Family psychological expert reports and mutual conflict resolutions

theme No.: 37a
responsible federal state: North Rhine-Westphalia
date: 04.12.2023 - 08.12.2023

The seminar is aimed at judges of family courts.
The conference wants to qualify participants more confidently in assessing and evaluating important aspects and individual questions, which are especially important in commissioning and evaluating family psychological expert reports. In addition to lectures and working individually and in small-groups, relevant judicial practice issues will be debated in group discussions and exchanges of personal experiences and matched with common jurisdiction and legal psychology insights. Furthermore the seminar wants to develop (mutual) resolution possibilities in conflict situations in family law cases, especially with high conflict family systems and specialties in families with foreign issues, which can occur for example with parties with different cultural backgrounds and cross-border social interaction lawsuits.
Planned topics are:

• Criticism of family psychological experts: qualification and selection of experts
• Quality standards (minimum requirements) of content-related and formal criteria for legal psychological expert reports and courses of action in family law
• Assessment procedure – experts’ methods
• Terms in relation to family psychological expert reports (child’s welfare, child’s view, parenting skills, bond, interaction assessment (illustrated by video)
• Introduction to test psychology (projective and psychometric test proceedings, test quality criteria), background knowledge and psychological self-test implementation
• Systemic questioning, inter alia, developing conflict resolutions for high conflict families (“nutcracker strategies”)
• Evaluation of parenting skills according to § 1666 German Civil Code (restrictions by mental disorder, addiction, violence in partner relationships, abuse, neglect and sexual misconduct, impairment of intelligence, somatic illnesses etc.)
• Selected disorders of clinical child, adolescence and adult psychology
•  Traumatisation effects on parenting skills / child development (post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD)
• Evaluation of social interaction arrangements according to §§ 1684 ff. German Civil Code
• Evaluation of custody orders and current issues of the German Family and Voluntary Jurisdiction Procedure Code and the German Civil Code from a legal psychological point of view
• Hague Convention proceedings.

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