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Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Probate Definition Of Family: A Proposal For Guided Discretion In Intestacy, Susan N. Gary Jun 2012

The Probate Definition Of Family: A Proposal For Guided Discretion In Intestacy, Susan N. Gary

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Intestacy statutes may not match the wishes of many people who die intestate. Changes to the Uniform Probate Code (UPC) include or exclude potential takers, as the drafters attempt to bring the UPC provisions closer to the intent of more intestate decedents. As the UPC tries to fine-tune the intestacy statutes, however, family circumstances continue to get more and more complicated. Families headed by unmarried couples, blended families with children from multiple marriages, and families in which adults raise children who are not legally theirs, have become commonplace. For some decedents, non-family friends and caregivers may be more important than …


Toward Equality: Nonmarital Children And The Uniform Probate Code, Paula A. Monopoli Jun 2012

Toward Equality: Nonmarital Children And The Uniform Probate Code, Paula A. Monopoli

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article traces the evolution of the Uniform Probate Code's (UPC) broad equality framework for inheritance by nonmarital children in the context of the wider movement for legal equality for such children in society. It concludes that the UPC is to be lauded for its efforts to provide equal treatment to all nonmarital children. The UPC's commitment to such equality serves an expressive function for state legislatures and courts to follow its lead. The UPC has fulfilled its promise that all children regardless of marital status shall be equal for purposes of inheritance from or through parents, with one exception: …


Renegotiating The Social Contract, Jennifer S. Hendricks Apr 2012

Renegotiating The Social Contract, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Michigan Law Review

Despite an economic recession and record levels of personal bankruptcy filings due to healthcare costs, President Obama's healthcare reform initiative sparked a season of protests. A "public option"-not to mention a single-payer system-was off the table even before the discussion began. As the question of the reform package's constitutionality wound its way to the Supreme Court, it became clear that a substantial number of American people do not want their government helping them stay alive. In this climate, it is difficult to imagine an America in which the state is an accepted partner in meeting the challenges and responsibilities of …


Civil Marriage: Threat To Democracy, Jessica Knouse Jan 2012

Civil Marriage: Threat To Democracy, Jessica Knouse

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article argues that civil marriage and democracy are inherently incompatible, whether assessed from a transcultural perspective that reduces them to their most universal aspects or a culturally situated perspective that accounts for their uniquely American elaborations. Across virtually all cultures, civil marriage privileges sexual partners by offering them exclusive access to highly desirable government benefits, while democracy presupposes liberty and equality. When governments privilege sexual partners, they effectively deprive their citizens of liberty by encouraging them to enter sexual partnerships rather than selfdetermining based on their own preferences; they effectively deprive their citizens of equality by establishing insidious status …


The Devil Comes To Kansas: A Story Of Free Love, Sexual Privacy, And The Law, Charles J. Reid Jr. Jan 2012

The Devil Comes To Kansas: A Story Of Free Love, Sexual Privacy, And The Law, Charles J. Reid Jr.

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

On Sunday, September 19, 1886, Moses Harman, the editor of the radical newspaper Lucifer the Light-Bearer, presided over an inherently contradictory event-a free-love marriage ceremony between his associate editor, the thirty-seven-year-old Edwin Walker, and Moses' own daughter, the sixteen-year-old Lillian. The case that the two Harmans and Walker wished to present aimed to transform marriage from a public to a private relationship and from a permanent and exclusive one to a temporary one that permitted potentially many partners. State v. Walker and its parties have received some scholarly notice, but the truly radical quality of the arguments Moses, Edwin, and …


Displaced Mothers, Absent And Unnatural Fathers: Lgbt Transracial Adoption, Kim H. Pearson Jan 2012

Displaced Mothers, Absent And Unnatural Fathers: Lgbt Transracial Adoption, Kim H. Pearson

