Law Commons^™

The Irrationality Of Child Support Enforcement In The United States: Harming Children And Punishing The Poor, Hannah Pitcher

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Pragmatic Family Law, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Family law is a central battleground for a polarized America, with seemingly endless conflict over abortion, parental control of school curricula, gender-affirming health care for children, and similar flash points. This is hardly surprising for an area of law that implicates fundamental concerns about equality, bodily autonomy, sexual liberty, gender norms, parenting, and religion. Polarization poses significant risks to children and families, but centering contestation obscures another important reality. In many areas of doctrine and policy, family law has managed to avoid polarization, even for politically and socially combustible issues. Instead, states are converging on similar rules and policies, working …

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

Northwestern University Law Review

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 …

Absent Fathers And Child Maintenance Rights In The Copperbelt Province Of Zambia: The Dilemma Of A Postcolonial Bemba Matrilineal Practice, Mutale Mulenga-Kaunda

Zambia Social Science Journal

Being matrilineal and matrilocal, the Bemba people believe that “children belong to the mother”. This cultural belief and practice is so resilient that even in the event of divorce men have lost paternity rights to their children. Colonisation shifted Bemba women’s status as men were forced to migrate to work in the mines on the Copperbelt, leaving women to raise children as single mothers often without support from their absent husbands. Yet, even though Bemba people believe that children belong to the mother, the responsibility of raising children was traditionally shared with the father of the child. In postcolonial Zambia, …

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 …

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 …

Child Support And Joint Physical Custody, Raymond C. O'Brien

Catholic University Law Review

Child custody has evolved to the point where, at a minimum, states provide a mediated process by which parents may formulate parenting plans with court-appointed assistance. At a maximum state legislatures and courts increasingly consider joint physical custody awards. While joint physical custody safeguards the fundamental rights of parents, it nonetheless prompts practical concerns in awarding child support. Today, child support begins with state statutory guidelines, but the guidelines often fail to adequately address the economic consequences of two complete residences, one supported by a parent with fewer economic resources, and the fact that oftentimes the child drifts from one …

Family Law By The Numbers: The Story That Casebooks Tell, Laura T. Kessler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents the findings of a content analysis of 86 family law casebooks published in the United States from 1960 to 2019. Its purpose is to critically assess the discipline of family law with the aim of informing our understandings of family law’s history and exposing its ideological foundations and consequences. Although legal thinkers have written several intellectual histories of family law, this is the first quantitative look at the field.

The study finds that coverage of marriage and divorce in family law casebooks has decreased by almost half relative to other topics since the 1960s. In contrast, pages …

Family Law Disputes Between International Couples In U.S. Courts, Rhonda Wasserman

Articles

Increasing mobility, migration, and growing numbers of international couples give rise to a host of family law issues. For instance, when marital partners are citizens of different countries, or live outside the country of which they are citizens, or move between countries, courts must first determine if they have jurisdiction to hear divorce or child custody actions. Given that countries around the world are governed by different legal regimes, such as the common law system, civil codes, religious law, and customary law, choice of law questions also complicate family litigation. This short article addresses the jurisdictional and other conflicts issues …

Getting Blood From Stones: Results And Policy Implications Of An Empirical Investigation Of Child Support Practice In St. Joseph County, Indiana Paternity Actions, Margaret F. Brinig, Marsha Garrison

Journal Articles

Today, there is consensus that the current system of calculating and enforcing support obligations does not work well for disadvantaged families, most of which are nonmarital. Nonmarital children are less likely to have support orders established than marital children, and they are much less likely to experience full payment.

In this paper, we report data on parenting time, child support calculation, and enforcement actions in a population of nonmarital children for whom paternity actions were brought, in 2008 or 2010, in St. Joseph County, Indiana. The computerized, court-based record system we utilized to collect data gave us access to information …

Fisco V. Department Of Human Services: The Inequity Of Equitable Defenses In Child Support Arrearage Cases, Rebecca C. Raskin

Maine Law Review

On August 8, 1995, using a federal law targeting the most egregious deadbeat fathers, FBI agents arrested Jeffrey Nichols for failing to pay approximately $580,000 in child support. Although the law is fairly new, the problem of child support enforcement has troubled this country for decades. In the early 1970s, child support enforcement was so inadequate that the federal government spent $7.6 billion annually on welfare to provide for single parents. The government has tried to remedy the problem, but seventy-five percent of custodial mothers in this country continue either to lack child support orders or to receive less than …

The “Legal Stranger” And Parent: A Love Story?, Kellie Mahoney

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reforming The Processes For Challenging Voluntary Acknowledgments Of Paternity, Jeffrey A. Parness, David A. Saxe

