Föräldrarnas strid om barnet – En kvalitativ studie av tingsrättens bedömning i vårdnadstvister

Sammanfattning: Abstract Author: Josefin Almkvist and Ellenor Yngvesson Title: The battle for children – A qualitative study of the district court's assessment in custody disputes (translated title) Supervisor: Maria Bangura Arvidsson Assessor: Hans-Edvard Roos The purpose of this study was to analyze verdicts of custody disputes and thereby study how the court motivates their decisions in custody issues. The study also aims to examine how the parent’s gender influences the custody’s decision. More specifically we looked at how the district court's assessment looks like in sole and joint custody and whether there is any difference between cases where the court rules for the mother or father. This was done by studying 30 district court verdicts from Malmö Tingsrätt between 2007 and 2011 in which parents did not agree on custody. The studied verdicts were analyzed through a coding procedure to obtain a result. The analysis draws from theories on family and gender which are applied to our findings in an attempt to further put light on the issue of how the court decides in custody disputes. The study showed that there are many factors in custody disputes that are important and affects the district court's assessment of the custody issue. Each individual dispute has its own unique context and it is therefore difficult to make any generalization of what is required to enable the district court judge for sole or joint custody. Even though no single factor was found to be particularly crucial in the dispute, we have found some patterns in how the district court reasons. Factors that often have a decisive importance are parental suitability, parents' ability to cooperate and the child's right to both parents.