Contact/Shared Residence and Child Well-Being: Research Evidence and its Implications for Legal Decision-Making

This article considers the implications for legal decision-making of one aspect of research on children’s adjustment to parental separation: the significance for child well-being of maintaining a relationship with both parents, either by way of contact with a non-resident parent or by means of a shared (dual) residence arrangement (known in some jurisdictions as ‘joint physical custody’). It is argued that policy-makers who have rejected recent calls for a statutory presumption of child/non-resident parent contact, or of equal division of a child’s time between parents, have acted appropriately in the light of the research evidence.