Nancy Ross Bakker Lcsw

06/04/09

Bad Evaluator

by amwoolner

First of all, if you are trying to decide whether or not to hire Nancy Ross Bakker for an evaluation, DON'T! Like the previous reviewer, our experience was similarly negative.

DISORGANIZED - The client should never have to remind the Evaluator of appointment times; nor should the Evaluator set such a busy schedule that appointment times are mixed up or need to be rescheduled more than once. Both of these things occurred during our evaluation. It seemed as if things were left until the very last minute. She was preparing her report just days before we were scheduled to go to court.

BIASED TOWARD MOTHER - Up until the evaluation I (the father) had been the primary parent with physical custody of the children and mother lived more than 1200 miles away. Nancy Ross Bakker repeatedly emphasized what a great mother my ex-wife was and then casually and quickly brushed past my existence with an attitude of 'well, dad isn't bad'. Lies that mother told were chalked up as "misunderstandings" even though emails directly from mom said otherwise. But when it came to me, it wasn't a misunderstanding but rather that I had remembered it wrong or incorrectly. Nancy asked for 5 collateral references- Mother gave more than 5 (only a couple of which actually knew me) and Nancy spoke with all of them; I gave 5 as requested (all of whom knew both mother and me) and Nancy only spoke with some of them. Still don't know why that was.

UNTRUTHFUL - Nancy made false statements in her report wherein she cites remarks supposedly made by me that I never said at all. I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and excuse most of them as misunderstandings, but one in particular is an outright lie. My attorney checked with her to make sure it wasn't a simple misunderstanding or mistake. She says that I told her I had concerns about mar*juana (had to use an * because this site doesn't like this word) use. First, I didn't have concerns of mar*juana use so why would I pretend to; second, I like the person that I supposedly was accusing and think him to be of the most upstanding character, so why would I slander him? I never made any statements remotely close to what she claimed. I have no idea why she wouldn't check her notes more carefully.

The oddest thing of all that was the final recommendations were in my favor! How does an evaluator praise the mother, discredit the father and then recommend sole custody to that father? It was very obvious that she sympathized with the predicament the mother had placed herself in and yet knew she couldn't find in her favor. So she recommended as close to joint custody as she could to give mom a do-over. Very poor evaluation!

• Pros: friendly and courteous in person
• Cons: disorganized, unflinchingly biased for mother, untruthful