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

While some might believe that Black versus gay discourse only surfaces in highly politicized settings like the military and marriage, it holds sway in the area of LGBT transracial adoption. LGBT transracial adoptions are a relatively small percentage of all adoptions, which include private adoptions, LGBT second-parent adoptions, and step-parent adoptions, but they are an important site for interrogating the Black versus gay discourse because adoption and custody decisions often address parent-child transmission. When claims intersect, as they do in a case where a White LGBT foster parent and a Black maternal grandmother dispute the adoption of a Black child, …


Against The New Maternalism, Naomi Mezey, Cornelia T. L. Pillard Jan 2012

Against The New Maternalism, Naomi Mezey, Cornelia T. L. Pillard

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Parenting is a major preoccupation in law and culture. As a result of efforts of the American women's movement over the past forty years, the legal parent is, for the first time in history, sex-neutral. Our law has abandoned restrictions on women's education, employment, and civic participation that sprang from and reinforced beliefs about the primacy of motherhood as women's best destiny. On the flip side, U.S. law now also generally rejects formal constraints on men's family roles by requiring sex-neutrality of laws regulating custody, adoption, alimony, spousal benefits, and the like. The official de-linking of presumptive parenting roles from …


Child Representation In America: Progress Report From The National Quality Improvement Center, Donald N. Duquette, Julian Darwall Jan 2012

Child Representation In America: Progress Report From The National Quality Improvement Center, Donald N. Duquette, Julian Darwall

Articles

Few dispute that children in the child welfare system need effective representation. In October 2009, the U.S. Children's Bureau named the University of Michigan Law School the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System (QIC-ChildRep). The QIC-ChildRep is a five-year, multimillion dollar project, charged with gathering, developing, and communicating knowledge on child representation. In addition, the QIC-ChildRep is tasked with promoting a consensus on the role of the child's legal representative and providing one of the first random assignment experimental design research projects on the legal representation of children.


Representing Parents With Severe Mental Illness In Child Welfare Cases, Joshua B. Kay Jan 2012

Representing Parents With Severe Mental Illness In Child Welfare Cases, Joshua B. Kay

Articles

Parents with severe mental illness are at greater risk than others of becoming involved in the child protection system, and their cases are more likely than others to result in termination of parental rights. Among women with severe mental illness, 26-75% lose custody to one or more of their children, rates far higher than for women without mental illness. Lawyers who represent mentally ill parents in child protection matters face a number of challenges, including maintaining a productive attorney-client relationship, advocating for appropriate services and reasonable accommodations for their clients’ disabilities, and refuting assumptions about their clients’ parenting abilities that …


Psychological Evaluation Of Parenting Capacity In Child Welfare Proceedings, Katherine L. Rosenblum, Joshua B. Kay Jan 2012

Psychological Evaluation Of Parenting Capacity In Child Welfare Proceedings, Katherine L. Rosenblum, Joshua B. Kay

Articles

In the child welfare context, courts, attorneys, and child protection agencies often turn to psychologists to evaluate parenting capacity. As evaluators in child protection cases, psychologists may be asked to evaluate different parties for different purposes, acting as agents of the court, the child protection agency, or directly retained by the parents or the lawyer guardian ad litem. In this article we focus specifically on psychological evaluations addressing issues pertaining to parenting capacity (in contrast to, for example, assessments that focus solely on child psychological well-being or developmental status). These types of assessments may help to inform dispositional decisions, including …


Building Resilience In Foster Children: The Role Of The Child's Advocate, Frank E. Vandervort, James Henry, Mark A. Sloane Jan 2012

Building Resilience In Foster Children: The Role Of The Child's Advocate, Frank E. Vandervort, James Henry, Mark A. Sloane

Articles

This Article provides an introduction to, and brief overview of trauma, its impact upon foster children, and steps children's advocates" can take to lessen or ameliorate the impact of trauma upon their clients. This Article begins in Part 11 by defining relevant terms. Part III addresses the prevalence of trauma among children entering the child welfare system. Part IV considers the neurodevelopmental (i.e., the developing brain) impact of trauma on children and will explore how that trauma may manifest emotionally and behaviorally. With this foundation in place, Part V discusses the need for a comprehensive trauma assessment including a thorough …