Law Commons^™

Gender And Nation-Building: Family Law As Legal Architecture, Tracy E. Higgins, Rachel P. Fink

Maine Law Review

In considering the legal architecture of nation-building, we might most readily think of public law as our subject insofar as it governs the relationship between the individual and the state, and establishes the institutions of governance and the sources and limits of their power. The essays in this volume, in large part, track this instinct in that they concern themselves with fields such as constitutional law, criminal law, and public international law. Closer to the margin of public and private law are essays dealing with various dimensions of the modern regulatory state, including banking and commercial transactions. In each of …

An Empirical Study Of Property Divisions At Divorce, Margaret Ryznar

Pace Law Review

Much has been written about family law and how to fairly divide property between divorcing spouses. Without a good understanding of what courts are doing in the field, however, there is no baseline for theoretical frameworks. This Article fills the void by analyzing all divorce cases involving children that were filed in one county over several months. The resulting empirical data has implications for the meaning of fairness in divorce, the role of judicial discretion, and the incentives for contracting by couples. This Article also examines the underlying law in order to explore the correlation between the family law code …

You Are Now Entering The School Zone, Proceed With Caution: Educators, Arbitration, & Children’S Rights, Raquel Muniz

Arbitration Law Review

No abstract provided.

Assisted Reproduction Inequality And Marriage Equality, Seema Mohapatra J.D., Mph

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In Obergefell v. Hodges, Justice Kennedy declared that “marriage is fundamental under the Constitution and [should] apply with equal force to same-sex couples.” This Article examines how the advent of marriage equality may impact the rights of same-sex couples to have biological children via assisted reproduction and surrogacy. Specifically, this Article points out the ways that the Obergefell decision affects the law of infertility. By the law of infertility, I mean the laws that require insurance coverage of infertility treatments and other assisted reproductive technologies (“ART”). Because same-sex couples are not able to have biological children with each other …

Parents, Babies, And More Parents, June Carbone, Naomi Cahn

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This Article makes two basic points. First, the three-parent family is here. Once states accept that parenthood does not depend on either biology or marriage, then three parents are inevitable unless the states go out of their way to rule that adults who otherwise meet their definitions of parenthood will not be recognized. Second, as three-parent family recognition increases, there are difficult questions on how to manage the status of each parent. This difficulty arises because the two major trends in the family law—the recognition of a multiplicity of family forms and the insistence on parental equality—are on a collision …

Obergefell’S Ambiguous Impact On Legal Parentage, Leslie Joan Harris

Chicago-Kent Law Review

For more than thirty years, the central questions of the law of parentage have been when and to what extent determinations of legal parenthood should be based on biological relationship, marriage to a child’s biological parent, or functioning as or intending to be a parent. In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court endorsed the claim that children whose parents are married are better off socially and legally than nonmarital children; its language could easily be taken to support legal rules that encourage or prefer childrearing within marriage. On the other hand, the Court’s argument assumes that the same-sex couple—both members—are …

Romantic Discrimination And Children, Solangel Maldonado

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In recent years, social scientists have used online dating sites to study the role of race in the dating and marriage market. This research has revealed a racialized and gendered hierarchy that disproportionately excludes African-Americans and Asian-American men. For decades, other researchers have studied the risks and outcomes for children who are raised in single-parent homes as compared to children raised by married parents.

Drawing on these studies, this Essay explores how racial preferences in the dating and marriage market potentially disadvantage the children of middle-class African-American women who lack or reject opportunities to intermarry relative to children of married …

Quacking Like A Duck? Functional Parenthood Doctrine And Same-Sex Parents, Katharine K. Baker

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This Article unpacks the relationship between the functional parenthood doctrine, constitutionally protected parental autonomy rights and intent-to-parent tests as they are applied in same-sex parenting relationships. It argues that, with the advent of same-sex marriage and second parent adoption, the functional parent doctrine is unnecessary and ultimately counterproductive to anyone interested in expanding legal recognition of non-traditional family forms. The functional parent doctrine asks courts to employ traditional understandings of parenthood (“Who acted like a parent?”) in assigning parental status.

