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Due Process Rights Of Parents And Children In International Child Abductions, Dorothy C. Daigle

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Rising divorce rates in recent years have led to increasingly frequent abductions of children by one parent away from the other parent. Often, abducting parents move the children to different jurisdictions in which the parents believe they can obtain a more favorable decision on custody. To remedy this problem, twenty-nine nations joined in 1980 to adopt the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. This Convention mandates the immediate return, upon request, of the abducted child to the state of habitual residence of the child. The Convention includes several limited exceptions to this mandate, applicable at the …

Texas Community Property Law: Conservative Attitudes, Reluctant Change, Joseph W. Mcknight

Law and Contemporary Problems

A senselessly rigid interpretation of a provision in the Texas consititution referring to a married woman's separate property has hampered development of community property law. The state's addressing of this issue is discussed.

Introduction: Family Law In The 1990s -- New Problems, Strong Solutions, L. Elizabeth Bowles

Vanderbilt Law Review

The 1992 Presidential campaign was fraught with references to "family values." While Vice President Quayle took on a fictional television character for choosing to have a child out of wedlock," candidate Clinton was vowing support for the Family Leave Bill and other pro- family measures. Although the political rhetoric of the 1992 campaign was partisan in nature, the emphasis placed on the family by the political parties reflects the seriousness of the problems facing the American family in the 1990s. The American family is not the same entity that it was twenty years ago. Now, "nontraditional" families, such as single …

Divorce Obligations And Bankruptcy Discharge: Rethinking The Support/Property Distinction, Jana B. Singer

Faculty Scholarship

The Bankruptcy Code currently divides divorce-related obligations into two categories: awards or agreements in the nature of support are non-dischargeable; obligations arising from property divisions can be discharged in the same manner as ordinary commercial debts. Because recent developments in family law have undermined the support/property distinction and because privately negotiated divorce agreements often fail to distinguish between payments intended to serve as support and those intended to distribute property, the Code's reliance on this classification often leads to confusion and hardship for divorce obligees. In addition, because of the rise of equitable distribution as the dominant method of allocating …

Domestic Violence, The Family And The Lawyering Process: Lessons From Studies On Gender Bias In The Courts, Karen Czapanskiy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Access To Legal Remedies. The Crisis In Family Law, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

Lack of access to the courts to resolve domestic disputes is a national problem which deserves the attention of both family law scholars and practitioners. Family law scholars have exhaustively critiqued both the substantive and procedural law governing dissolution proceedings. This analysis of rules and standards, however, is rarely conducted with the explicit goal of maximizing access to the courts for people of low and moderate income. This paper begins by assessing the dimensions of the problem through an explanation of the existing domestic legal needs studies. This paper also presents a case study of a typical multi-issue domestic case …

Evolution And Revolution In Family Law, Victoria M. Mather

Faculty Articles

Family law has significantly changed over the last twenty-five years, and certain areas will likely continue to change. Family law tends to follow, rather than lead, social upheaval and adjustment in family decisions and structures. The most important legal changes in family law are a result of massive shifts in American social, political, and economic constructs in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

Family law will continue to evolve because of three critical developments. First is the expansion of the concept of what constitutes a “family” in the modern context. Next is the treatment of children as autonomous individuals, separate and …

Implementing Custody Mediation In Family Court: Some Comments On The Jefferson County Family Court Experience, Louise Everett Graham

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The Jefferson Family Court's custody mediation service was developed as part of a larger program creating the first family court system in Kentucky. The mediation service's connection with the Family Court has influenced both practical and policy aspects of its development. Any description of the mediation project necessarily entails some description of the court system that created it.

This Article describes the structure of the Jefferson Family Court and the custody mediation process as it has developed in Jefferson County. A review of one community's approach to custody mediation may be useful not only as a blueprint for a system's …

Starting Down The Road To Reform: Kentucky's New Long-Arm Statute For Family Obligations, Louise Everett Graham

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Kentucky has long needed a comprehensive family law provision for its long-arm statute. Before the general long-arm statute was amended by the 1992 General Assembly, it addressed only a narrow class of paternity cases among its specific jurisdictional provisions, ignoring the need for long-arm jurisdiction in other domestic relations cases. A second long-arm statute provided jurisdiction over some nonresidents to establish or enforce child support obligations. In the contexts of divorce and child support, Kentucky's failure to claim constitutionally available jurisdiction deprived Kentucky residents of important protection.

Recent amendments to Kentucky statutes fill previous gaps and expand Kentucky's jurisdiction in …

State Interest Analysis And The Channeling Function, Carl E. Scheider

Book Chapters

In this article, I wish to criticize the narrowness of the Supreme Court's conception of the interests states may advance to justify statutes challenged on constitutional privacy grounds. I also wish to identify and describe one of the several state interests that not infrequently undergirds such legislation but that the Court has failed to understand.