Family law psychological report

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The family law psychological report is a psychological report with the aim of supporting family courts in the legal decision-making process. As a rule, it deals with questions relating to the best interests of the child , in particular the clarification of psychological aspects relating to parental custody , how the child interacts with the parents or other persons, aspects of the child's best interests and the assessment of the effects of risk and protective conditions for the child , by competent experts.

Questions

Family courts decide on a wide range of issues and appoint experts for a wide variety of reasons.

Typical legal issues

Typical psychological questions

  • Judgment on family relationships and ties; of resources and risk factors in the family.
  • Assessment of the competencies of the parents / guardians, their ability to bring up their children, willingness to cooperate, willingness to take on responsibility, bond tolerance or bond care.
  • Assessment of the stage of development, the needs of the child, the child's will, the skills and the current situation of the child, possibly special burdens and impairments.
  • Diagnosis and assessment of case-relevant psychological disorders and / or neurological impairments / illnesses and / or disabilities and / or other impairments in children and / or parents.

Legal basis

  • The court formulates a specific question in the ongoing process and appoints an expert by way of the formal taking of evidence. This is appointed by the judge within the framework of the legal requirements according to Section 163 (1) FamFG . §405 ZPO
  • The parties involved have the right to be heard before the appointment and to express any doubts about the neutrality or qualification of the expert. Section 404 (2) ZPO
  • The expert is obliged to check immediately whether the assignment corresponds to his area of ​​expertise or whether additional experts need to be called in and whether there are reasons to doubt his impartiality. He must inform the court of this immediately. Section 407a (1) and (2) ZPO . The paragraph also contains the provision that the court must set the expert a deadline by when the expert opinion must be submitted.
  • If there are legitimate reasons, the expert, as well as the judge, can be rejected by those involved in the proceedings because of bias. §406 ZPO
  • If it only becomes apparent in the course of the preparation of the expert opinion that the expert is not impartial, the expert opinion can be regarded as unusable even without a formal bias proceedings ( Section 406 ZPO ).
  • According to Section 404a of the German Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO), the court leads the review process and all those involved in the proceedings, including the presiding judge, are required to take a critical look at the result of the review.

Quality requirements

The 2015 working group on family law reports formulated requirements for the quality of expert reports in child law . The working group consisted of representatives from legal, psychological and medical professional associations, the Federal Chamber of Lawyers and the Federal Chamber of Psychotherapists and was supported by the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection . Further standards are mentioned in the quality standards for psychological-diagnostic reports of the German Society for Psychology . However, the recommendations do not represent any legally binding criteria, but merely serve the transparency of the expert opinion process.

Expertise

The expert must have a psychological, psychotherapeutic, child and adolescent psychiatric, psychiatric, medical, pedagogical or socio-pedagogical professional qualification in accordance with Section 163 (1) FamFG . In addition, socio-pedagogical and pedagogical specialists must demonstrate a recognized additional qualification through which sufficient diagnostic and analytical knowledge has been acquired.

The Working Group on Family Law Reports 2015 recommends that only persons should be appointed as experts who have completed a degree in psychology (Diplom / M. Sc.) Or medicine (state examination) and who have received corresponding knowledge and experience in the field of Can prove forensics . The appraisal in child law requires in-depth knowledge of scientific work, test theory, clinical psychology and forensic psychology in order to expertly select the appropriate methods and to draw critical conclusions from the results. Knowledge of procedural and substantive law is also indispensable.

process

  • Formulation of a psychological working hypothesis on the basis of the legal issue.
  • Appropriate education of those involved about the assessment process (question, choice of methodology and assessment process).
  • Expert exploration and diagnostics of those involved.
  • Use of different survey methods so that the results are based on as much data as possible (exploration, behavioral observation, possibly home visits, test procedures, questionnaires, etc.).
  • Diagnosis of separation dynamics, parent-child relationships and specific problems in the family.

Written opinion

  • Mention of formalities, such as B. Name of the expert, file number, question.
  • Presentation of the underlying file contents.
  • Presentation of current research results (with an explanation of the survey methods and their quality criteria ).
  • Presentation of the findings (interpretation and weighting of the test results according to scientific criteria).
  • Answering the judicial question for the individual case. (If necessary, taking various prerequisites into account. Including the weighting of the findings, the presentation of the underlying connecting facts from the files and a prognostic assessment).

criticism

Despite the large number of recommendations and minimum standards for family law psychological reports and despite legal changes in both expert law and family law, there are critical aspects to the existing expert opinion practice in family law.

Selection of experts

Psychological reports are almost exclusively prepared by psychologists , psychological psychotherapists and medical professionals. About 3.5% of the reports were prepared by educationalists. Reports by psychologists with the additional qualification for legal psychology proved to be more well-founded. The demand made by Prof. Jürgen Margraf , “ that judges should only rely on qualified and certified psychologists when selecting experts ” was not met in the 2016 amendment to the law on experts.

