A FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY MODEL OF RISK ASSESSMENT FOR CHILD CUSTODY RELOCATION LAW |
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| Authors: | William G Austin |
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| Institution: | William G. Austin is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist, currently in private practice in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He was formerly a Russell Sage Resident Fellow in law and social science at the University of Virginia School of Law and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. |
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| Abstract: | Relocation in child custody presents a psycho-legal dilemma of trying to preserve stability in the child's residential family unit while maintaining continuity in the role of the nonresidential parent. Courts have shown a strong preference to permiting the child to move away with the residential parent unless there is a showing of potential harm to the child. The forensic violence risk assessment literature provides an analogous conceptual framework for understanding the prediction of harm. Instead of predicting violence, the evaluator is predicting the effect of environmental circumstances on the child's adjustment. A forensic psychology model of risk assessment is adapted to the relocation problem. The elements of the model are an expected base rate of short-term emotional distress due to relocation, risk and modulating factors, and how to handle the potential consequences of prediction errors. A hierarchical predictive process, derived hypotheses, and practical considerations in relocation are discussed. |
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