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Articles 31 - 60 of 124
Full-Text Articles in Law
Discrimination In Baby Making: The Unconstitutional Treatment Of Prospective Parents Through Surrogacy, Andrea B. Carroll
Discrimination In Baby Making: The Unconstitutional Treatment Of Prospective Parents Through Surrogacy, Andrea B. Carroll
Journal Articles
The article focuses on limited use of reproductive technologies in defense of discriminating against unmarried intended parents. It emphasizes to eliminate unconstitutional treatment of prospective parents involved in the surrogacy process. It informs that State laws related to surrogacy create discrimination which is based on marital status. It suggests that surrogacy should be included as a permissible reproductive avenue for right to married and unmarried intended parents in the U.S.
Heuristics, Cognitive Biases, And Accountability: Decision-Making In Dependency Court, Matthew I. Fraidin
Heuristics, Cognitive Biases, And Accountability: Decision-Making In Dependency Court, Matthew I. Fraidin
Journal Articles
On tens of thousands of occasions each year, state court judges wrongly separate children from their families and place them in foster care. And while a child is in foster care, judges are called on to render hundreds of decisions affecting every aspect of the child’s life. This Article uses insights from social psychology research to analyze the environment of dependency court and to recommend changes that will improve decisions. Research indicates that decision makers aware at the time they make a decision that they will be called upon later to explain it may engage in a systematic, deliberate decision-making …
Filial Support Laws In The Modern Era: Domestic And International Comparison Of Enforcement Practices For Laws Requiring Adult Children To Support Indigent Parents, Katherine C. Pearson
Filial Support Laws In The Modern Era: Domestic And International Comparison Of Enforcement Practices For Laws Requiring Adult Children To Support Indigent Parents, Katherine C. Pearson
Journal Articles
Family responsibility and support laws have a long but mixed history. When first enacted, policy makers used such laws to declare an official policy that family members should support each other, rather than draw upon public resources. This article tracks modern developments with filial support laws that purport to obligate adult children to financially assist their parents, if indigent or needy. The author diagrams filial support laws that have survived in the 21st Century and compares core components in the United States (including Puerto Rico) and post-Soviet Union Ukraine. While the laws are often similar in wording and declared intent, …
Promoting The General Welfare: Legal Reform To Lift Women And Children In The United States Out Of Poverty, Jill C. Engle
Promoting The General Welfare: Legal Reform To Lift Women And Children In The United States Out Of Poverty, Jill C. Engle
Journal Articles
American women and children have been poor in exponentially greater numbers than men for decades. The problem has historic, institutional roots which provide a backdrop for this article’s introduction. English and early U.S. legal systems mandated a lesser economic status for women. Despite numerous legal changes aimed at combating the financial disadvantage of American women and children, the problem is worsening. American female workers, many in low-paying job sectors, earn roughly twenty percent less than their male counterparts. Nearly forty percent of single mothers and their children subsist below the poverty level. The recession exacerbated this problem, mostly because unemployment …
Sexual Orientation Of Fatherhood, Dara Purvis
Sexual Orientation Of Fatherhood, Dara Purvis
Journal Articles
In this Article, I examine how same-sex fathers affect the perception of heterosexual caretaking fathers - and by extension, could affect the perception of heterosexual non-caretaking mothers. I conclude that gay stay-at-home fathers offer a provocative opportunity to broaden societal views of men and caregiving more generally, and argue that greater recognition of parents who counteract gender stereotypes - even where the recognition might arguably lessen women's rights in family law - ultimately helps women as well as children and nontraditional parents. Part I discusses fathers, particularly stay-at-home fathers, the practical problems fathers face combining work and caregiving responsibilities, and …
Revisiting Mary Ann Glendon: Abortion, Divorce, Dependency, And Rights Talk In Western Law, Margaret F. Brinig, Linda C. Mcclain
Revisiting Mary Ann Glendon: Abortion, Divorce, Dependency, And Rights Talk In Western Law, Margaret F. Brinig, Linda C. Mcclain
