Dr. Perlmutter conducted an evaluation of my now 28-year-old daughter's father's visition request 20 years ago. He really called it right! My "ex" totally lost interest when I agreed to set. his ongoing child support at zero. He did not, however, accurately describe his relationship with me,, but aside from my bruised ego, that wasn't consequential. The only thing that has ever come up by my daughter about what Dr. P. made a tolerable process was his very concerned look when she said her favorite movie was The Nightmare Before Christmas! He appeared to confuse the name with an indicator of night terrors or something! My daughter brought that up at a social gathering a few years ago as a laugh and mentioned it to me recently when she saw a book written by a different Perlmutter, thinking it was the same Dr. Perlmutter. We both hope that by now he's seen Nightmare and at least found out what it is and who is its creator! Funny cartoon movie; anything but scary! read more

As a result of this man's decisions within the court system my childhood was genuinely destroyed. If I could give zero stars, I would. I could not recommend this man less if you care an iota about your child's welfare. It has taken over a decade plus to recover from said childhood. I'm still recovering. Save your children from the same outcome and do not use this man's services. read more

I wish that we had the option of selecting. no "stars" on Yelp. Many years have passed since our lives intersected with this horrible man, and I want to share more details about our experience, however, I am finding it very difficult to write this because of the resulting (& lasting) trauma that is a direct result of Perlmutters ("P") abuse. I can say that what others have written about P was true for us as well. Sadly, we chose P. I hope to be able to share more in the future. Here is something to add: A different psychologist we worked with, knew about P already, but by the time I found out, it too late to do much about it. I shared P's report with our psychologist who was angered by it, but not surprised. Of course, he did not agree with it! I will add that while I didn't know it at the time we started working with him, our psychologist, had been not only an evaluator but a special master in his career. His credentials are superior to P's (we all know that now, don't we?). Please, please, please save yourself, your children & whatever semblance of regard (& co-parenting) may remain between parents/family, from the damage that will be caused by P. The high cost/loss of money is significant but other losses are greater, and more important! ----- I read what P wrote in response to a review. Why would anyone want to have anything to do with him ever again? As if he would even listen. He would argue with you, humiliate you -- if you could even get a word or two in! read more

A wonky tower of arrogance. Let's just say I love my kids enough never to take them back there! If you're Bob & Jane Cornfed with daughter Alice Cornfed, this doctor will probably do fine for you, but if, like me, you share neither national origin nor current neighborhood with him, it might be a good idea to consider more open-minded alternatives.. The impetuousness with which he repeated incessantly during our interviews that he had done "over 500" custody evaluations and therefore was not to be questioned was a caricature of itself. His booming voice telling me that I was wrong when I mentioned a passage from a standard guide for performing custody evaluations (he was mistaken - I went home & read the text again) was as unforgettable as his made-up "quoting from the dictionary"... well - it was not my OED he quoted from. Recognizing that English is my second language, a pot-shot not to be missed, I should add that my command of the language is not bad. My SAT and ACT scores were high enough that I was a National Merit Scholarship finalist, and I have continued to write articles and translations throughout my adult life. When (anglo) mom told him that our daughter was planned, he wrote down just that. When my wife & I (both hispanic) told him that our son was planned, he reported that our son was unplanned. You know how we Latins have babies!... The clincher: a year earlier, my daughter had reported some very disturbing abuse by mom. My partner at the time had seen this, and made a report to CPS about it. My daugther's attorney (appointed by the court and paid by mom) took that file from the San Francisco city attorney's office, according to that office, and withheld it from me so it could not be presented during the evaluation. On our closing meeting, Perlmutter told me that I "had better stop inquiring about the abuse, or your custody could be affected." read more

