The relevance of sibling relationships when parents separate

Sibling relationships ar a new field in empirical science, and existing dat a are rather sparse. An overview will be given about the diversity of sibli ng relationships. General research results will be reported briefly, and sp ecial emphasis will be put on the situation of siblings in families undergo ing divorce. Starting with the situation of current research an their diver se results two major studies will be described more closely (Conger and Con ger 1996; Schmidt-Denter and Beelmann 1995). Furthermore problems of resear ch in the area of sibling relationships will be discussed. Implications of these research results for expert opinions in custody cases will be present ed (Karle et al. 2000). A following case study will again demonstrate the c omplexity of this topic.