Psychological evaluation in judicial affective abandonment processes: family conflicts and judiciary demands

Abstract

The affective abandonment indemnity is characterized as a lawsuit in which a child moves action requesting financial compensation for the moral damages resulted from the affective abandonment by one of the parents. The objective of this retrospective, documentary study was to understand the dynamics of affective abandonment indemnity lawsuits, identifying the relevance of judiciary psychology in this type of action. We studied in depth two psychological reports of psychological assessments carried out in two lawsuits of affective abandonment, judged in a Family Court of the South of Brazil. We identified that the children involved in the marital conflicts sought the judicialization as a resource for clarifying the family situation and a strategy to call the parents to recognize the gap that was opened in the paternal or maternal-filial relationship. Legal psychology, in this context, draws attention to the recognition of the complexity of the conflict, the well-being of the individuals involved and the need for specialized attention.