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Articles 1 - 19 of 19
Full-Text Articles in Family Law
Inheritance Equity: Reforming The Inheritance Penalties Facing Children In Non-Traditional Families, Danaya C. Wright
Inheritance Equity: Reforming The Inheritance Penalties Facing Children In Non-Traditional Families, Danaya C. Wright
Danaya C. Wright
This Article examines how more than 50% of children living today may be disadvantaged by 1950s era inheritance laws that privilege and protect only those children living in nuclear families with their biological parents. Because so many children today are living in blended families — single-parent families, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer/questioning (LGBTQ) families, or are living with relatives — their right to inherit from the persons who function as their parents are severely limited by most state probate codes, even though they would likely be entitled to child support under the parent-child definitions of most of those states' …
First Parents: Reconceptualizing Newborn Adoption, James G. Dwyer
First Parents: Reconceptualizing Newborn Adoption, James G. Dwyer
James G. Dwyer
No abstract provided.
Grasping Fatherhood In Abortion And Adoption, Malinda L. Seymore
Grasping Fatherhood In Abortion And Adoption, Malinda L. Seymore
Malinda L. Seymore
Biology makes a mother, but it does not make a father. While a mother is a legal parent by reason of her biological relationship with her child, a father is not a legal parent unless he takes affirmative steps to grasp fatherhood. Being married to the mother at the time of conception or at the time of birth is one of those affirmative steps. But if he is not married to the mother, he must do far more before he will be legally recognized as a father. Biology is often presented as a sufficient reason for this dichotomy--it is easy …
Grasping Fatherhood In Abortion And Adoption.Pdf, Malinda L. Seymore
Grasping Fatherhood In Abortion And Adoption.Pdf, Malinda L. Seymore
Malinda L. Seymore
The One-Size-Fits-All Family, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
The One-Size-Fits-All Family, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
Margaret F Brinig
Family policy and the law based on it assume universals. That is, if marriage improves the welfare of the majority of couples and their children, it is worth pushing as a policy initiative. Further, laws will be written (or kept on the books) that privilege marriage over other family forms. Similarly, research that tells us that divorce harms children except following the relatively small number of highly conflicted marriages, spawns efforts to preserve troubled marriages or even to roll back liberal or relatively inexpensive divorce laws. With yet another example, since adopted children mostly do better than children left either …
Openness In International Adoption, Malinda L. Seymore
Openness In International Adoption, Malinda L. Seymore
Malinda L. Seymore
After a long history of secrecy in domestic adoption in the United States, there is a robust trend toward openness. That is, however, not the case with international adoption. The recent growth in international adoption has been spurred, at least in part, by the desire of adoptive parents to return to closed, confidential adoptions where the identity of the birth mother is secret and there is no ongoing contact with her. There is, however, an emergent interest in increased openness in international adoption, spurred by the success of domestic open adoptions, health concerns when an adoptee's genetic history is important, …
Termination Of Parental Rights, J. Smithburn
If Black Is So Special, Then Why Isn't It In The Rainbow?, Sharon E. Rush
If Black Is So Special, Then Why Isn't It In The Rainbow?, Sharon E. Rush
Sharon E. Rush
In the modern day, defining "family" becomes less of a theoretical debate when one's own family unit is different from the traditional married, middle-class mother and father with their biological children. For non-traditional families, redefining family takes on enormous practical significance and may actually enable people to create families. Laws permitting transracial adoptions and surrogacy are illustrative. Moreover, a broader definition of family provides greater legal security to non-traditional families. Without such legal protection, non-traditional families live in fear of traditional laws tearing them apart. Rather than using a standard that promotes hegemony in custody disputes, decisionmakers should become aware …
Cracks In The Cost Structure Of Agency Adoption, Andrea B. Carroll
Cracks In The Cost Structure Of Agency Adoption, Andrea B. Carroll
Andrea Beauchamp Carroll
No abstract provided.
