Informes de recomendación de guarda y custodia en procesos de ruptura de parejavariables psicológicas y sociofamiliares

Abstract

This PhD thesis explores the variables involved in the recommendations of custody made by forensic psychologists in the Administration of Justice in the Region of Murcia (Spain). The Spanish National Statistics Institute reports that the number of divorces in 2014 was increased by 5.6% over the previous year, up to more than one hundred thousand cases. It is a social fact and a circumstance that has become part of the lives of many people. The concomitant changes produced at legal and social levels imply a demand from Psychology that must be prepared not only from the forensic point of view, but also in the counseling and management of family conflicts fields. This population experiences a high risk of suffering certain reactive difficulties to the stressful changes they are going through. The fundamental premise in this situation is to seek the best interest for the child - favor filli -. The forensic psychological evaluation of the family unit can determine the custody option likely to cause the smallest interference in the lives of the children. OBJECTIVES: The main objective of the present work was to analyze the influence of the psychological and socio-familial variables evaluated on the recommendation of custody by the forensic experts. The level of participation of the children in the process and the evolution of the diferent recommendations of custody in the Region of Murcia were also considered of interest. In addition, the utility of the "Model for Areas and Variables to Be Evaluated in Disputed Custody Cases" by Ramirez (1997) was studied, looking for a statistical relationship between the proposed variables and those evaluated by the experts. METHODOLOGY: The methodological aproach consisted on three phases: a pilot study (n=50), consults to experts (n=35) and the final development of the research (n=186). After a preliminar study of 581 forensic reports, 186 reports produced between 2005 and 2015 were finally selected. The specific circumstances of the evaluated families were explored with special attention to the 276 children involved in the processes of separation lived between their parents. A database to collect the variables pointed out by the referred theoretical model and the best practice guidelines to be used in forensic evaluations involving childern custody was developed, making the appropriate statistical analysis to the sample. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The results of this work indicate a statistically significant (p<0.05) relationship with the recommendation of custody for 21 of the considered variables, half of them having a very strong association (p<0.01). The analysis of the 276 children involved in separation processes reveals that families under this situation have among 1 and 4 children and that almost 90% of them have been directly evaluated by the forensic psychologist. There are no gender differences between the children evaluated and those who have not gone to interview. However, those children directly evaluated are on average 9.5 years old while those children not evaluated are under 4 years of age. Thus, experts in the Region of Murcia follow the theoretical model and the best practice guidelines in their recommendations for the best family organization after parental separation. In addition, joint custody recommendations experience and increase since 2007, finding its peak in 2014. There are certain differences in the relevant criteria used for this choice. Finally, a high degree of involvement of the children in the forensic evaluation is observed, depending on their age the actual contribution of their intervention.