WHAT SHOULD FAMILY LAWYERS KNOW? RESULTS OF A SURVEY OF PRACTITIONERS AND STUDENTS1

The contemporary practice of family law demands that lawyers know far more than the law. Results of a recent survey of professionals and law students suggest that today's family lawyer needs knowledge and skills that are often missing from law school curricula. Survey respondents emphasized the importance of strong interpersonal skills like listening, negotiation, and working with clients in emotional crisis, as well as keen understanding of financial issues in family law, the impact of separation and divorce on children, and the ethical dimensions of family law practice. Law students held contrasting views to law faculty and to practicing attorneys on a number of measures, ranking adversarial courtroom skills as more important and placing less emphasis on skills, knowledge, and attributes related to ethics.     

Parental Use of Physical Punishment as Related to Family Environment, Psychological Well-being, and Personality in Undergraduates

Childhood experiences of physical punishment were examined as related to perceptions of family environment during childhood and affective and personality outcomes of college students. From the 274 respondents who participated, scores were compared for the participants with the 75 highest and 75 lowest physical discipline scores based on the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTSPC-CA). Respondents who experienced the highest level of physical punishment in their families of origin reported higher family conflict, more negative parental relationships, greater family worries, more depressive symptoms, more perceived nonsupport, greater identity problems, and more negative social relationships. Respondents in the low physical punishment group reported higher positive family affect. Results suggest that experiencing physical discipline as a child may be related to one’s family environment and psychological well-being in young adulthood.     

Understanding Pathways to Family Dispute Resolution and Justice Reforms: Ontario Court File Analysis & Survey of Professionals

This article reports on two related studies about varying pathways to the resolution of family disputes and the effects of family justice reforms in Ontario: a survey of family court professionals (n = 118) and an analysis of 1,000 closed court files of family cases involving children. Both studies reveal that the vast majority of cases are resolved without a trial, often by negotiation. While professionals generally support family justice reform initiatives, there remain significant gaps in the implementation of these strategies. For example, many litigants do not attend information programs despite the requirement for mandatory attendance; there is limited use of mediation; the views of children are being sought in only a small number of cases; and there is a large proportion of self‐represented family litigants. Despite the increase in shared care and joint decision‐making arrangements, a majority of cases in the court file study were sole custody arrangements to the mother, whether the case was settled or resolved by trial. Mediation was associated with greater time of contact with the non–primary residential parent (usually the father).     

Grave concerns: Entailment and intergenerational agency in Amsterdam (1600–1800)

The entail was one of the few instruments that allowed pre-industrial testators to organize long-term strategies with respect to asset management: it allowed them to decide which goods descendants could alienate, and also after how many generations restrictions would be lifted. This article looks into the somewhat neglected topic of entailment in merchant towns, and thus contributes to our understanding of the goals urban testators set with respect to asset management, both for themselves and their descendants. Evidence from Amsterdam suggests that many testators were inclied to create long-term strategies once improvements had been made to the institutional framework surrounding the entail. Our analysis indicates that they were particularly looking for ways to prevent descendants from squandering patrimonial goods, but without reducing liquidity. This ‘intergenerational agency problem’ was solved by allowing groups of descendants to file requests to have entails cancelled.     

Cohabitation,Marriage, and Child Wellbeing: A Cross-National Perspective

Non-marital cohabitation has become widespread in modern, Western nations. It has led to dramatic declines in marriage rates and contributed to high levels of unwed births and lone-parent families, thus negatively affecting child wellbeing.

A Longitudinal Daily Diary Study of Family Assistance and Academic Achievement Among Adolescents from Mexican,Chinese, and European Backgrounds

A longitudinal daily diary method was employed to examine the implications of family assistance for the academic achievement of 563 adolescents (53% female) from Mexican (n = 217), Chinese (n =  206), and European (n = 140) backgrounds during the high school years (mean age 14.9 years in 9th grade to 17.8 years in 12th grade). Although changes in family assistance time within individual adolescents were not associated with simultaneous changes in their Grade Point Averages (GPAs), increases in the proportion of days spent helping the family were linked to declines in the GPAs of students from Mexican and Chinese backgrounds. The negative implications of spending more days helping the family among these two groups was not explained by family background factors or changes in study time or school problems. These results suggest that the chronicity rather than the amount of family assistance may be difficult for adolescents from Mexican and Chinese backgrounds.