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Voluntary acknowledgements of paternity (VAPs) significantly determine male legal parentage at birth for many children born of sex to unwed mothers in the United States. VAP processes are chiefly dictated by the federal Social Security Act, which places certain mandates on states participating in federally-subsidized welfare programs. These processes include norms on effective VAP establishments and on VAP disestablishments, either via early rescissions (within sixty days) by signatories or via later contests (after sixty days) by challengers, including signatories. The norms are driven by the Act’s desire to increase reimbursements of state child welfare payments from unwed fathers regardless of …

In The "Best Interests" Of The Disabled: Legislating Morality And The Power To Initiate Support Orders For Disabled Adults In Ohio, Kalynne Proctor

Cleveland State Law Review

Today’s reality is that many families have children who are faced with disabling conditions that prevent them from relinquishing their dependency on others. Often, the need for specialized treatment and care does not terminate once a severely disabled child reaches adulthood. While typically parents are relieved of their legal parental obligations to their adult-aged children, this is not the same case for parents with severely disabled children. In some respects, Ohio has recognized the financial difficulties divorced parents face when they are the sole caregivers of disabled adult children. Although Ohio law requires that the noncustodial parent in a divorce …

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Daugirdas Kristina, Julian Davis Mortenson

Articles

In this section: • Congress Overrides Obama’s Veto to Pass Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act • U.S. Federal Court of Appeals Upholds United Nations’ Immunity in Case Related to Cholera in Haiti • U.S.-Russian Agreements on Syria Break Down as the Syrian Conflict Continues • Russia Suspends Bilateral Agreement with United States on Disposal of Weapons-Grade Plutonium • The United States Makes Payment to Family of Italian Killed in CIA Air Strike • United States Ratifies Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance

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 …

Child Support Collections To Offset Out Of Home Placement Costs: A Study Of Cost Effectiveness, Trish Skophammer

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Families experiencing out-of-home placement (OHP) are in crisis. The fact that a child has been removed from the home means the family has become involved with the child welfare or juvenile justice system. Families that experience OHP are disproportionately poor, and the reasons for OHP often stem from poverty. Because OHP is expensive, and society values parental responsibility, federal and state laws require that parents be referred to the child support system to help offset the cost of OHP through child support collections. This study explores practices around OHP cases in the child support system and adds to the small …

Prenatal Abandonment: 'Horton Hatches The Egg' In The Supreme Court And Thirty-Four States, Mary M. Beck

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article addresses an issue critical to forty-one percent of fathers in the United States: prenatal abandonment. Under prenatal abandonment theory, fathers can lose their parental rights to non-marital children if they do not provide prenatal support to the mothers of their children. This is true even if the mothers have not notified the fathers of the pregnancy and if the mothers or fathers are unsure of the fathers’ paternity. While this result may seem counterintuitive, it is necessitated by demographic trends. Prenatal abandonment theory has been structured to protect mothers, fathers, and fetuses in response to a number of …

Family Law, Allison Anna Tait

Law Faculty Publications

In the past year, Virginia courts have addressed a range of family law questions—new and old—that reflect the changing landscape of families and marriage. Questions related to same-sex marriage and divorce have begun to appear on Virginia court dockets, including an important case the Supreme Court of Virginia decided this year with respect to same-sex couples cohabiting and the termination of spousal support. Family law courts also saw shifts in gender norms—wives paying spousal support to their husbands and fathers being awarded physical custody of their children. These legal questions tested the limits of statutory language and helped to expand …

Valdez V. Aguilar, 132 Nev. Adv. Op. 37 (May 26, 2016), Kory Koerperich

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined that NRS 425.360(4) does not exempt a noncustodial parent, who receives public assistance, from a court-ordered child support obligation to the custodial parent of their child. NRS 425.360(4) only exempts a parent from a debt for support owed to the Division of Welfare and Supportive Services.

Recent Development: Sieglein V. Schmidt: Pursuant To § 1-206(B) Of The Estates And Trusts Article, Artificial Insemination Encompasses In Vitro Fertilization Using Donated Sperm; A Court May Use The Goldberger Factors To Determine Voluntary Impoverishment; A Trial Court Can Issue A Permanent Injunction For Harassment Based On § 1-203(A) Of The Family Law Article., Virginia J. Yeoman

University of Baltimore Law Forum

The Court of Appeals of Maryland held that the term “artificial insemination” includes in vitro fertilization using donated sperm, and that a consenting husband is presumed to be the father of the child born as a result of the procedure. Sieglein v. Schmidt, 447 Md. 647, 652, 136 A.3d 751, 754 (2016). The court also held that the circuit court did not abuse its discretion in finding the husband to be voluntarily impoverished or in issuing a permanent injunction based on harassment. Id.

Alimony's Job Lock, Margaret Ryznar

Akron Law Review

In family law, courts often prevent people who owe alimony from changing jobs. If a job change is accompanied by a salary decrease, the court will not necessarily readjust the alimony obligation and instead impute the higher income to the obligor. This Article introduces the term “job lock” to describe this situation, borrowing the term from the health care context, wherein job immobility due to health insurance concerns has received significant scrutiny. This Article draws similar attention to the alimony context, proposing a balancing test to assist courts interested in alleviating job lock under certain circumstances.

