Thesis advisor: Lisa A. Goodman / At the vulnerable time of separation, many survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) enter into family courts in search of protection for themselves and their children. However, they may instead face a distressing court process in which they must confront the person who abused them and encounter legal determinations that place them and their families in danger. As many survivors – particularly those who are mothers - have no choice but to engage in the family court system to address matters such as divorce and child custody, this legal institution serves as an important gatekeeper to safety. Thus, it is essential to understand why survivors repeatedly report such - often extreme - negative experiences. A growing number of qualitative studies point to legal abuse -- abusive partners’ use of court processes to enact coercive control -- as an overlooked, yet critical mechanism through which survivors and their children are harmed during family court processes. To shed light on the role of this pernicious process, this study 1) established an ecologically and psychometrically valid measure of legal abuse, 2) used the measure to explore the psychological correlates of legal abuse for survivors, and 3) leveraged a mixed-methods approach to investigate the vocational, economic, and related mental health factors associated with legal abuse. Results pave the way for further research and policy efforts that recognize and respond to legal abuse in family court. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

There is a disproportionate number of African American fathers in the State of Tennessee that experience parenting and child support disparities when compared to single parents of other ethnicities. The purpose of this general qualitative study was to examine the experiences of African American noncustodial fathers and to examine the impact of the codification of Tennessee family laws. The theoretical frameworks for this study were critical race theory, and social construction and policy design. The key research questions examined the lived experiences of African American noncustodial fathers in the State of Tennessee and how the codification of Tennessee family laws contributed to the social construction of African American noncustodial fathers. The general qualitative study included both phenomenological and historical techniques. The data was collected by in-depth interviews of 8 African American noncustodial fathers. The study resulted in 5 emergent themes: many were happy to become fathers; many have no relationship with their child's mother; child support negatively impacted their lives; child support is biased and unfair; and the fathers wanted more time with their children. The State of Tennessee and African American fathers will benefit from the study by replicating the research statewide. Specifically, the role of fathers will be increased, less adversarial co-parenting, and legislators will have scholarly research to show the issues with the laws. The implications for positive social change include lower crimes rates related to child support, increased graduation rates, and enhanced father-child time.

When a family starts to dissolve it frequently comes to the attention of the court or the welfare department and what happens once its members enter the system can be of critical importance. While the number of adults incarcerated is expected to increase slightly, the alarming fact is that if we continue to confine juveniles at the same rate an increase of 70% between 1965 and 1975 can be expected. These data suggest that we should investigate alternatives to detention, not only because of the increasing pressures of space available but, more importantly, because juvenile detention has shown itself to be very expensive and ineffective.

Previous research reveals the existence of social distance between the social policies that govern care work and human services that make up child welfare systems and their front-line implementation by direct service workers. The authors suggest that the nature of child welfare and human services requires discretion and flexibility that is not built into governing social policies. Our study uses qualitative ethnographic methods including participant observation, informal interviewing, and content analysis to determine the extent to which front-line barriers persist to implementing child welfare and related types of human services social policies and legal mandates. A comparison of different human services settings is presented along with a social policy analysis. A discussion of implications for front-line care work and ongoing research goals will be included.

Bien que les chercheurs fassent état de l ’importance croissante de l ’individualisme en droit québécois de la famille, il n ’est pas clair que ces conclusions soient fondées sur une définition constante du phénomène. Il est primordial de comprendre la dynamique mouvante de cette tendance, ses caractéristiques ainsi que son lien avec le droit. Au moyen d ’une approche socio-juridique, le présent mémoire décrit ce phénomène et définit trois indicateurs pour explorer si et comment le droit social et privé québécois de la famille s ’individualise autour de la mère au foyer. Au final, le mémoire démontre que le droit de la famille vise, reconnaît et supporte concrètement très peu la mère au foyer. L ’observation de ce cas a plutôt mis en lumière une tendance à la diminution de mesures ou services qui la supportent, tendance qui est notamment liée à la fiscalisation, la contractualisation et l ’octroi d ’une large discrétion judiciaire. / Although researchers have given much attention to the growing importance of individualism in Quebec family law, it is unclear whether these conclusions refer to the same definition of the phenomenon. It is essential to understand the dynamic quality of this tendency, its characteristics as well as its relationship with the law. Using a socio- juridical approach, this thesis explores the phenomenon through three indicators. Specifically, we have undertaken to examine the individualization of Quebec ’s social family law and private family law in the case of the stay-at-home mother. Our analysis reveals that Quebec family law aims, acknowledges and concretly supports the autonomy of the stay-at-home mother very little. Our observations have rather highlighted a decrease in mesures and services that support her, a tendency that is related to the fiscalization, the contractualization and the important judiciary discretion characteristic of contemporary family law.