Parenting by Cell Phone: Parental Monitoring of Adolescents and Family Relations

Cellular phones provide a means for parents to monitor and request information about whereabouts, associates, and current activities from adolescents. Simultaneously, adolescents can communicate with parents to inform them of activities and to solicit support or they can also choose to nondisclose. The frequency, duration, and nature of calls may relate to parents’ and to adolescents’ perceptions of truthfulness and family relationships. 196 dyads (13% father–son, 11% father–daughter, 30% mother–son, and 46% mother–daughter) completed a questionnaire indicating cell phone use, their truthfulness of activities, the nature of their calls to one another, and family relationships. The parents were, on average, 45.38 years old (SD = 6.35) and were 83% Euroamerican, 9% Asian American, 3% Latino, 3% African American, 2% Mixed ethnicity, and 1% American Indian. The adolescents were, on average, 16.25 years old (SD = 1.17) and were 77% Euroamerican, 9% Asian American, 4% Latino, 3% African American, 8% Mixed ethnicity, and .5% American Indian. Correlational analyses revealed that parents who called more frequently reported less truthfulness when speaking to their adolescents via cell phone. Greater frequency in parental calls also was associated with less adolescent-reported truthfulness. From multiple regression analyses, for parents, calls when upset were associated with less parental knowledge and poorer family relations. For adolescents, the same was true; however, adolescents who made calls seeking social support and to ask and confer with parents reported greater perceived parental knowledge and better family relationships.

Childhood bads,parenting goods,and the right to procreate

Abstract

Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, together with many other philosophers, think that adults’ interests in raising a child can give them a moral right to parent when they will be adequate parents. We consider whether the same interest could give such adults a moral right to procreate, as a means of acquiring a child to raise. We argue that the interest in parenting cannot support a right to procreate, because the features of childhood that make parenting uniquely valuable for adults are bad for children. Adults may have a right to procreate, but they do not have that right due to their interest in a parent–child relationship.     

A Multidisciplinary Perspective on the Role,Functions, and Effectiveness of Parenting Coordination

Based on a survey conducted in 2018 in collaboration with the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts’ (AFCC) Task Force on Parenting Coordination, this paper explores issues related to the process and perceived outcomes of parenting coordination for families post separation and divorce. The views expressed emerge from a diverse and multidisciplinary sample (n = 289) from legal, mental health, and conflict resolution backgrounds. Almost half of all participants (46%) were mental health professionals (psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker), followed by attorneys (28%), family mediators (17%) and judges (5%). Over half of all participants identified as a parenting coordinator (PC) (53%). Based on the results, participants had the highest level of agreement that the goal of parenting coordination should be to assist in sheltering the children from parental conflict and to help the coparents reduce interparental conflict. Participants assigned greater success to parenting coordination when there was demonstration that coparenting conflict decreased. Several differences were noted among professional disciplines and specifically between legal and mental health professionals. Mental health professionals rated higher on the effectiveness of PCs to help children adjust and limit their involvement in the parental conflict, while legal professionals focused on PCs’ ability to help families resolve legal disputes. The implications of the results are discussed, including how best to measure the success of parenting coordination and to prioritize outcomes related to the success of parenting coordination across disciplines to create greater consistency in the field.     

Confidentiality and Privilege for Family and Child Protection Mediation: A Roadmap for Navigating the Innovation,Inconsistency and Confusion

This article will identify the inconsistency and confusion in mediation regarding the definition of mediation, the role of the mediator, and the difference between mediation confidentiality and privilege. Further, it will discuss the confusion and inconsistency in the protection of mediation communication, specifically regarding the definition of mediation communication, the time frame for protected communication, waiver of the protections and exceptions to protected mediation communication. It will provide a roadmap and fact pattern for determining whether mediation communications are protected and if so, the protection they are afforded. Lastly, it will offer recommendations so parties, professionals and the courts may better understand and reap the benefits of mediation.