Changing the rules for determining child custody in divorce cases.

Abstract

Mental health professionals who conduct child custody evaluations in divorce face two huge problems. First, available assessment methods are sharply limited. Second and more basically, the legal standard guiding child custody determinations, the best-lnterests-of-the-child test, is a vague directive that presents major, perhaps impossible problems for custody evaluators—and for the judicial system. Given these circumstances, one solution for mental health professionals Is to refuse to participate in the custody decision-making process. In this commentary, I argue for a more positive solution: changing the system rather than working (or refusing to work) under it. Two especially promising ways of changing the system for deciding custody in divorce are to (1) promote divorce mediation and other forms of private dispute resolution, and (2) adopt a new legal standard, the approximation rule.