Bien que les chercheurs fassent état de l ’importance croissante de l ’individualisme en droit québécois de la famille, il n ’est pas clair que ces conclusions soient fondées sur une définition constante du phénomène. Il est primordial de comprendre la dynamique mouvante de cette tendance, ses caractéristiques ainsi que son lien avec le droit. Au moyen d ’une approche socio-juridique, le présent mémoire décrit ce phénomène et définit trois indicateurs pour explorer si et comment le droit social et privé québécois de la famille s ’individualise autour de la mère au foyer. Au final, le mémoire démontre que le droit de la famille vise, reconnaît et supporte concrètement très peu la mère au foyer. L ’observation de ce cas a plutôt mis en lumière une tendance à la diminution de mesures ou services qui la supportent, tendance qui est notamment liée à la fiscalisation, la contractualisation et l ’octroi d ’une large discrétion judiciaire. / Although researchers have given much attention to the growing importance of individualism in Quebec family law, it is unclear whether these conclusions refer to the same definition of the phenomenon. It is essential to understand the dynamic quality of this tendency, its characteristics as well as its relationship with the law. Using a socio- juridical approach, this thesis explores the phenomenon through three indicators. Specifically, we have undertaken to examine the individualization of Quebec ’s social family law and private family law in the case of the stay-at-home mother. Our analysis reveals that Quebec family law aims, acknowledges and concretly supports the autonomy of the stay-at-home mother very little. Our observations have rather highlighted a decrease in mesures and services that support her, a tendency that is related to the fiscalization, the contractualization and the important judiciary discretion characteristic of contemporary family law.

While several Australian and international studies have explored the family lawyer-client interaction, these studies have been limited to investigations of discrete areas of the lawyerclient relationship and have been necessarily limited in their methodologies. The present study employed a quantitative empirical methodology in an Australian wide field study of 230 family lawyers and 94 clients that investigated the family lawyer-client interaction from a procedural justice framework. Using multivariate analyses, the study establishes that the Tyler and Blader two-component model of procedural justice applies in the lawyer-client dyad and is influenced by the approach of the lawyer, the emotional response of the client, and the level of co-party conflict that the client is experiencing. Further, the study gives meaning to the terms 'conciliatory and constructive' and 'adversarial' as they apply to family law dispute resolution. The study establishes a construct to measure the conciliatory and adversarial approach of family lawyers and identifies that lawyers tend to incorporate a mixture of the two into their work. The results also identify four distinct behavioural factors that characterise the two approaches: the client-centred and interest-based factors characterise the conciliatory approach; and the lawyer-directed and court-focused factors characterise the adversarial. The study found that in terms of perceptions of fairness, and feelings of satisfaction, the clients preferred the lawyers who took a client-centred and interest-based approach, but in circumstances where the clients were experiencing high-levels of conflict, or fear for the safety of their children, they also appreciated the lawyer who was lawyer-directed and court-focused. Overall, the study shows that in order to create a fair and satisfying dispute resolution service for their clients, family lawyers need to maintain a fine balance of family lawyering behaviour. On a general level, the study provides a profile of Australian family lawyers in terms of their approach to dispute resolution, their attitude towards ADR processes and their favoured negotiation styles. It also profiles family law clients in terms of their emotional adjustment to the divorce and their perceptions of the family lawyers assisting them to resolve their disputes. The study substantially expands the procedural justice theory base and has significant implications for practical family law education, government policy, family lawyering, and the ADR and collaborative law movements. The study indicates where future research could benefit these communities.

