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 May 12, 2008 Monday
Final Edition

SECTION: SECTION C; Pg. 1C

LENGTH: 574 words

BYLINE: M.C. MOEWE - STAFF WRITER

BODY: 

Thinking they can stop divorcing parents from fighting in court, state officials want to rewrite the laws to replace loaded terms like "custody" with "parenting plan."

To do that, though, they'll strip out guidelines for psychologists that are designed to protect the children.

It dumbs down the criteria," Coral Gables psychologist Jerome Poliacoff said of the proposal to replace the American Psychological Association's guidelines with "standards that a reasonable psychologist would use."

Who gets to be the reasonable psychologist?" Poliacoff said. "I think it leaves a lot of room for poor work."

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, passed both the House and Senate last week and is waiting for Gov. Charlie Crist's signature.

The bill's supporters say it's designed to lessen the conflict in some of the state's nastiest divorces.

The intent was never to limit the standards," said Elisha Roy, who worked on the bill for four years as a member of the family law section of The Florida Bar. "The goal of the bill is to limit litigation."

In contentious divorce cases involving children, psychologists often act as court experts who make recommendations to judges on issues such as where the child should live, how often the other parent sees the child and any mental health treatment the family might need.

Currently, psychologists are presumed to be acting in good faith if they follow the American Psychological Association's guidelines when making recommendations.

Roy said she believes those are the standards psychologists will continue to follow. "That is how I would interpret it," she said.

I would assume that's what they'd use," added Lynn.

Assumptions, though, leave a lot of wiggle room and, without specific guidelines, judges and lawyers working with the psychologists would have a more difficult time determining the quality of the reports, Poliacoff said. Also, bringing a legal case against a psychologist who did a poor job of considering a child's best interest in an evaluation would also be more difficult.

Adele Guadalupe, president and a founder of Families Against Court Travesties, said standards for psychologists working as court experts are already difficult to enforce, yet the decisions can put heavy and expensive burdens on families.

You have to dance to the tune of these so-called favored experts and favoritism is constantly rearing its ugly head," said Guadalupe, whose organization for the past four years has sent impartial court watchers to hearings to monitor family court cases. "The poorer parent can't afford to pay all these experts, so usually it's the parent with the money that wins."

The thought behind taking out the standards was because those rules contain the word "custody" and the bill is removing those words from the law, said Roy, the Florida Bar representative, who worked with psychologists in helping to write the bill.

Taking away terms like "primary custody" and replacing them with the term "parenting plan" will stop parents from fighting, she said: "The whole purpose behind (the bill) is to reduce litigation by the removal of labels that don't mean anything."

That the proposed law was vetted by lawyers and psychologists doesn't alleviate Guadalupe's concerns.

These are the very people who stand to profit," said Guadalupe explaining the costs associated with these court experts often run into the thousands of dollars. "It can leave a parent financially decimated."

CORRECTION: 

GRAPHIC: Caption: Evelyn Lynn

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 2008