evaluator.' Dr. Osei has no forensic training, has never completed a custody evaluation, and knows that a forensic evaluator in the next county now offers telehealth evaluations.
1. Analyze the multiple relationships and recommend whether Dr. Osei should accept the appointment.
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This is a textbook rural multiple-relationship problem. APA 3.05 does not ban multiple relationships; it bans relationships that could reasonably be expected to impair objectivity or to risk exploitation or harm. Here the connections are numerous, foreseeable, and directly material: her son's teammate, her mechanic, her hairdresser, and a fee dispute in a town where everyone will know the outcome. A custody evaluation is the wrong place to test those limits, because the evaluator's neutrality is the product the court is buying. Standard 3.05(c) recognizes that unusual circumstances, particularly in small communities, can justify a multiple relationship with informed consent and a plan, but the availability analysis undercuts that defense here: the evaluator in the next county offers telehealth, so the 'no one else will do it' argument is weak. She should disclose every relationship to both attorneys and the court, and decline unless the court, on the record and after full disclosure, still wants her.
2. Evaluate the proposed barter arrangement and lien.
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Decline it. APA 6.05 permits barter only when it is not clinically contraindicated and not exploitative; a custody evaluation fails that test. The barter partner is the father - a party whose parenting and credibility are being evaluated - so accepting $2,800 of his labor creates a debtor-creditor relationship in which he is simultaneously litigant and creditor. The lien makes it worse: she would hold a security interest in a vehicle belonging to a party. Fee arrangements in forensic work are also scrutinized on cross-examination, and a barter deal is hard to document and easy to attack. The proper course is a written fee policy, a retainer paid by the parties or the court, and referral to the court's fee-allocation process if the family cannot pay. If she cannot be paid in a defensible way, she should decline and let the court appoint someone who can.
3. How should she respond to the request to serve as both therapist and evaluator?
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Decline. Treating therapist and custody evaluator are incompatible roles. Therapy requires alliance and advocacy for the client's goals; evaluation requires neutrality, multiple data sources, and interviews with both parents. APA 3.05 and the Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychology direct psychologists to avoid conflicts that could impair objectivity, and Kansas courts expect an independent opinion rather than a therapist's brief. If she treated the boy and then testified, cross-examination would center on the dual role, and the therapy itself would be compromised because his disclosures would be used in the litigation. The clean structure is one clinician treating and a different evaluator evaluating, with no sharing of therapy material absent proper authorization. If she prefers the treatment role, she should say so now and help the family locate an evaluator.