Showing 5 verified claims · custody & parenting arrangements
Custody and divorce mediation, compared with litigation, settles disputes faster and with higher party satisfaction and durable improvements in nonresidential-parent involvement and coparenting — benefits visible up to 12 years later in a randomized trial — without increasing conflict; however, benefits are not symmetric across parents and, in high-conflict or intimate-partner-violence cases, mediation requires safety protocols and shows no clear advantage over litigation.
A small, methodologically limited body of research suggests that post-separation relocation that increases a child's distance from a parent is, on average, associated with somewhat worse adjustment; the evidence is thin, largely retrospective or cross-sectional, confounded by conflict and selection, and the field's own experts conclude it supports no presumption either for or against relocation.
Whether frequent overnight separations from a primary caregiver affect attachment security and adjustment in infants and toddlers is genuinely contested: some studies link frequent overnights to greater attachment insecurity and dysregulation in the youngest children, but the effects are small, inconsistent, and better explained by parental conflict and caregiving quality than by overnights themselves — so the science supports neither a blanket pro- nor anti-overnight presumption.