If you are ordered into a Child Custody Evaluation, it's important that you are aware: 1. You have the right to reject the evaluator if you do not agree to terms of their evaluation contract. Pay particular attention to Dr. Perlmutter's fees. 2. You can find a mutually agreeable evaluator who is professional and unbiased. 3. You have the right to make an audio recording of the evaluation. If you do contract Dr. Perlmutter to perform an evaluation, I recommend that you record every second of your time with him, and keep a complete record of all evidence you submit to him in any form. You will likely find that he will produce a very long and dense report that may be quite selective in what it considers. If you attempt to challenge any of the facts, focus, or conclusions of the report you will have to pay Dr Perlmutter's fees of $400 per hour, for his preparatory, travel, and testimony time. While in court you may find he will not make factual and professional statements that defend the welfare of children, but instead avoid addressing the questions, insert delay and obfuscate issues. It seems reasonable to me that an evaluator who is confident that he is doing the right thing for the welfare of children would confidently and effectively explain the facts and logic behind his evaluation. I do not believe that is how Dr. Perlmutter operates. I believe he attempts to prolong the Child Custody process and have the court order more evaluations he can profit from. If you would like to spare your family years of court proceedings, and tens of thousands of dollars, I suggest you look for someone who is not Dr. Perlmutter. read more

Looks like I'm not the only one who believes this (Doctor) is in the wrong practice. My family was subjected to his condescending arrogance 30 years ago and the bitter experience has left a piercing mark on our family ever since. We were assigned to this man through an equally twisted woman, Gwen Mallory, from San Mateo County Family Court Services during divorce proceedings to evaluate parental behaviors and family dynamics. He met with and interviewed 6-7 of us and the only thing we all agreed on at the time was the fact he was cold, callous, out of line and had no clue what any of us were really trying to say. He misread our replies and personalities and made errant recommendations to the court that led to even further family dysfunction, including escalated drug abuse and alcoholism. In this wondrous Bay Area full of intelligent and competent analysts and counselors, why are people subjected to this mans abuse? If you have a choice at ALL and can see any other analyst, do it!!! read more

Read all the negative reviews. I found the negative reviews to be an accurate description of our experience with Dr. Ken Perlmutter. My ex refused to continue court ordered co-parenting therapy sessions with Dr. Ken after a few in person meetings due to ineffectiveness and her questioning of his competency. Dr. Ken Perlmutter would spend 60%+ of the therapy time discussing his own credentials and his "process". This occurred during every single session. His "process" left only 10-15 minutes in each session to discuss and resolve any co-parenting issues, which resulted in Zero resolutions to any issues. We tried Dr. P a second time. Same results. The Dr. refused to review his own notes, and was calling my ex repeatedly by the wrong name during the second session. When you can't remember or care enough to learn your clients names... If you have other options in counseling or therapy, strongly consider them. read more

Dr. Perlmutter should be avoided at all costs to you and your children! My youngest child will turn 18 this week so now I'll finally be free of his complete lack of compassion and professional ability to help families in crisis heal. My husband wanted out of the marriage, we developed a parenting plan that we both agreed to and were sent to Dr. Perlmutter to mediate some of the few points we had not yet resolved. We didn't hate each other upon entering his office, but we certainly left his office with a new loathing for each other. His questioning of how we had come to our agreement proved that he was committed to having us accept HIS very unreasonable and unworkable policies for our children, who were only 3 and 5 years old at the time. Here is just one example -- as parents we agreed to dividing Christmas like this: one year I would have the children through Christmas Eve until 8 PM, I'd then take them to their father's house, and he'd have them through New Year's Eve. The next year we would reverse this schedule. Dr. Perlmutter wouldn't have it. He insisted that we exchange the children at noon on Christmas. What did this accomplish? That every Christmas the kids woke up in one parent's home, we had to rush to open presents and eat our holiday meal, then pack them up and drive to the other parent's home who then had to re-create Christmas that afternoon at their home. I'm a religious person. I wanted to attend services on Christmas Eve with my children after we had opened presents every other year. Their dad had agreed, but not Dr. Perlmutter. Why on earth would he object to what we had already agreed to and thought was best for our children? This is just one of dozens of ways in which he fanned the flames of discord in our divorce and parenting plan. And if I ever meet him in person again I will tell him to his face that I've never met a less compassionate person! He is paid to allegedly ensure that childrens' interests come first, rather he is allowed a forum for infinite malice and for bloating his own ego. Beg your attorneys to never send you or your worst enemy to Ken Perlmutter in Palo Alto! read more

