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Term Definition Psychological Parent - a term minted by three psychologists in the early 1970s, meaning that a child had only one psychological parent who should be awarded custody in a dispute, but since enlarged to include adult(s) other than natural or adoptive.
Application in Divorce The idea of the psychological parent is the rationale for awarding party who 2) must have lived with the child and 3) must have performed parental functions "to a significant degree"; and 4) the legal parent must have consented to the relation of the child with the third party.

When used in conjunction with the attachment disorder later in life.

In custody disputes, the phrase psychological parent may come into play in cases involving gay unions, where a child may have bonded himself or herself to a nonbiologically related adult who provides love, nurturing and care. Adults in gay unions often can meet the four-prong test that makes them a child’s psychological parent.

The determination that a person is the psychological parent may give him or her third parties the right to access a child at a fixed times, dates and durations.

Courts are very reluctant to separate parents from their interest in maintaining "...the ties that connect them to adults who love and provide for them." Love, after all, is not genetic.

See also Visitation Rights, Grandparents’