Mental Health Aspects of Custody Law

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.

"This book is full of practical gems… It would be a useful addition to a family court judge's collection, law firms or practitioners with child custody practice, and an academic law library. It would also be useful to mental health practitioners who work in or advise those who work in the family court system." — Legal Information ALERT