When I first encountered Ken Perlmutter, my kids and I had already endured five years of post-divorce trauma. I could not imagine that he was as inept and unprofessional as his reputation indicated, but he proved even worse. Best interests of the children? Although he met briefly with mine, he refused to listen to them, insisted on telling them what they felt and thought, and managed to cause them significant amount of distress with veiled threats. My children are over 18 now, but the scars remain. If your goal in hiring Ken is to achieve some stability for your children, please be aware that he does not appear to share your objectives. He seems far more concerned with having his ego stroked and, incidentally, extracting as much money as possible along the way. Read your agreement with him carefully: you may be signing over your bank account. If your goal in hiring Ken is to get revenge on your ex-spouse, there is no guarantee he will side with you. He has been known to recommend that custody be given to parents who are physically abusive, alcoholic/substance abusers, or otherwise unfit as primary caretakers. I was fortunate to retain primary custody of my children, but when you entrust your family to Ken, you're rolling the dice. The only certainty is that it will cost you a lot of money. Given the number of complaints about him, I'm surprised the state board hasn't revoked his license. read more

It's VERY unfortunate the families and children's lives this man has probably wrecked with his hubris and arrogance. I waited until my child was over 18 to write this review. Perlmutter was assigned by family court to conduct an evaluation for determining child custody. In sort, our child did not want to be with his mother and the court wanted to find out why. At the age of 8 our child had become withdrawn and when interviewed said plainly the preference to live only with Dad. Perlmutter could not explain why and assumed it was parental alienation. Perlmutter chose to ignore evidence of abuse. 3 years later CPS pulled my child from Mom, and another evaluation from a more competent evaluator proved child abuse in concurrence with the County investigators. "Dr" Ken Perlmutter is so blinded by his own superior intellect and knowledge he's dealing with two immature bickering parents, it's his duty to sober you up into a responsible parent. My opinion is this guy enjoys exercising power extended to him by the court he appears to enjoy wielding over divorcing parents who are vulnerable and dealing with high levels of anxiety in a difficult process. The more I write the more angry I get remembering the $18K we were forced to pay Perlmutter in fees and charged for his services. Perlmutter teaches seminars to other therapists for how to monetize child custody evaluations in their practices. read more

Read this and prepare accordingly! Roisin N. provided an excellent review that I won't repeat here, but you should read it! Avoid doing a court ordered evaluation with him, pick someone else! Realize that all the lawyers know Perlmutter, and use his name as a veiled threat to encourage negotiation. His name is not about what is best for the children, or for your case, it is about production of a report that will be definitive in court. If you must continue, do what I did not, and hire an evaluator to prep, DO NOT go to the office unprepared! Expect Dr. Perlmutter to decide the evaluation outcome withing 5 minutes of the initial meeting, and spending the remaining time simply looking for things to document to support his initial bias, and make his report difficult to challenge. Expect Dr. Perlmutter to interrupt your origination's by applying rigid control to the session, and reminding you of his process. This method is super effective at disrupting you and placing Permutter in control of the content of the conversation. The net effect will likely leave you off balance, and feeling uncomfortable of when to add your information to the conversation. Expect Dr. Perlmutter to attempt to build trust. Expect positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and gaslighting. Be aware of any compliment, or non-verbal body language expressed. IMHO these are being used to manipulate you to a state where he can lead you to a statement or conclusion that he wishes to write down. You might say that I'm being overly harsh, but I walked into this with an open mind, and that I had nothing to hide. Surely a professional with his experience would see the relevant details of my case. I was sadly mistaken, and in-appropriately prepared. Now my child has to pay dearly for my mistake. read more

No star for this one. I wouldn't recommend. He is part of the family court mushroom industry. There is no oversight or supervision when it comes to reviewing his work. He would be very good working for tabloid industry. Family court has been dysfunctional. It needs to be reformed. His intention is not to help the family or children. So much permanent damage has been done having him do recommendation. I agree. He recommended child to be with abuser. It was so obvious. My grown daughter who was damaged from his evaluation and recommendation he made to the family court is working to repair emotional and psychological damage inflicted on her. I would try to settle family court case without using this evaluator. Do research on family court reform. It has been making some progress but we are not there yet. https://nationalparentsorganization.org/blog/6685-f-f-introduces-5th Don't go to an evaluator just because he/she was recommended by the court. Those people get paid for the referrals. They all talk to each other and they are friends. Good luck. Love your children and protect them from family court corruption. Best wishes, Mother who regret going through this evaluation process. read more

When you're looking for child custody evaluators, the choices are limited. I was told, before encountering Perlmutter, that the courts love him because he is consistent. I can believe that is the case, as he told me what he intended to include in his final report within fifteen minutes of my first meeting him, before he had talked to any of the children. Consistency may be his only positive attribute. Perlmutter does not listen. He ignores the input of teens because he knows better what they want than they do. At one point in my evaluation, he threw a tantrum. Apparently this is not a rare event, as I have friends who had a similar experience. If he were an ordinary clinical psychologist, he would probably not have any clients. If you have been assigned to his practice, best of luck to you. If you have a choice to go elsewhere, I encourage you to keep looking. read more

I had to pay him $28,000 for a child custody evaluation for a case that already had a custody trial and a final judicial determination, and where there was a subsequent allegation of emotional abuse. By his own admission in court, he did not know what the trial outcome was, he did not know the current legal custody, and he did not know what emotional abuse was. He did not make any attempt to resolve anything, and just wrote a temporary order for 6 months, saying that we would have to go back for an update at that time. When the court notified him that I was required to get an update from him, he replied that he was refusing because his "neutrality and objectivity" had been compromised. I had to file a complaint against him to the State Board for his negligent and incompetent conduct. His testimony is no longer accepted in the Santa Cruz court. read more

Listen to the reviews - wish that I had. I was hesitant to use him for custody mediation because of his reviews but my lawyer reassured me he was a strong& firm mediator which we needed because my children's father has a history of being abusive & a bully. This was a huge mistake. Not only is he incompetent - my son is Autistic and Perlmutter knew alarmingly little about ASD though he knew that was my son's diagnosis and readily agreed to take our case. He also knows nothing about trauma victims as he forced me into meeting with my ex jointly even though he knew my ex sexually abused me & I told him how difficult it is for me to be in the same room w/ him. He told me that if I didn't meet with my ex jointly than he would have no other choice than to recommend a full custody evaluation for our family. I felt I had no other choice as I didn't want to put my children through that. After 2 excruciatingly stressful sessions w/my ex where Perlmutter spent the majority of the time lecturing and touting his beliefs and barely attempting to mediate, he still recommended a Custody Evaluation & charged us $20K. Beware! read more

Dr Perlmutter is a specialist (and expert) in high-conflict child custody situations. This is an inherently difficult task, and many parties involved in it will inevitably feel aggrieved or cheated. Parties involved in it will also have strong and perhaps distorted views of others... Their frustrations will be magnified by legal issues and confidentiality rules. The thoughtful reader will see the comments here as reflecting the challenges of this occupation, and perhaps also reflecting the personal characteristics that got the commenters into high conflict child custody disputes. In my case, after years of argument and litigation over the terms of two previous agreements, Dr Perlmutter wrote an unambiguous, crystal-clear, comprehensive parenting document which functioned smoothly, with no issues, for six years (until it was no longer needed). He brought order to four people's lives previously caught up in confusion and malicious disruption. read more

If I could rate Dr. Kenneth Perlmutter with negative stars I would. I don't need to reiterate all the negative reviews of him which I agree with. Rather, if you are seriously thinking of using him and you would like some hard concrete evidence of why you shouldn't, then contact me, let's meet in person, and I'll show you his despicable report and point out every complete lie in it and back it up with concrete proof. I very much regret not reading his well deserved horrible reviews before I was tricked into using him. My error on not doing my homework beforehand. Text only for the initial contact: 650-346-7344 read more

I share the concerns expressed by the previous reviewers. I filed a complaint against Dr. Perlumtter with the Ca liscensing board. He is biased and unethical, failing to follow even hisown written billing procedures. If you need a child custody evaluation, choose another provider. read more

