April 2017

• Author: Barbara A. Babb
• Date: 01 April 2017
• Published date: 01 April 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12280

EDITOR’S NOTE

APRIL 2017

This issue of Family Court Review (FCR) begins by honoring the life and memory of Ruth

Stern, former Managing Editor of Family Court Review, who passed away in October, 2016. Her

husband, Professor Herbie DiFonzo, offers glimpses into Ruth’s life and their life together. Coming

from a baseball family myself, I am particularly moved by Ruth’s and Herbie’s mutual passion for

the New York Mets. It is obvious from the details Herbie graciously shares that theirs was a love and

a life of unique tenderness and togetherness. I am deeply grateful to Herbie for allowing us the privi-

lege to publish this tribute to Ruth.

The April 2017 issue consists of six articles and two law student notes. In this volume, we have

initiated a practice discussed during the 2016 Editorial Board meeting at the AFCC Annual Confer-

ence in Seattle. From time to time, FCR editors and staff plans to publish articles longer than the stan-

dard twenty-five pages. By doing so, we hope to encourage the submission of additional scholarly

articles from academics who, in lieu of submitting their articles to FCR, choose other professional

publications that allow for documents of longer length. Thus, this is a call to our readers to encourage

authors to submit articles to FCR that they heretofore may have submitted to other journals.

The first article, “Mainstreaming Therapeutic Jurisprudence in Family Law: The Israeli Child

Protection Law as a Case Study,” by Tali Gal and Dahlia Schilli-Jerichower, is one with a theme

near and dear to my heart. All of my scholarship, advocacy, lawyering, and teaching is grounded in

therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ). The Gal/Schilli-Jerichower article analyzes the role of TJ in the devel-

opment and reforms in child welfare law in Israel. The authors suggest practices and law reform to

enhance the child protection system that can apply beyond Israel.

Robert Kaufman and Daniel Pickar have contributed “Understanding Parental Gatekeeping in

Families with a Special Needs Child.” The authors build upon their prior work identifying co-

parenting as a key to create appropriate parenting plans for a special needs child. They discuss paren-

tal gatekeeping as a useful concept to understand co-parenting relationships. They describe particular

gatekeeping dynamics that occur with a special needs child and the implications for these behaviors.

Solangel Maldonado’s article, “Bias in the Family: Race, Ethnicity, and Culture in Custody Dis-

putes,” represents FCR’s inclusion of a longer scholarly work, as described above. This article discusses

both explicit and implicit racial, ethnic, or cultural bias in custody decision-making as well as in custody

evaluations and lawyering. The article includes suggestions to combat the impact of bias in custody cases.

“Predictors of Initial Court Agreement and One-Year Relitigation in Title IV-D Contested Pater-

nity Cases,” by Ani Poladian, Brittany Rudd, Amy Holzworth-Munroe, Amy Applegate, and Brian

D’Onofrio, summarizes their empirical study of 182 contested cases involving unmarried parents’

attempts to establish paternity and child support in Marion County, Indiana. The authors suggest that

certain characteristics predict which parents are more likely to reach agreement and less likely to

return to court, as well as which demographics predict less likelihood of reaching agreement and

more relitigation.

A second article in this issue focuses on parental gatekeeping. “Adaptive and Maladaptive Gate-

keeping Behaviors and Attitudes: Implications for Child Outcomes After Separation and Divorce,”

by Michael Saini, Leslie Drozd, and Nancy Olesen, details gatekeeping behaviors and their impact

on the other parent’s relationship with the child, including issues of safety, well-being, and positive

parent–child relationships.

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 55 No. 2, April 2017 173–174

V

C2017 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts