Introduction

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Divorce has become a fact of life. A practice that was once an exception to the rule of the two parent family has become more common over time. From a moral taboo, it has become socially acceptable for couples who have made a lifetime commitment to sever it. In the process, the divorcing couple's ". . . failure to set boundaries is one of the major sources of conflict and stress between the parents,"¹and the children of the marriage are sometimes lost in the shuffle.

As divorce has become more prevalent in American society, focus by social scientists has shifted from the couple to the children because as one court noted, "Divorcing parents seek, or decide not to seek custody of their children for many different reasons, many of which have little correlation with the best interest of the child."² In one study of parent-child communications about the family's divorce, nearly one in four children (twenty-three percent) reported that no one had talked to them about it, and forty-five percent reported having received only short-shrift bulletins, such as "your dad is leaving."³ These failures to communicate may have long-term effects, as interviews with grown-up children, even decades after a parental divorce, suggest that many have persistent anger about having no role in the divorce proceedings, at being ignored, and at not being consulted about custodial arrangements.⁴

Divorce is rarely a pleasant experience under the systems in place in most states today.

In the current adversarial model, the impact of provoking parents to dredge up old failures, to prove cruelties in exquisite detail, to exaggerate if not to lie, to plot for the downfall of the other surely exacerbates woundedness and hostility. . . In child custody disputes, the child's whole self and well-being are at stake and the decision-making process itself can compound the child's trauma. Most importantly, the adversarial adjudicatory process is unequal to the task of retrofitting parents for their new roles as parents living in what will be a binuclear family.⁵

As a result, many seek reform to the current adversarial system. "Custody controversies, unlike other types of litigation, involve parties who will have some sort of continuing future interaction with eachPage 1294 other. Recognizing the significance of that characteristic, reformers envision a process for unraveling the current dispute that provides some means for reconstructing and improving the parties'...