Years ago, our family used Dr. Perlmutter for mediation. As we moved through our sessions, I was surprised to see Dr P.miss a fair amount of manipulative behavior & dishonesty in one of the 3 adults, (which came out later through an evaluator). His skills of observation were limited & therefore, his analysis was weak I noticed this only as we moved along. Towards the end, I decided against having Dr Perlmutter make decisions for my children's custody arrangements. Dr P was arrogant & insisted on supplying a letter to the attorneys. He was angry he did not get chosen. read more

Dr Permutter gets great reviews from people he works and collaborates with - who profit from our decision to get out of harmful demeaning relationships. How is it that all of us were credible parents until the California Bar Association approved attorneys and their "partners in profits" claim we are NOT during a divorce? I thought that years of supporting my kids, providing for their physical, emotional and spiritual needs was meaningful. It had no value during my divorce and in Mr. Permutter's office. I became an untrustworthy "career builder" and "disinterested parent." This guy loves control like all weak people do. Not only will one of you be forced to defend there rights as a parents but as I was told by my attorney you must pretend he is an "expert" and make him feel like he's the "alpha male" to have a chance! He plays favorites and if you display confidence or believe that you are a worthy parent he will not be honest or fare to you. Sorry but he is no expert when it comes to normal people. He lacks good judgement and is easily played by belly aching, bitter emotional people. Unlike the other co-parenting counselors Perlmutter will not follow the laws regarding equality in custody. He will make plans for you to earn your time with your own child and may, like in my case, make plans in your absence for an evaluation with the support of one parent. this gut promotes strife, tension and heartache because he is no stranger to it as a parent. If you use Perlmutter it may be your biggest mistake. Dr. Perlmutter has numerous complains and the others do not for a reason. If I was savvy enough to do research about the people profiting from the divorce industry I would have NEVER stepped foot into Perlmutter's office. Always remember all of those in this industry live and survive by collaborating with each other - don't trust any of them do your own research and save yourself a lot of heartache, money, time and stress. If Perlmutter was not a part of the "divorce industry" he would be unable to make a living. Also be careful when reading these reviews. Remember most of these reviews are promotional in nature written by "colleagues" who also gain from your heartache. read more

I had a very good experience with Dr. Perlmutter in June 2010. Dr. Perlmutter was jointly appointed through family services court by my ex wife and I to perform a limited evaluation of our custody and visitation schedule and other matters of conflict between us relating to our children. His report was discoverable by the court as we had both agreed to this stipulation and he had discretion to broaden the scope of evaluation if he thought it was necessary. After six years of combined separation and divorce without a written holiday or detail custody agreement and as a result of our mutual dislike for and mistrust of one another, our co-parenting had become filled with conflict which was affecting our children and adding chaos and stress to our separate lives. I filed for court ordered mediation which led to private evaluation but had a lot of fears about the process expanding beyond our "schedule" mandate, potentially even leading to loss of equal custody of my children. Dr. Permutter correctly diagnosed the situation as being one where the children were doing well except for their parents conflict and that the conflict was increased by the flaws in our written custody agreement and hap hazardly followed holiday schedule. He wrote an unemotional and balanced assessment of the situation and provided recommendations based entirely on unambiguous observations from interviewing both of us and both of our children twice (once in each parents presence). He then wrote a suggested custody and visitation schedule that has no ambiguity, fairly affects both parents, is age appropriate for the children and is consistent with their wishes based on his discussions alone with them. Given the power to expand the evaluation at his discretion and thereby increase his fees, he chose a far more limited approach, cut short the he said/she said drama and then produced a solution that is eminently fair for both of us and has eliminated 90% of the conflict in our co parenting. I found him to be a dedicated professional with the highest regard for maintaining nuetrality and following professional, ethical and legal guidelines. I didn't get everything I wanted and neither did my former spouse but Dr. Perlmutter was very fair and what he suggested has worked thus far wonderfully. If you want someone in this situation who will focus on facts rather than heresay, will be objective rather than biased and will strictly follow professional and legal guidelines in their highest spirit, I would strongly recommend Dr. Perlmutter and am profoundly grateful for the excellent work he did for us and for my children. read more