Vill vuxna veta vad barnen tycker? : En undersökning om hur barnets åsikt kommer fram och påverkar familjerättens bedömning och tingsrättens dom i vårdnads, boende- och umgängestvister

Abstract

The main purpose of this essay was to study how the child's own view appeared in the office of family law investigations and in the following municipal court verdicts and if it had influenced the judgement and the verdict. We wanted to see if the child's age was important for the possibility to make oneself heard and if there had been changes overtime related to the consideration to the child's own view in investigations- and court context. To obtain answers to the questions, we decided to execute a qualitative case study, which exclusively was based on document analyses. We selected to examine a middle-sized municipal in the southern part of Sweden. We concerned only for children in the age of 8-12 years, who was affected by a court verdict either 1999 or 2003. Our study showed, among other things, that the majority of all children were interviewed. It also showed that the age of the children didn't affect the consideration the court took to the child's opinion. We compared the results from the two different years and found a striking change. It showed that the verdicts from the court from 2003 almost completely corresponded with the child's own view in almost all cases, while only the half of the verdicts from the court from 1999 corresponded with the child's view