Children's psychological adjustment following parental separation or divorce is a function of the characteristics of the custodial parent, as well as the degree of postdivorce parental cooperation. Over time, custody has shifted from fathers to mothers and currently to joint arrangements. In this retrospective chart review of family court clinic records we examined predictors of custody and vis...

Policies governing divorce and parenting, such as child support orders and enforcement, child custody regulations, and marital dissolution requirements, can have a large impact on the welfare of parents and children. Recent research has produced evidence on the responses of divorce rates to unilateral divorce laws and child support enforcement. In this paper the authors argue that in order to a...

The issue of relocation presents courts and child custody evaluators with dilemmas on the issue of allowing a child to move with a parent to a new community and how to craft long-distance parenting plans if relocation is allowed. The issue of the potential effects of residential moves on children of divorce has focused on the importance of the child–nonresidential parent relationship. The resea...

The “best interests of the child” is the legal standard in custody disputes. It is also the mental health standard. One gets the impression that the court’s job is to implement the recommendations of the experts, but the principle is not the same in law and mental health. The psychiatric expert is limited to determining the psychological best interest; the court considers additional factors in ...

With rising numbers of single-parent families, a phenomenon becoming increasingly prevalent is the child orphaned by cancer. We sought to examine issues related to custody planning addressed prior to the patient's death. Ten deceased patients with minor children were identified. The contact person was administered a brief questionnaire regarding the minor children and custody issues. The study ...

AIMS Increasing proportions of Scandinavian children and children in other Western countries live in joint physical custody, moving between parents' homes when parents live apart. Children and parents in non-intact families are at risk of worse mental health. The potential influence of parental ill-health on child well-being in the context of differing living arrangements has not been studied t...

Demographic studies of family relationships frequently equate household composition with family membership. High rates of divorce and parent-child separation challenge this assumption. Parental rights and responsibilities may continue even when parents and children live apart. This paper describes the legal and physical custody arrangements adopted by a repre.entatlve sample of recent divorce c...