The child's will in custody, residence and visitation disputes

The aim of this study was to increase understanding of the extent to which the child's will is given in Swedish courts' overall assessments of the best interests of the child in disputes on custody, resident and visitation (VBU). 18 District Court judgments have been collected from the database Zeteo via court judgments from Sweden's six Courts of Appeal. Based on a qualitative research effort, a content analysis was conducted on the judgments. The content analysis resulted in the following three categories being identified: The court judges according to the expressed will of the child, The court judges against the expressed will of the child, and The will of the child was omitted in the district court's assessment. The results were mainly analyzed based on childhood sociological perspectives, Hart’s ladder of participation and family law regulations. The theoretical framework was used to illustrate how the child was presented and socially constructed, and what impact this had on the space the child's will was given in the court's assessments of the best interests of the child. This was then reflected in the prevailing laws. The results of the study showed that the child's will appeared in about half of the cases, and that the court judged according to the will of the child in less than one third of them. The study also showed that the court tended to question the authenticity of the will of the children whose wishes did not comply with what the court considered to be the best interests of the child. In the majority of the cases where the children’s will were not given any room in the judgment, the court generally gave no reasons why the will was not reported