Law Commons^™

Bargaining In The Shadow Of The Best-Interests Standard: The Close Connection Between Substance And Process In Resolving Divorce-Related Parenting Disputes, Jana B. Singer

Jana B. Singer

This essay, written for a Symposium celebrating the child custody scholarship of Professor Robert Mnookin, examines the close connection between changes in substantive child custody doctrine and changes in custody dispute resolution processes over the past 30 years. Part I of the article explores how the widespread adoption of an unmediated “best interest of the child” standard, and the ensuing rejection of the sole custody paradigm, precipitated a shift from adversarial to non-adversarial resolution of divorce-related parenting disputes. Part II of the essay reverses the direction of the analytic lens and considers how the shift from adversarial to non-adversarial dispute …

What's Wrong With A Federal Inheritance Tax?, Wendy Gerzog

Wendy Gerzog

Scholars have proposed a federal inheritance tax as an alternative to the current federal transfer tax system, but there are serious flaws with that idea. Those problems include: (1) different tax rates and exemptions based on the decedent’s relationship to the beneficiary; (2) the lack of a tax on lifetime gratuitous transfers, including gifts with retained interests or control; (3) the persistence of most current valuation distortion abuses; and (4) significantly decreased compliance rates and increased administrative costs inherent in a system that taxes transferees on transactions that may be largely unmonitored.

This article reviews common characteristics of existing inheritance …

Husband-Wife Homicide: An Essay From A Family Law Perspective, Margaret Howard

Margaret Howard

No abstract provided.

From Sex For Please To Sex For Parenthood: How The Law Manufactures Mothers, Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

As soon as sperm enter a woman, so do law and politics, or so the decades-long disputes surrounding abortion suggest. Now, however, renewed debates surrounding contraceptives show legal and political interference with women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy may actually precede the sperm. This Article argues that, increasingly, women even thinking about having sex are defined socially and legally as “mothers.” Via this broad definition of who is a “mother," the State extends its reach into women’s decision-making throughout their reproductive lifetime. This Article argues that the State simultaneously devalues women’s choices to have sex for pleasure, which this Article calls …

Dirty Harry Meets Dirty Diapers: Masculinities, At-Home Fathers & Making The Law Work For Families, Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

Beth A. Burkstrand-Reid

Who is the “man”? Implicit in that question is whether the man at issue demonstrates traits traditionally associated with masculinity: traits such as power, rejecting all things associated with being female, aggression, and being the family breadwinner. If a man, then, abandons paid work and stays at home full-time with his children, is he still a “man” as typically defined? The answer to this question bears both on whether families are truly evolving away from the gendered construct that places men as family breadwinners and women as caregivers and whether work-family balance law meets the needs of these—and all—families. This …