The Effect Of The Change In The Age Of Majority On Prior Divorce Decrees Providing For Child Support, Stephen F. Ahern

Akron Law Review

The purpose of this article is to consider the effect of the statutory change in the age of majority on the construction and enforcement of support orders entered prior to the effective date of the new statutory age. The goal is to provide the domestic relations practitioner with a shorthand guide as to how these issues have been decided in Ohio and in other states and, finally, to provide an analysis of these decisions.

Parents' Support Obligations To Their Adult Children, Marvin M. Moore

Akron Law Review

The average parent is likely to assume that his legal obligations to his children terminate upon the child's attainment of majority. This was, in fact, the common law rule, and it is true in a few states today. However, most jurisdictions, through statute or court decision, have made parents responsible for the maintenance of their physically or mentally incapacitated adult children, and a number of states have authorized courts to order divorced parents to help defray their post-majority childrens' high school and/or college expenses. The purpose of this article is to examine and evaluate the states' support laws insofar as …

"Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe": Disestablishment Of Paternity, Vanessa S. Browne-Barbour

Akron Law Review

Part II of this Article provides a general historical overview of paternity rules. Part III summarizes the laws addressing paternity and its disestablishment in the United States and the European Union. It discusses related cases from the high courts of both jurisdictions, which highlight the broad range of issues, interests, and consequences associated with issues of paternity. Part IV considers the adverse effects of disestablishment of paternity on a child. It recommends nationally mandated genetic testing at birth or soon thereafter. This would eliminate altogether the need for paternity disestablishment procedures, thereby avoiding their harmful effects. Part V acknowledges that …

Stop Making Court A First Stop For Many Low Income Parents, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

In the wake of the unrest over police misconduct in cities across the country, calls for reform have focused on the criminal justice system — making police, prosecutors, and criminal courts more accountable and just. While much work needs to be done in that arena, too little attention has focused on the ways in which low income families are hurt in civil courts. Many more men, women and children from low income communities of color pass through the doors of our family courts every day than those who interact with the criminal justice system. Some come to court as a …

Shared Parenting Laws: Mistakes Of Pooling?, Margaret F. Brinig

Margaret F Brinig

In their recent paper “Anti-Herding Regulation,” forthcoming in the Harvard Business Review, Ian Ayres and Joshua Mitts argue that many well-intentioned public policy regulations potentially harm rather than help situations. That is, because they seek to pool — or herd — groups of people, treating them as equal, they miss or mask important differences among the regulated, thus magnifying systematic risk. Anti-herding regulation, on the other hand, can produce socially beneficial information, in their words steering “both private and public actors toward better evidence-based outcomes.” Left to their own, or with various carrot-and-stick incentives, some groups, anyway, would instead fare …

Paved With Good Intentions: Unintended Consequences Of Federal Proposals To Integrate Child Support And Parenting Time, Lisa V. Martin, Stacy Brustin

Faculty Publications

Promoting the relationships between noncustodial parents and their children has become a federal policy priority. Recent policy proposals aim to achieve this by integrating adjudications of custody and parenting time within proceedings to establish child support. These proposals share several laudable goals, including encouraging the involvement of fathers in their children’s lives, increasing compliance with child support orders, and facilitating unmarried parents’ access to court processes for resolving custody and visitation disputes. But the simplistic solutions employed by the proposals, some of which would mandate that custody and visitation be adjudicated in all child support proceedings, pose serious risks to …

The Numbers Game: Why California's Child Support Formula Should Be Amended To Avoid Parental Abuse, Karly Schlinkert

Golden Gate University Law Review

This article examines the H% element of the child support equation (the amount of time the higher earning parent spends with the minor child) and how it affects children and their best interests. Part I focuses on the history of child support in America and how federal legislation has impacted California’s approach to child support. Part II discuses California’s child support formula and how the amount of time spent with a child affects the total amount of financial support owed; this section will focus on what constitutes a child’s best interest. This article advocates for California to adopt a different …

Shared Parenting Laws: Mistakes Of Pooling?, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

In their recent paper “Anti-Herding Regulation,” forthcoming in the Harvard Business Review, Ian Ayres and Joshua Mitts argue that many well-intentioned public policy regulations potentially harm rather than help situations. That is, because they seek to pool — or herd — groups of people, treating them as equal, they miss or mask important differences among the regulated, thus magnifying systematic risk. Anti-herding regulation, on the other hand, can produce socially beneficial information, in their words steering “both private and public actors toward better evidence-based outcomes.” Left to their own, or with various carrot-and-stick incentives, some groups, anyway, would instead fare …