Verifiability

Working hypotheses by means of which the legal issues can be checked using suitable data were not drawn up in more than half of a sample of expert opinions. Only around 20% of the reviews examined referred to current psychological and educational knowledge and explicitly to specialist literature. Everyday terms such as “attachment”, “child welfare” or “ability to bring up” were only scientifically and precisely defined in a minority of the reviewed reports. The experts justified their decision criteria in only a quarter of the reports.

Data collection process

In a large part of the psychological reports, the selection of the diagnostic procedures was not justified or the examination methods were not clearly related to the working hypotheses. Psychometric quality criteria were rarely mentioned in the justification for the selection of the examination methods.

The requirement for the application of scientifically recognized methods and criteria for the acquisition and interpretation of data is rarely met. The most important quality criteria for assessing the quality of scientific test procedures ( objectivity , validity , reliability and the secondary quality criterion standardization ) are often not taken into account.

Diagnostic interview (exploration)

There is ample evidence that unsystematic interviews lead to incomplete, unreliable, and inaccurate information. The exploration method was not evident in the majority of the expert opinions examined.

Behavior observation

The type of behavioral observation is unclear in the majority of the reports.

The unsystematic observation of behavior corresponds to the observation of a person in everyday life (e.g. how parents deal with the child at home). This method suffers from a lack of objectivity and reliability, whereas the validity can be better justified.

With systematic observation, the behavior of a person is recorded and evaluated according to a previously selected observation scheme. The systematisation increases the quality criteria of objectivity and reliability. The observation situation is planned by the expert and the conditions are defined in advance (e.g. one parent should play a game of dice with the child in the expert's practice). This "artificial" observation situation can reduce the validity of the results.

Test procedure

The predominantly used test procedures are projective procedures and personality structure tests .

The most frequently used projective test procedures include: the family relation test (this test was already heavily criticized by experts in 1995 because the validity cannot be regarded as assured and, for economic reasons, modifications that are inadequate to the instructions are often made during practical implementation ” .), the lock sign test , the family-in-animals test , the sentence completion test , the Scenotest .

Projective methods usually only achieve low scientific test quality criteria. Personality structure tests are sometimes viewed critically from a professional and ethical point of view in the context of family law, since the use and presentation of the results in court can represent a significant encroachment on privacy and personal rights.

Interpretation of results

In the majority of the reports, there is no methodological discussion on the classification of individual results. There is therefore a risk that results from unsuitable survey methods will be incorporated into the judgment of the court uncritically.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Christel Salewski, Stefan Stürmer: Quality features in the family law psychological assessment. Fernuniversität Hagen, 2012, accessed on July 5, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b Joseph Salzgeber: The psychological expert in family court proceedings. 2nd edition . Beck, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-406-37099-3 .
  3. ^ A b c d Anne Kannegießer, Horst-Heiner Rotax: Minimum requirements for the quality of expert reports in child law. Deutscher Psychologen Verlag GmbH, Berlin, 2015, accessed on July 6, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Kemal Temizyürek: The step model of attachment care . In: ZKJ . No. 6 , 2014, p. 228-231 .
  5. ↑ Friedrich Arntzen: Parental care and dealing with children, a plan of forensic family psychology . Beck, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-406-37134-5 , pp. 69 ff .
  6. ^ A b Lothar Schmidt-Atzert, Susanne Buch, Karin Müller, Andreas Seeber, Rolf-Dieter Stieglitz and Renate Volbert: Quality standards for psychological-diagnostic reports German Society for Psychology 2012, Version 2.2. Retrieved July 3, 2017.
  7. ↑ Federal Government: The law amending the law of experts and further amending the law on the procedure in family matters and in matters of voluntary jurisdiction comes into force . Website of the German Bundestag. Retrieved July 3, 2017.
  8. ↑ DGPs demand more quality in family law reports. Website of the German Society for Psychology. June 30, 2014. Retrieved July 3, 2017.
  9. ↑ Federal Government: Draft of a law amending the law on experts and further amending the law on the procedure in family matters and in matters of voluntary jurisdiction . Bundesanzeiger Verlag GmbH, Cologne 2015, ISSN 0722-8333 ( PDF ).
  10. ↑ a b Werner Leitner: Third expert report from 2013 and 2014 press release, accessed on July 3, 2017.
  11. ^ "Quality criteria of empirical research" website [werner.stangel] s worksheets. Retrieved July 3, 2017.
  12. ↑ "Definition of standardization" ( Memento of the original from July 5, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Website experimentalpsychologie.de. Retrieved July 3, 2017. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.experimentalpsychologie.de
  13. ↑ a b Werner Leitner: Evaluation of psychological decision-making aids for family courts: Family psychological reports after separation and divorce Leitner, 1998b. Retrieved July 3, 2017.