Assessing Family Coordination in Divorced Families

The principal aim of this study is to adapt the standardized observational method of family relationships-the Lausanne Trilogue Play (LTP; Fivaz-Depeursinge & Corboz-Warnery, 1999)-to typical observed clinical situations. Our objective is to assess if this procedure is useful in distinguishing and standardizing the levels of complexity of those divorced families who are being followed by a court expert in child custody cases. Sixty high-conflict divorced families participated in this research project. The families were observed through clinical LTP during the third expert's counseling (CE) session. The families displayed different relational characteristics and there was a prevalence of families with dysfunctional alliances in the sample. The association between the clinical diagnosis of family alliance and the structural reading scores highlighted that families with dysfunctional alliances obtained lower scores than families whose alliances were functional. The implications of these findings for the development of future theoretical and empirical research in this field are discussed.