Shared Residence: A Review of Recent Research Evidence - Family Law journal

LIZ TRINDER Professor School of Law Exeter University

There has been a significant rise in the use of shared residence or ‘shared care' over the last decade in England and elsewhere. The aim of this article is to summarise the key messages for practitioners from a wealth of recent research studies on the outcomes of shared residence: it looks at numbers of shared residence arrangements family profiles durability satisfaction and the impact of shared residence on child well being.

At the start it is important to sound a note of caution about the evidence base. There are some very clear and persuasive messages emerging from recent research but there remain large gaps in knowledge. Almost everything we know about shared care is based on overseas research with no large-scale UK studies. Research to date has also been dominated by the views of mothers and fathers although parents are clearly not objective reporters. With a few notable (and small-scale) exceptions we have only a limited understanding of children's experiences of shared care. Studies have also...

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