Law Commons^™

Resulting And Constructive Trusts In The Contemporary Singaporean Family Context, Man Yip

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The legal rules that emerge in a society are shaped by the conditions of that society. In the area of trusts law, this chapter argues that the English principles of the presumed resulting trust and the common intention constructive trust have been adapted to suit the Singaporean family context. At first sight, given that Singapore law has declined to follow the Stack v Dowden line of developments that have taken place in English law concerning beneficial ownership of family property, it may appear that Singapore trusts law is more conservative and that pre-Stack English law is better preserved on Singapore …

Irrationalities In Legal Parentage: Gender Identity And Beyond, Jeffrey A. Parness

College of Law Faculty Publications

This Article is the first to outline the irrationalities in many new and old parentage laws. Irrationalities often arise when the laws employ gendered terms like mother and father, husband and wife, man and woman, and male and female. These terms require a parent to be gender identified by the state, even when such an identity clashes with the parent’s own gender identification. More importantly, these gendered terms frequently clash with public policies underlying parentage laws, new and old, that are not dependent upon any form of gender identity.

Beyond gender identity, irrationalities also arise when there are distinctions without …

Marketing Research And Children’S Consumer Privacy Rights: A Battle In The Digital Age, Hadley Johnson

Child and Family Law Journal

Advancements in technology and social media have led to a decreased level of personal data privacy. Companies are now provided with limitless ways to extract information about their customers, even without their knowledge. This is especially concerning when it is the personal information of a child that is being collected, as in the United States, few regulations exist to protect them on social media. Even fewer regulations exist to protect children between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. The purpose of this Note is to discuss the importance between market research practices and children’s consumer privacy rights in the digital …

Floridians' Right To Choose Or Refuse Vaccinations, Patrick E. Tolan Jr.

Child and Family Law Journal

Every state must strike the right balance between an individual's freedom to make medical choices and the state's role in protecting the public health and the welfare of its people. Florida, by and through its Constitution, has afforded heightened protections for individual self-determination over medical treatment decisions and evaluates infringement of these private medical rights with strict scrutiny. This article is about legal rights for adults to obtain or refuse vaccines and for parents to decide the timing or administration of any vaccine or group of vaccines proposed for their school-aged, preschool, newborn, or unborn children.

I argue that States …

Parental Alienation In Family Court: Attacking Expert Testimony, John E.B. Myers, Jean Mercer

Child and Family Law Journal

In child custody litigation, when a parent raises the possibility of child abuse, the accused parent may respond that the parent wo has raised the possibility of abuse is alienating the child in an effort to gain an unfair advantage in court. The parent accused of abuse may offer expert testimony on parental alienation. A voluminous and contentious social science literature exists on parental alienation. Family law attorneys often lack ready access to social science literature. The purpose of this article is to give family law attorneys information from the parental alienation literature that can be used to cross-examine experts …

Hopefully Enduring: How North Carolina’S Divorce Laws Violate The First Amendment, Maren H. Lowrey

Child and Family Law Journal

The phrase “til death do us part” is both poetic and aspirational. It is the ubiquitous vow Americans make to one another when they marry[1] and embark on what is “hopefully enduring.”[2] But life does not always meet the aspirational marks we set and that is most true in the context of marriage and divorce. Each state enjoys nearly exclusive control over this intimate relationship, which results in different regulatory schemes across the United States.[3] Changes in Supreme Court jurisprudence over time ensured state regulation of marriage did not run afoul of the Constitution.[4] These decisions …

Suspension Of Citizenship: Ethical Concerns In International Commercial Surrogacy And The Legal Possibility Of Stateless Children, Rachael Curtin

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Legal issues often exist in ethical gray areas. Advancements in reproductive technologies have increased family-building options for those that were previously unable to procreate. Similarly, globalization has increased family-placement options for children in the adoption context. However, when assisted reproductive technologies advance in a globalized world without regulation or international cooperation, international com- mercial surrogacy arrangements are governed by contractual systems that often protect the commissioning parties, rather than those who are most vulnerable and in need of protections. This Note examines how the current lack of international regulation and cooperation in the international commercial surrogacy context can leave children …

Making The Case For Paid Parental Leave In The United States, Jane Johnson, Sarah Calvert

