1. Objectifs

Intentions :
Cet article vise à sonder le point de vue des professionnels sur les cas de garde partagée.

Questions/Hypothèses :
«How do judges and custody experts arrive at the positions they adopt in taking decisions and making rulings in the best interests of the child?» (p. 274)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
«The target group studied comprised judges from the Québec Superior Court who, in the year preceding the collection of data for the study, had dealt with at least one case where custody or access rights had been the subject of a court challenge. The target group also included custody evaluators [...] who had produced at least one assessment on custody or access in the course of the previous year, at the request of either the judge or the parties to the challenge. […] In the end, 11 judges and 16 child custody experts (10 men and 17 women in all) participated in this study. The child custody experts (9 social workers and 7 psychologists) were on average 51.3 years old […] and had an average of 14.9 years of practice […].» (p. 278-279)

Instruments :
Guide d’entretien semi-directif

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse de contenu

3. Résumé

«Our analysis shows that access to both parents appears to be a central principle in the positions taken by most of the respondents. As such, they believe this principle to be more important than the child’s physical stability, and this is reflected in their encouragement of shared custody despite major problems with communication and agreement between the parents. Allegations of domestic violence are, in the view of the respondents, often exaggerated or even fabricated, since ‘genuine’ cases are rare and remain confined to relations between the parents. Besides access to both parents, other considerations remain present in the positions taken by respondents: custody arrangements made for infants, sometimes including a perception that the mother remains the ideal parent for a nursing child, show that stability in the care regime is considered especially important when children are very young. However, the majority position on this issue still favours a gradual increase in access so as to achieve over time the ideal situation of a child’s maximum contact with both parents. In addition, cases involving extended breastfeeding, or teenagers who refuse to maintain contact with a particular parent (thereby clearly impeding the active presence of one of their parents), create situations in which judges and custody experts feel uncomfortable.» (p. 291-293)