My husband's niece has not seen her two daughters for over five years now and I went through the whole family court process with her. The complete process was a debacle to say the least. I witnessed her abuse by her husband, I heard him tell her "don't even think of leaving me because I will take the kids and you
will never see them again. I can and will do it". She has 3 daughters (the eldest from a previous relationship) and is the legal foster guardian of her nephew. She was diagnosed with NPD by "one" court expert who went on to make recommendations that all the children be removed from her care. Her two daughters were placed in her ex's care, her eldest remained with her and the DCS, as it was known then, investigated the allegations thoroughly. DCS found that there was absolutely no evidence of NPD or any other of the allegations made in her ex's statements or the court experts report. The court counsellors went one
step further to express concerns for the children after they had been in their fathers care for a while and their made recommendations that supported the report from DCS and went further to make recommendations that went against the court expert. The court experts response the two reports was scathing (how dare she be found wrong she was the expert...smacks of narcissism to me.) I paid for my niece to see an independent psychiatrist but was unable to afford a report for the court; however the psychiatrist supported the DCS Psychologists findings...no evidence of NPD. The court upheld the expert's recommendations and made orders for the family to attend counselling. My niece attended with her eldest daughter and her nephew (who remained in her care). The ex repeatedly refused to present the two girls in his care to counselling session, to court ordered access visits with their mother and refused telephone access; the court consistently ignored the fact that he was continuously in contempt of court. The ex eventually took the girls to Queensland, left them with his father and returned to WA. My niece was unable to fight any further the whole process from start to finish took two years and she was refused legal aid because of the court experts report. She represented her self every step of the way.

Just a bit more on this court expert...my brother-in-law (father of niece) is profoundly deaf and has been since birth. He rarely uses sign language because he has two missing fingers on his right hand. My sister & brother-in-law were also psychologically assessed by the "court expert" because of sexual abuse allegations levelled at them by my nieces ex husband. After the session my sister and brother-in-law were having a conversation in the car park (they have been married for 40 years) and the court expert was having a cigarette on the balcony one floor up and was watching. Her report stated that my bother-in-law was not hearing impaired, he had pretended to be to avoid answering questions. She supported this opinion by saying she had witnessed the couple talking in the car park. My sister-in-law had to produce records that went back to his childhood to prove he was deaf. She made a totally unqualified
statement in her report and this did not call her report into question.