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

Despite being one of the most influential countries in the world, the United States is still one of only three developed countries that does not mandate paid parental leave on a federal level. Although some federal legislation does offer unpaid leave, these laws are insufficient to meet the needs of working parents. This paper examines existing parental leave laws to highlight the duration of leave and methods of funding used by some U.S. states and other countries worldwide. We also review multiple studies that demonstrate benefits of paid parental leave for both parents and children. This paper ends with a …

The Current Status Of Women In Morocco And How It Can Be Improved, Amanda Maia

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My paper will explore the conditions of gender minorities in Morocco through representation, NGOs, social structures, and resources therein to support the progress of acquiring more rights for these demographics. With an emphasis on the status of women in Morocco. My main questions as it stands are: What are the living conditions for women in Morocco and how can they be improved? What progress has been and still can be made to improve the quality of life and foster joy for these demographics in Morocco? Since the 1990s, there has been significant progress in Morocco to improve Family Law and …

Achieving Equality Without A Constitution: Lessons From Israel For Queer Family Law, Laura T. Kessler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

How might the United States reconcile conflicts between equality and religious freedom in the realm of family law? To answer this question, this chapter considers recent developments in family (personal status) law in Israel. While Israel may at first blush appear to be the last place that feminists and queer theorists should look for solutions to modern conflicts between democratic and religious values, this chapter argues that the Israeli experience has much to offer critical family scholars working to develop pluralistic legal approaches to family regulation. Israel is a country with a diverse population and unique political and legal context …

Who Is A Parent? Intrastate And Interstate Differences, Jeffrey A. Parness

College of Law Faculty Publications

When the parental status of one or more people involved in a civil action is contested in a court in the United States, the need for a legal parentage determination arises. In these contests, legal parentage can differ from personally and/or publicly perceived parentage. Legal parentage can also differ by context, as between child custody and child support settings. Legal parentage most often varies by context in a single American state where the purposes behind varying parentage laws differ, as where biology is key in one setting and parental like acts are key in another setting.

Parental status laws are …

Introduction: Family Court Review Special Issue Dynamic Pedagogy In The Family And Juvenile Law Classroom: Experiential And In-Class Exercises, Meredith Johnson Harbach

Law Faculty Publications

Over the last number of years, the legal academy has placed increasing emphasis on the need to diversify teaching methods, and in particular, has focused on expanding in-class, experiential teaching methods. Educational research confirms that learning experientially has multiple benefits for adult learners, including better retention of material, the ability to explore a more diverse range of representation contexts, the development and use of a broader range of analytical skills, and an emphasis professional collaboration and growth.1Consistent with this evolution of the scholarship on teaching and learning in law school, ABA Standard 303(a)(3) requires all students to complete“ one or …

Choosing Parentage Laws In Multistate Conduct Cases, Jeffrey A. Parness

College of Law Faculty Publications

This paper explores choosing parentage laws in multistate conduct cases in varying contexts, including cases involving parentage for childcare purpose and for such nonchildcare purposes as tort, probate and child support. Choice of law may be compelled by Full Faith and Credit. Where there is no compulsion, the forum choice of law rules typically apply. These rules, of course, can vary in a single state between contexts, as with parenthood in childcare and in probate settings. These rules can also vary between states in a single context, as with parentage in tort settings. The paper seeks to provide guidance to …

Tributes To Family Law Scholars Who Helped Us Find Our Path, Thomas Oldham, Paul M. Kurtz

Scholarly Works

At some point after the virus struck, I had the idea that it would be appropriate and interesting to ask a number of experienced family law teachers to write a tribute about a more senior family law scholar whose work inspired them when they were beginning their careers. I mentioned this idea to some other long-term members of the professoriate, and they agreed that this could be a good project. So I reached out to some colleagues and asked them to participate. Many agreed to join the team. Some suggested other potential contributors, and some of these suggested faculty members …

