Child Custody Decision-Making: The Lawyer-Behavioral Scientist Interface

This paper briefly discusses problems of the present legal system in dealing with child custody cases and proposes two alternative modes for deciding custody disputes. Section I presents problems involved in the present process of deciding legal custody. It is argued that the adversarial process is...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author Duquette, Donald N
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published 01.08.1977
Subjects
Behavioral Sciences
Child Custody
Child Welfare
Children
Court Litigation
Decision Making
Divorce
Lawyers
Legal Problems
Legislation
Psychologists
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Summary:This paper briefly discusses problems of the present legal system in dealing with child custody cases and proposes two alternative modes for deciding custody disputes. Section I presents problems involved in the present process of deciding legal custody. It is argued that the adversarial process is often unresponsive to the child's best interests. Section II describes two traditional roles of behavioral scientists: witness/consultant to the mother or father and expert to the court in child custody decision-making. Section III discusses two proposed alternative roles for behavioral scientists involving greater collaboration with lawyers. Called for are (1) team representation of the child by both a lawyer and a psychologist, and (2) a process of counseling and mediation among all parties to a case. (SB)