These traditional understandings are usually, if not inevitably, dyadic, heteronormative, genetic, and gendered. In practice, the functional parent doctrine undermines …

Reforming The Processes For Challenging Voluntary Acknowledgments Of Paternity, Jeffrey A. Parness, David A. Saxe

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Voluntary acknowledgements of paternity (VAPs) significantly determine male legal parentage at birth for many children born of sex to unwed mothers in the United States. VAP processes are chiefly dictated by the federal Social Security Act, which places certain mandates on states participating in federally-subsidized welfare programs. These processes include norms on effective VAP establishments and on VAP disestablishments, either via early rescissions (within sixty days) by signatories or via later contests (after sixty days) by challengers, including signatories. The norms are driven by the Act’s desire to increase reimbursements of state child welfare payments from unwed fathers regardless of …

Judicial Discretion V. Predictable Outcomes: A Review Of The 2016 Amendments To The Illinois Marriage And Dissolution Of Marriage Act, David E. Braden

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In 2015, the Illinois General Assembly comprehensively amended the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act (IMDMA). Illinois legislators cited a desire to increase predictable outcomes and to minimize adversarial litigation as primary goals for passing this overall to Illinois’s marriage and divorce law. This Comment evaluates how the amendments advance the stated legislative goals of increasing predictable outcomes and minimizing litigation while maintaining flexibility for fact-specific decision-making through judicial discretion. While the results are mixed, this Comment identifies changes in key provisions to which practicing attorneys should take note.

A Practical Solution To The Marriage Penalty, Margaret Ryznar

Pepperdine Law Review

In the federal income tax code, there is a marriage penalty resulting from tax brackets that do not double upon marriage. This marriage penalty persists despite universal condemnation of it, penalizing a significant portion of married women who work and many same-sex couples. This Article proposes a novel way to deal with this marriage penalty by creating a filing status for dual income couples that earn an amount within a particular percentage of each other. This filing status would be the same as the current married filing status, except it would double the rates of single filers by accommodating two …

The Empirics Of Child Custody, Margaret Ryznar

Cleveland State Law Review

Child custody issues are as American as apple pie, with only a quarter of children seeing their parents married until the end. The legal standard for custody is the best interests of the child, but the greyness of this inquiry allows courts to make difficult judgments. In family law, such discretionary standards govern factually diverse cases and make it difficult to draw conclusions from individual cases. This Article offers an objective measurement in family law by empirically examining a sample of Indiana divorce cases filed during three months in 2008 that involved children. The resulting analysis of child custody and …

The New Phoenix: Maine's Innovative Standards For Guardians Ad Litem, Dana E. Prescott

Maine Law Review

In a 2014 article in the Maine Law Review, the author reviewed the historical and legal foundations for guardian ad litem (GAL) appointments by judges on behalf of children in Maine. GALs are appointed to provide the court with investigative facts and recommendations concerning the best interest of a child. The implications and frustrations expressed during political and policy discussions reflect a broader national debate deeply rooted in the power of family law courts when child custody or abuse and neglect are alleged. Whether in the form of child protection or child custody litigation, the sheer volume and complexity of …

Criminal Law As Family Law, Andrea L. Dennis

Georgia State University Law Review

The criminal justice system has morphed dramatically over the last several decades, achieving more pervasive control over the lives of individuals than ever before. The expansion began with the proliferation of criminal statutes, generating the now well-known concept of over-criminalization. The expansion also encompassed increasing the range of possible sanctions for criminal misbehavior and creating overlapping enforcement regimes. Two more instances of criminal justice expansion include mass surveillance and policies and practices that swept youth out of the juvenile justice system and into the criminal justice system. A product of the expansion has been mass incarceration; more individuals than at …

Formal Declarations Of Intended Childcare Parentage, Jeffrey A. Parness

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

This Essay first reviews current state imprecise childcare parentage laws and then considers the importance of parental intentions in such laws. This Essay goes on to suggest new mechanisms for formal declarations of intended childcare parentage. Such declarations would not necessarily determine childcare parentage under law. Still, they would be quite helpful when courts assess earlier actions when determining imprecise childcare parentage issues.

Overcoming Biased Views Of Gender And Victimhood In Custody Evaluations When Domestic Violence Is Alleged, Ruth Leah Perrin

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.