Expanding State Parent Registry Laws, Jeffrey A. Parness

College of Law Faculty Publications

As with state recognized voluntary acknowledgements of parentage (VAPs) and state recognized assisted reproduction pacts (SRARPs) on childcare parentage for future or current children, state parent registries (PRs), often labeled putative paternity registries or putative father registries, embody declarations of expecting or current legal parenthood. Yet declarations on children in PRs often involve unilateral assertions, unlike dual parenthood declarations in VAPs. Actual parenthood under law for many PR declarants is never recognized because there are no simultaneous assertions by a second expecting or existing legal parent on the declarant’s parenthood, as with an assertion by an expecting or existing birth …

Frozen Embryos, Male Consent, And Masculinities, Dara Purvis

Journal Articles

Picture two men facing the possibility of unwanted fatherhood. One man agreed to go through in vitro fertilization with his partner, but years later has changed his mind. Despite the fact that the embryos created through IVF are his partner’s last chance to be a genetic parent, a court allows him to block her use of the embryos.

By contrast, another couple’s sexual relationship broke the law. The woman was a legal adult and her partner was a child, under the age of eighteen. Their encounter was thus statutory rape. Her crime led to pregnancy, and after she gave birth, …

The Institutions Of Family Law, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Family law scholarship is thriving, with scholars using varied methodologies to analyze intimate partner violence, cohabitation, child maltreatment, juvenile misconduct, and child custody, to name but a few areas of study. Despite the richness of this discourse, however, most family law scholars ignore a key tool deployed in virtually every other legal-academic domain: institutional analysis.

This methodology, which plays a foundational role in legal scholarship, focuses on four basic questions. Scholars often begin empirically, identifying the specific legal, social, and economic institutions that shape an area of legal regulation. Beyond descriptive accounts, scholars analyze how authority is and should be …

The Institutional Mismatch Of State Civil Courts, Colleen F. Shanahan, Jessica K. Steinberg, Alyx Mark, Anna E. Carpenter

Faculty Scholarship

State civil courts are central institutions in American democracy. Though designed for dispute resolution, these courts function as emergency rooms for social needs in the face of the failure of the legislative and executive branches to disrupt or mitigate inequality. We reconsider national case data to analyze the presence of social needs in state civil cases. We then use original data from courtroom observation and interviews to theorize how state civil courts grapple with the mismatch between the social needs people bring to these courts and their institutional design. This institutional mismatch leads to two roles of state civil courts …

The Institutions Of Family Law, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Family law scholarship is thriving, with scholars using varied methodologies to analyze intimate partner violence, cohabitation, child maltreatment, juvenile misconduct, and child custody, to name but a few areas of study. Despite the richness of this discourse, however, most family law scholars ignore a key tool deployed in virtually every other legal-academic domain: institutional analysis. This methodology, which plays a foundational role in legal scholarship, focuses on four basic questions. Scholars often begin empirically, identifying the specific legal, social, and economic institutions that shape an area of legal regulation. Beyond descriptive accounts, scholars analyze how authority is and should be …

The Negative Impact Of Service Member And Veteran Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Ptsd) Rating Or Specter Of Ptsd On Child Custody Arrangements, Erhan Bedestani

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

It Takes Two: Professional Interconnections And Potential Collaborations Between Small-Town Family Attorneys And Couple/Family Therapists, Wendy Lenk Mcclary

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Attorneys who specialize in family practice may experience significant rates of mood disorders and substance reliance. Law schools typically do not provide supportive coursework or mentoring to help students learn to manage their feelings and those of crisis-impacted clients. Lawyers may well consider that understanding emotional needs and providing emotional support does not fall within their codes of practice. Societal stigma may prevent family attorneys and their clients from seeking therapy. Small-town attorneys may be particularly vulnerable to professional stress and safety concerns. The purpose of this study was to explore and understand the lived experiences of family attorneys practicing …

Common Law Divorce, Michael J. Higdon

Scholarly Works

Common law marriage has existed in the United for more than 200 years. Although not permitted as widely today, every state continues to recognize a common law marriage from one of the handful of states that still permit parties to wed in this informal manner. In contrast, never has there been anything even approaching common law divorce—and for good reason. Namely, the states’ desire to ensure that those who leave unsuccessful marriages do so in such a way that their interests (as well as their children’s) are adequately protected. Nonetheless, even though not sanctioned by law, informal divorce not only …

Termination Of Parental Rights As A Private Remedy: Rationales, Realities, And Remedies, Deirdre M. Smith