Legal Status And Effect On Children, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
Legal Status And Effect On Children, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
Margaret F Brinig
One of the haunting claims of each poor, unmarried mother in Edin and Kefalas' Promises I Can Keep is that at least she can guarantee she will love her child, even though she cannot promise to make a lifelong commitment to a mate. That love, each young mother says, will be a sustaining gift both to her and the child. Similarly, in work done by sociologists McLanahan and Garfinkel to counteract the claim that it was not single parenting that made children's prospects dim, but poverty, sociologists have found that many of the bad effects of single parenting go away …
How Much Does Legal Status Matter? Adoptions By Kin Caregivers, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
How Much Does Legal Status Matter? Adoptions By Kin Caregivers, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
Margaret F Brinig
No abstract provided.
The Role Of Socioeconomics In Teaching Family Law, Margaret F. Brinig
The Role Of Socioeconomics In Teaching Family Law, Margaret F. Brinig
Margaret F Brinig
No abstract provided.
Parents: Trusted But Not Trustees Or (Foster) Parents As Fiduciaries, Margaret F. Brinig
Parents: Trusted But Not Trustees Or (Foster) Parents As Fiduciaries, Margaret F. Brinig
Margaret F Brinig
Some fifteen years ago, Elizabeth and Robert Scott wrote an important article making the case that parents could be usefully described using a fiduciary model. This paper explains why their model fits foster parents better than biological or adoptive parents, at least in the sense that Tamar Frankel explains in her new book on fiduciary law.
Bringing Up Baby: Adoption, Marriage, And The Best Interests Of The Child, Robin Fretwell Wilson, W. Bradford Wilcox
Bringing Up Baby: Adoption, Marriage, And The Best Interests Of The Child, Robin Fretwell Wilson, W. Bradford Wilcox
Robin Fretwell Wilson
In the piece, Professor Brad Wilcox and I ask who should care for children when their biological parents cannot? This is a question of potentially explosive dimensions under new definitions of legal parentage proposed in this volume of the WILLIAM & MARY BILL OF RIGHTS JOURNAL. This question is also important today for evaluating state adoption laws. A significant number of states bar consideration of a prospective adopter’s marital or non-marital status. We believe these laws miss an important opportunity to maximize the best interests of each child being placed. In this piece, we take an exclusively child-centered approach, drawing …
Meeting The Challenges Of Adoption In An Internet Age, Mary Kate Kearney, Arrielle Millstein
Meeting The Challenges Of Adoption In An Internet Age, Mary Kate Kearney, Arrielle Millstein
Mary Kate Kearney
No abstract provided.
To Grandmother’S House We Go: Grandparent Visitation After Stepparent Adoption, Peter Zablotsky
To Grandmother’S House We Go: Grandparent Visitation After Stepparent Adoption, Peter Zablotsky
Peter Zablotsky
No abstract provided.
Credit For Motherhood, Melissa Jacoby
Credit For Motherhood, Melissa Jacoby
Melissa B. Jacoby
This essay builds on prior work exploring the impact of consumer lenders who sell credit products for assisted reproduction and adoption. After reviewing some basic attributes of the parenthood lending market, the essay discusses how not-for-profit lenders promote traditional conceptions of motherhood and the division of carework in ways that credit discrimination laws were not designed to address. The essay also articulates some incentives of for-profit lenders to sell motherhood and potential implications for women who are ambivalent about becoming parents.
Adoption, Identity, And The Constitution: The Case For Opening Closed Records, Naomi R. Cahn, Jana B. Singer
Adoption, Identity, And The Constitution: The Case For Opening Closed Records, Naomi R. Cahn, Jana B. Singer
Jana B. Singer
No abstract provided.
The Debt Financing Of Parenthood, Melissa B. Jacoby
The Debt Financing Of Parenthood, Melissa B. Jacoby
Melissa B. Jacoby
In this contribution to the symposium Show Me the Money: Making Markets in Forbidden Exchange, I explore an under-appreciated participant in the assisted reproduction and adoption industries: consumer lenders. Through fertility clinics and other service providers, financial institutions market and distribute loans specifically to finance acquisition of treatments, drugs, and human eggs. Adoption foundations and agencies advertise for-profit loans to intended parents, while small foundations offer adoption loans that appear to be low-cost financially but may condition loan approval on intended parent characteristics such as religious observance, marital status, sexual orientation, and adherence to traditional gender roles. After discussing how …