The data base for the study was all family court cases of divorcing families with children, as well as postdivorce cases pertaining to child custody or access, that were completed during 1987 in the surrounding county of a medium- size southeastern city. A total of 603 such cases were identified from review of 2,675 family court judgments that were issued in 1987. A uniform coding scheme was used for all cases. Three main categories of information were obtained: allegations of sexual and physical abuse; custody, access, and case outcome; and descriptive information on each case. The findings did not support the contention that sexual abuse allegations are commonplace in child custody disputes. Sexual abuse allegations were made in 2 percent of cases in which custody or access was contested and in only 0.8 percent of all the cases. The study recommends that abuse allegations be fully assessed even when a custody dispute is in progress and that the evaluators should be open to the possibilities of abuse, attempted parental alienation, or neither as potential circumstances. 13 references