Faculty Publications

Terminating a parent’s rights—a drastic measure—is commonly associated with public child welfare proceedings, where a state or county child protective services agency has removed a child from their home based on findings of abuse or neglect. In fact, state laws across the country also permit private individuals to petition a court to terminate another person’s parental rights. While private termination actions are not uncommon, there has been scant scholarly examination of these matters, their underlying purposes, and their role in contemporary family law. Termination of parental rights orders in any context interfere with parents’ fundamental constitutional rights, but parents in …

Diy Artificial Insemination: The Not-So-Great Gatsby, Jeffrey A. Parness

College of Law Faculty Publications

Increasingly, intended parentage by female couples, married and unmarried, and by single women, is pursued via do-it-yourself (DIY) artificial insemination (AI) that utilizes sperm donors (who may be unknown). A recent ruling illustrates the difficulties arising from incomplete AI statutes. In Gatsby v. Gatsby in 2021, the Idaho Supreme Court determined legal parentage for a child born via AI to a married female couple who later divorced. The Gatsby ruling is troublesome on several fronts. Its problems highlight the difficulties facing intended childcare parents employing AI in the United States, especially for those without significant financial resources and women, coupled …

Debt Governance, Wealth Management, And The Uneven Burdens Of Child Support, Allison Anna Tait

Law Faculty Publications

Child support is a ubiquitous kind of debt, common to all income and wealth levels, with data showing that approximately 30% of the U.S. adult population has either been subject to paying child support or has received it. Across this field of child support debt, however, unpaid obligations look different for everyone, and in particular the experiences around child support debt diverge radically for low-income populations and high-wealth ones. On the low-income end of the spectrum, child support debt is a sophisticated and adaptive governance technology that disciplines and penalizes those living in or near poverty. Being in child support …

Unsexing Breastfeeding, Naomi Schoenbaum

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

For half a century, constitutional sex equality doctrine has been combating harmful sex stereotypes by invalidating laws that treat women as caregivers and men as breadwinners. Yet decades after the constitutional sex equality revolution unsexed parenting roles, one area of parenting has escaped this doctrine’s exacting gaze: breastfeeding. Beginning in the 1990s in the wake of public health efforts to promote breastfeeding, a raft of laws were enacted, from insurance coverage mandates under the Affordable Care Act to workplace accommodations under the Fair Labor Standards Act, that provide substantial breastfeeding protections and benefits, but only to women. Although the sexed …

The Institutional Mismatch Of State Civil Courts, Colleen F. Shanahan, Jessica Steinberg, Alyx Mark, Anna E. Carpenter

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

State civil courts are central institutions in American democracy. Though designed for dispute resolution, these courts function as emergency rooms for social needs in the face of the failure of the legislative and executive branches to disrupt or mitigate inequality. We reconsider national case data to analyze the presence of social needs in state civil cases. We then use original data from courtroom observation and interviews to theorize how state civil courts grapple with the mismatch between the social needs people bring to these courts and their institutional design. This institutional mismatch leads to two roles of state civil courts …

The Institutional Mismatch Of State Civil Courts, Colleen Shanahan, Jessica Steinberg, Alyx Mark, Anna E. Carpenter

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

State civil courts are central institutions in American democracy. Though designed for dispute resolution, these courts function as emergency rooms for social needs in the face of the failure of the legislative and executive branches to disrupt or mitigate inequality. We reconsider national case data to analyze the presence of social needs in state civil cases. We then use original data from courtroom observation and interviews to theorize how state civil courts grapple with the mismatch between the social needs people bring to these courts and their institutional design. This institutional mismatch leads to two roles of state civil courts …

Adopting Social Media In Family And Adoption Law, Stacey B. Steinberg, Meredith Burgess, Karla Herrera

UF Law Faculty Publications

Social media has dramatically changed the landscape facing families brought together through adoption. Just as adoptive families thirty years ago could not have predicted the impact of DNA technology on post-adoption family life, adoptive families are only now beginning to grasp the impact of social media connectivity on the lives of their growing children. This change is both related to social media’s impact on family life and fundamental shifts in our understandings about privacy more generally. Understanding the legal rights of parents and children in these circumstances is both a novel and underexplored issue for family law, constitutional law, and …