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Accounting To Ourselves For Ourselves: An Analysis Of Adjudication In The Resolution Of Child Custody Disputes, Francis J. Catania

Francis J. Catania

The adjudicatory process for resolving child custody disputes is out of synch with the way most functioning families operate. It is inherent in the adjudicatory process that judgment is passed upon the parties by a superordinate stranger-adjudicator. Each party to child custody adjudication approaches the ostensibly problem-solving court as a supplicant and an inferior, having to tacitly admit that (s)he cannot handle her/his own affairs. In the small percentage of child custody cases reaching impasse and adjudication, the legal process entails the creation and operation of a body of legal norms that has grown through legal opinions resolving individual disputes. …