Book Review: Divorced From Reality: Rethinking Family Dispute Resolution by Jane C. Murphy and Jana B. Singer

• Published date: 01 July 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12229
• Date: 01 July 2016
• Author: Barbara Glesner Fines

THE BOOK SHELF

BOOK REVIEW: DIVORCED FROM REALITY: RETHINKING FAMILY

DISPUTE RESOLUTION BY JANE C. MURPHY AND JANA B. SINGER

Barbara Glesner Fines

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This essay summarizes key points from the book and observes the very different players and processes involved when families

in poverty enter the family court system.

Keypoints for the Family Court Community:

The trend in family law dispute resolution has been to increase discretion in legal standards for custody and emphasize

dispute resolution systems that are designed to foster autonomy of families more so than develop legal norms.

Dispute resolution in parenting disputes has a primary goal of diminishing adversarial processes in restructuring fami-

lies, by providing alternative systems for resolution and an array of professional services to help families in conflict.

Families with and without financial means receive differential treatment by these developments in the family court

system.

The failure to articulate clear legal norms for intervention and removal of children in the home and the moving target

of “best interests of the child” once the state has intervened make for a significant number of families—primarily those

in poverty—for whom the new paradigm of dispute resolution does not increase their autonomy, provide supportive

services, or streamline dispute resolution.

Keywords: Book Review; Demographics; Dispute Resolution; and Mediation.

At a time when the substance of the law of marriage, divorce, parentage, and custody are the

source of passionate debate, it is easy to overlook the importance of the legal and extralegal proce-

dures and professionals who give meaning to those legal standards. In Divorced from Reality, Profes-

sors Murphy and Singer provide a concise but thorough examination of the developments in dispute

resolution in private family law matters, especially parenting disputes.

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The book takes a very broad

view of the subject, tracing the history of dispute resolution in the United States, providing global

perspectives, and comparing these developments to the changes in family formation over time. This

comprehensive view permits insights into structural shifts and tensions in the law that a more focused

approach would not as easily provide.

Three themes tie the book together: “the close connection between changes in the substantive

family law doctrine and changes in family dispute resolution processes; the shifting boundary

between the public and private aspects of family dispute resolution; and the differential treatment by

the family court system of families with and without financial means.”

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In over seven chapters, the

authors explore these themes through descriptions of trends in family law dispute processing and the

composition of families and through an examination of how these changes have resulted in altered

views of the adversary system, the courts, and the professionals in this system. The text ends with a

comparative global perspective and recommendations for reform. This review explores the develop-

ment of these themes through each of the chapters in the book.

The authors begin with an historical overview of the fundamental shifts in the resolution of par-

enting disputes. With an enviable clarity and succinctness, the beginning of the chapter summarizes

Correspondence: Glesnerb@umkc.edu

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 54 No. 3, July 2016 525–529

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C2016 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts