Law Commons^™

Rideout V. Riendeau: Grandparent Visitation In Maine After Troxel, Theodore A. Small

Maine Law Review

Rideout v. Riendeau presented a case in which two grandparents, Rose and Chesley Rideout, sought visitation of their three grandchildren. Though the Rideouts had served as the childrens' “primary caregivers and custodians” for significant periods of time, the childrens' parents, Heaven-Marie Riendeau, who was the Rideouts' daughter, and Jeffrey Riendeau, ended all contact between the children and the Rideouts due to a strained relationship between the Rideouts and the Riendeaus. The Rideouts filed a complaint pursuant to Maine's Grandparents Visitation Act (the Act), which allows grandparents to bring a petition for visitation when there is a “sufficient existing relationship between …

Mediator Or Judge?: California’S Mandatory Mediation Statute In Child Custody Disputes, Sofya Perelshteyn

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This article will argue that mandatory mediation offers important benefits, including lightening the overloaded court system and capitalizing on the flexibility and personalization of mediation in certain kinds of disputes. This article will also discuss how allowing the mediator to provide recommendations to the judge after unsuccessful negotiations can shatter the basic tenets of mediation and create an altogether different process for the dispute. Furthermore, it will argue that California’s mandatory mediation statute creates a system more akin to litigation, since the parties are presenting their case to a mediator who wears the hat of both mediator and judge. In …

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 …

Improper Delegation Of Judicial Authority In Child Custody Cases: Finally Overturned, Dale Margolin Cecka

Law Faculty Publications

"The appellate courts of this Commonwealth are not unlit rooms where attorneys may wander blindly about, hoping to stumble upon a reversible error."

These words of Judge Humphreys, denying a 2016 child custody appeal, are cogent. Yet four months later, in another appeal, Judge Humphreys joined a unanimous decision overturning a common provision in a custody order. In Bonhotel v. Watts, the Court of Appeals of Virginia held that judges cannot delegate judicial decision making power in child custody cases to outside professionals. This sounds obvious, but such delegation is actually ordered all the time. In final orders, Virginia's trial …

Rights Of Incarcerated Parents, Angélica Cházaro

Chapters in Books

This chapter discusses the childcare and custody rights of incarcerated parents. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, an estimated 809,800 state and federal prisoners were parents to children under the age of eighteen in 2007. There are approximately 1,706,600 children under the age of eighteen who have a parent in prison.

As a parent in prison, you may fear that your child will not be cared for, that you will lose your child, or that your relationship with your child will suffer while you are incarcerated. This Chapter focuses on New York state law and describes how the law …

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.

The Strange Life Of Stanley V. Illinois: A Case Study In Parent Representation And Law Reform, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

This Article helps describe the growth of parent representation through an analysis of Stanley v. Illinois — the foundational Supreme Court case that established parental fitness as the constitutional lynchpin of any child protection case. The Article begins with Stanley’s trial court litigation, which illustrates the importance of vigorous parental representation and an effort by the court to prevent Stanley from obtaining an attorney. It proceeds to analyze how family courts applied it (or not) in the years following the Supreme Court’s decision and what factors have led to a recent resurgence of Stanley’s fitness focus.

Despite Stanley …

Chickens And Eggs: Does Custody Move Support, Or Vise-Versa?, Margaret Brinig

Journal Articles

Most, if not all, of the theoretical work on child support presupposes that it becomes an issue only when couples separate, that is, that the flow moves between custody and child support and that the duty to make monetary payments is typically owed by the noncustodial parent. (I realize, of course, that there can be issues regarding the identity of the payor and that there are criminal and civil actions possible when parents refuse or neglect to provide support to dependent children.) Some empirical work confirms the relationship between the two. For example, Judith Seltzer, Weiss and Willis, and Brinig …

Early Childhood Development And The Law, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Early childhood development is a robust and vibrant focus of study in multiple disciplines, from economics and education to psychology and neuroscience. Abundant research from these disciplines has established that early childhood is critical for the development of cognitive abilities, language, and psychosocial skills, all of which turn, in large measure, on the parent-child relationship. And because early childhood relationships and experiences have a deep and lasting impact on a child’s life trajectory, disadvantages during early childhood replicate inequality. Working together, scholars in these disciplines are actively engaged in a national policy debate about reducing inequality through early childhood interventions. …