Mental Health Aspects of Custody Law

by Levy, Robert J.

• ISBN13: 9781594600562
• ISBN10: 1594600562
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-05-25
• Publisher: Carolina Academic Press

Summary

Written by an interdisciplinary group comprised of lawyers, judges, psychologists, and adolescent and child psychiatrists, this book identifies and examines the major legal and mental health issues confronted in post-divorce custody and visitation litigation. It examines state legislation and judicial doctrine as well as reform efforts such as the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act and the American Law Institute's Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution.As the authors themselves suggest, "a great many important and difficult divorce-custody legal and psychological issues have not been objectively and thoroughly explored in the literature and in courtrooms - indeed, many of them have been the subjects of misleading and sometimes ignorant reports and testimony - and judges and children and their parents have been the losers." The book has been designed to provide a sort of glossary - an objective description and analysis - of the underlying mental health aspects of legal issues and mental health professionals' concerns about how those issues are approached and resolved in divorce-custody cases. The book will be useful to practicing lawyers, mental health professionals and judges.

Table of Contents

The unique qualities of child custody litigation	p. 3
Doctrinal standards governing custody adjudication	p. 11
Doctrinal standards governing custody adjudication - continued	p. 31
Principles of joint legal and physical custody	p. 49
Child development theory and continuity	p. 61
The child's preference as to a custodian	p. 73
Domestic violence	p. 89
Sexual abuse allegations in child custody cases	p. 103
Substance abuse	p. 117
General principles of visitation	p. 131
Visitation with infants	p. 151
Visitation with mentally ill parents	p. 165
Grandparent and third party visitation	p. 183
Supervised visitation	p. 193
Visitation with dying parents	p. 203
Visitation with incarcerated parents	p. 211
Enforcing visitation	p. 221
General principles of modification	p. 233
Relocation of a custodial parent	p. 251
Parenting plans	p. 273
Judicial interviews	p. 283
Protecting the separate interests of children in divorce proceedings	p. 299
Psychological testing	p. 309
Court ordered custody evaluations	p. 321
Conclusion	p. 351
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.