Linda Elrod's Custody Book Combines Big Picture and Sharp Focus

From: Family Advocate, v.18:3 (winter 1996), p. v.

BY H. JOSEPH GITLIN

Child Custody Practice and Procedure by Linda Elrod. Clark, Boardman, Callahan, 1995 ($135).

Linda Elrod's comprehensive Child Custody Practice and Procedure is a virtual must for the family law practitioner. Although generally I have found that family law books with a national scope tend to give too much and not enough, Elrod's book is broad enough to provide perspective and yet targeted enough to be practical and useful. The book consists of 17 chapters and more than a thousand pages packaged in a ring binder, which will be updated with annual supplements.

Custody is just about the only family law area based largely on singular doctrine--the best interests of the child--and modified on the basis of a change of circumstances. Thus, this area of practice lends itself to a work that cuts across state lines, especially in light of growing federal involvement through such acts as the Child Support Enforcement Amendment Act of 1984, the Family Support Act of 1988, the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act, and international treaties such as the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Child Abduction.

With this book, Elrod, who is a law professor at Washburn University in Kansas, demonstrates the rare gift of being able to provide historical data within the context of the practical reality of where the law is today. She skillfully introduces family lawyers to the underlying foundations of child custody law and orients them to the ongoing dynamics of change, even in light of these ongoing national and international family law developments.

Sometimes it seems that change is the only constant in farnily law, as one, California lawyer found out the hard way when he was successfully sued for malpractice because he failed to predict where the law regarding pension plans was going. In Child Custody Practice and Procedure, Elrod offers considerable insight. With respect to the crystal-ball approach to awarding custody, she states:

Traditional adversarial methods aimed at ferreting out the "truth" of a past situation do not work as well at predicting which parent would make a better custodian for a child. The past may be a poor predictor of the future because no matter who is awarded custody, the child's prior living arrangement has been disrupted by the departure of one parent.

Perhaps the most dynamic area of child custody law is joint custody. Elrod devotes a well-balanced chapter to joint custody, pointing out both its advantages and weaknesses.

One of the most practical parts of Child Custody Practice and Procedure is the chapter that addresses "Selecting and Using Mental Health Experts." Because most custody disputes are not smoking gun cases, the battle is often won or lost in a duel of mental health experts. Elrod presents a well-thought-out checklist for organizing custody cases and attacking the expert witness. The chapter also describes the psychological testing generally used in custody cases.

Although my experience has been that few authors possess the range of talents needed to create a quality law book: Many authors are knowledgeable enough to write on the topic, but not at all skilled at organizing the material. Thus, a book combining sound scholarship with practical knowledge and a useful table of contents and index is rare. Elrod's book is a rare gem indeed, not only skillfully written, but well organized and indexed too.

H. Joseph Gitlin practices family law in Woodstock, Illinois.