Family Law Commons^™

Executive Order 13563 Creates Access To Affordable Child Support Orders For Incarcerated Parents, Cory Holifield

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Former President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13563: Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review in his last month of presidency, prohibit- ing States from treating incarceration as voluntary when considering a par- ent’s request for a modification of his or her child support order. Although fully expected to, President Donald Trump has yet to act on the executive order, which right-wing politicians fought vehemently against for two years. This Comment argues that the President should leave the order in action be- cause it will promote payment of child support and relationships between non- custodial parents and their children, as well as …

Adopting Civil Damages: Wrongful Family Separation In Adoption, Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

The Trump Administration’s new immigration policy of family separation at the U.S./Mexico border rocked the summer of 2018. Yet family separation is the prerequisite to every legal adoption. The circumstances are different, of course. In legal adoption, the biological parents are provided with all the constitutional protections required in involuntary termination of parental rights, or they have voluntarily consented to family separation. But what happens when that family separation is wrongful, when the birth mother’s consent is not voluntary, or when the birth father’s wishes to parent are ignored? In theory, the child can be returned to the birth parents …

Review Of "Jean Paton And The Struggle To Reform American Adoption", Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

Book Review Extract:

Wayne Carp is rightly celebrated as the official historian of American adoption reform. He continues his important work, begun with Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption in 1998 and continued with Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation and Ballot Initiative 58 in 2004, with a look at the life and times of Jean Paton, a reformer of the 1950s. Carp credits her with a litany of “firsts”: the first to recognize and study adult adoptees; the first to critique the “chosen child” concept; the first to create an organization devoted to adult adoptees; the first …