Thesis (LLM)--Macquarie University. Division of Law. / Bibliography: leaves 192-208. / Introduction -- The perceived problems and the new reforms -- The framework for children's matters in Australia -- Families and functions - regulating the Australian family -- Reorganising the gender hierarchy -- Men's movements, misconceptions and misidentifying the real issues -- Problems with "shared parenting": an ideal or a (rebuttable) presumption? -- Mediation not litigation -- Conclusion -- Bibliography. / In this thesis, I critically appraise the latest reforms of the Australian family law system and assess the underlying philosophy of these measures. I specifically analyse the introduction of shared parenting and mandatory family dispute resolution. My starting point is that legislative changes alone cannot be used as a means of social change. Legal models cannot function correctly if they reflect an ideal rather than social reality, and in light of the current reforms, the Australian family law system risks such a fate. The system, which presumes that parents share parental responsibility upon separation (and therefore during the intact family), does not represent social truth. It appears to make an assumption that shared parenting is the societal practice, but I believe the law is really being used to impose such an ideal. If the reforms are to be successful, I argue that substantial social and economic structural change is required, in order to break down the dichotomy between men's and women's roles, which continue to define the male role as economic and public and the female responsibility as care-giving and private. This is particularly important if the Government is genuine about its aim to make parenting gender neutral in practice and not just in theory. / The thesis demonstrates that the reform measures are a response to the perceived rather than real problems identified in the family law system, and that they are largely issues raised under the influence of fathers' rights groups. The response of the Government to remedy the system is therefore flawed as it is based on misconceived notions about the family law system. It incorrectly identifies judicial discretion as a fundamental cause of the problems and tries to replace it with a more rules-based approach to determining children's matters. I suggest that the real problems can be found in the continuance of deeply entrenched customs and gendered role constructions, and the remedies lie in their overhaul. The social culture that makes the mother the primary caregiver and allocates to the father diminished parental responsibility from the time the child is born needs to be transformed. A suitable legal response to the current impasse would be to begin by educating the public about the way the system works and provide counselling to families on how to structure their united life well before they reach the breakdown point. Assisting families while they are still functional, as opposed to when they are dysfunctional, would arguably make a large difference in how the family law system is understood. Moreover, it would be able to facilitate ongoing communication for separating couples and, most importantly, thereby uphold the best interests of the child. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / 208 leaves

This studies aim was to understand and analyze how social workers in family law constructs risk assessments. Furthermore the study aimed to describe social workers in family laws perspective on the construction of risk assessment. To achieve the goals of this study qualitative interviews was used. In total six social workers was interviewed which all worked with family law in social services. To understand how the social workers constructed the risk assessments a theory from social constructivism was used, namely the institutional theory by Berger and Luckmann. The results show that the procedure of how the risk assessment was similarly executed, the social workers gathered information and then they weighted the information. Though there was a difference in how they gathered the information and how they weighted the information. The main discovery of this study is however that according to the informants the construction of a risk assessment is influenced by seven factors, and these factors could be located on three levels from individual to workplace and to the law and Socialstyrelse. Depending on which level the factor was located it made a difference on how the factor was incorporated to the construction of the risk assessment.

The dissertation solves the empirical puzzle why similar regimes such as Morocco and Jordan vary in their engagement in family law reform between 1999 and 2013. Differences with respect to family law reform in the two monarchies are threefold: the way the reform processes were carried out, the content of the new family codes that were issued in Morocco in 2004 and in Jordan in 2010, and the way the laws were applied. Using Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice as a theoretical framework the dissertation establishes the links between the designs of the legal systems, how reform processes are carried out, the family laws countries end up with, and the way the laws are applied. French and British colonialism had shaped the legal systems of Morocco and Jordan to different degrees, producing a legal system that was unified after independence in Morocco whereas the Jordanian one continued to be divided into regular and religious courts. As a result, Moroccan family courts are less autonomous and more subjected to political decisions than Jordanian sharia courts. The institutional design of both judicial systems affected how family law reform was carried out because those systems contain biases towards different actors who are seen as competent of reforming family law and thus came to influence the reform process. The different access criteria to the juridical fields promote different types of cultural capital, so that actors participating in the process have different preferences regarding the development of the content of family law. In Jordan, the absence of the Jordanian king allowed the sharia court administration to exploit the structural bias in its favour and come to dominate both the process and content of family law reform. For this reason the 2010 Jordanian family law reflects to a lesser extent the demands of women's groups. The absence of the Jordanian king from the reform process demonstrates that change in authoritarian states is not necessarily imposed from above nor is it predetermined from the beginning. The Jordanian reform process saw little engagement from the top-level of the regime and could be classified as a mid-level process. It was led by a government body, the sharia court administration, which however enjoyed relative autonomy from the upper echelon of the regime. By contrast, the Moroccan family law reform was a textbook example of authoritarian politics, the reform being imposed from above and the king playing a leading role during the process. In contrast to the process and content of reform, the application of the reformed law in Morocco challenges the notion of the omnipotent authoritarian regime. While the monarch could impose legislative change, the state is at best partially able to enforce this very law or to impose a consensus over its interpretation. The designs of the legal systems again had an impact here. International law occupies different places in the Moroccan and Jordanian constitutions: Jordanian sharia courts enjoy greater autonomy, reject international law, and thus were able to resist its intrusion.