The counseling provided was useful to clients, on the basis of client self-reports of satisfaction, the extent to which counseling was effective in helping to resolve disputes, the enduring nature of the agreements reached, and client reports of high levels of satisfaction with counseling well after counseling was terminated. The experience of domestic violence or physical and emotional abuse had no significant effect on either male or female clients' ability to benefit from counseling and no effect on their ability to use the process to resolve sensitive family disputes and obtain enduring agreements that were to the satisfaction of both disputants. Counselors vastly underrated the significance of the client's experience of abuse when compared to the client's own perceptions of the significance of abuse, particularly with male clients; this possibly resulted from clients' and counselors' differing opinions about what constitutes abuse. Tables, note, references