Psychosocial and Legal Perspectives of Marital Breakdown - With Special Emphasis on Spain

Divorce has long been viewed as a single phenomenon affecting two individuals without considering the framework conditions in which it occurs. Due to the increase of divorce rates in the past decades researchers have changed their perspective and have concentrated on the view of divorce as a personal experience that is greatly affected by the socials and economic environment. The aim of this thesis is to investigate divorce that has become a mass phenomenon in our present society. The assumption is that in order to understand the grounds for divorce and its consequences, we have to view divorce as a phenomenon that occurs at the intersection of personal, socio-economic and legal factors. Family disputes involve persons who have interdependent and continued relati- ships and arise in a context of distressing emotions. Separation and divorce affect all the members of the family, especially children. The study presents a comprehensive analysis of divorce as a psychological process that is situated within a social and a legal context. It presents a comprehensive view of divorce as a psychosocial, economic and legal phenomenon and contains a review of the research literature about divorce and its consequences for parents and children. Moreover, it describes divorce by proposing conceptual frames and explanatory models.

Dr. Mag. Margit Gaffal is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Toledo (Spain). She studied at the Paris-Lodron-University of Salzburg (Austria) and was lecturer at Cardiff University in Wales (United Kingdom), the Johannes Kepler University in Linz (Austria) and the University of Castilla-La Mancha. She specialized in the field of law, obtained her Diploma of Advanced Studies (DEA) in the field of European Contract Law and received her Doctorate in Family Law. Her publications include Language for Specific Purposes: European Economy and European Law (2003), Sozioökonomische Einführung in die Interkulturalität (2005) and several articles.