Journal Articles
This essay revisits Mary Ann Glendon’s comparative law study, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law and her subsequent book, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. Glendon’s comparative study actually included a third topic: “forms of dependency which are connected with pregnancy, marriage, and child raising.” The topic of dependency has obvious relevance to consideration of intergenerational obligations and the interplay between family responsibility and societal responsibility for addressing dependency needs. A central claim Glendon made in both books is that the U.S. legal tradition is “libertarian,” views individuals as “lone rights bearers,” and exalts the “right to be …
Changing The Narrative Of Child Welfare, Matthew I. Fraidin
Changing The Narrative Of Child Welfare, Matthew I. Fraidin
Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
Intended Parents And The Problem Of Perspective, Dara Purvis
Intended Parents And The Problem Of Perspective, Dara Purvis
Journal Articles
When asked to identify the legal parents of a child, traditional family law principles look backwards in time, primarily to biology and to marriage. People using assisted reproductive technologies such as surrogacy, however, seek to manifest their intent to become parents with a forward-looking temporal perspective, before a child is conceived and born. Of the existing doctrines used to identify parentage – marital presumption, biology, functional theories, and intent – only intent facilitates a forward-looking perspective. Intent through time, however, is not treated consistently. A woman, for example, may donate an egg, and may place a baby up for adoption, …
Using Community Based Participatory Research To Study The Relationship Between Sources And Types Of Funding And Mental Health Outcomes For Children Served By The Child Welfare System In Ohio, Susan Vivian Mangold, Catherine Cerulli, Gregory Kapcar, Crystal Ward Allen, Kim Kaukeinen, Hua He
Using Community Based Participatory Research To Study The Relationship Between Sources And Types Of Funding And Mental Health Outcomes For Children Served By The Child Welfare System In Ohio, Susan Vivian Mangold, Catherine Cerulli, Gregory Kapcar, Crystal Ward Allen, Kim Kaukeinen, Hua He
Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
Explaining Abuse Of The Disabled Child, Margaret F. Brinig
Explaining Abuse Of The Disabled Child, Margaret F. Brinig
Journal Articles
This article discusses abuse of disabled children in terms of two competing theories for why it may occur. The evolutionary biology theory has been discussed in the legal literature as well as in biological and social science pieces. The author contrasts this theory with a novel one, mimetic desire, which may be less familiar in legal circles, but which, he believes, better explains the abuse of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder children and offers more hope for preventing abuse without disrupting intact families. While the evolutionary biology explanations for child abuse may be helpful and important, more territory can be covered …
Child Support Guidelines And Divorce Incentives, Margaret F. Brinig, Douglas W. Allen
Child Support Guidelines And Divorce Incentives, Margaret F. Brinig, Douglas W. Allen
Journal Articles
A child support guideline is a formula used to calculate support payments based on a few family characteristics. Guidelines began replacing court awarded support payments in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and were eventually mandated by the federal government in 1988. Two fundamentally different types of guidelines are used: percentage of obligor income, and income shares models. This paper explores the incentives to divorce under the two schemes, and uses the NLSY data set to test the key predictions. We find that percentage of obligor income models are destabilizing for some families with high incomes. This may explain why …
Cracks In The Cost Structure Of Agency Adoption, Andrea B. Carroll
Cracks In The Cost Structure Of Agency Adoption, Andrea B. Carroll
Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
Reviving Proxy Marriage, Andrea B. Carroll
Reviving Proxy Marriage, Andrea B. Carroll
Journal Articles
Marriage is merely a contract. It creates myriad rights and responsibilities - essentially conferring a status - but the American states recognize without exception that the parties’ relationship is at base nothing more than a contractual one. Still, modern society has elevated the marriage contract above all others. This distinction has overwhelmingly focused on the very personal nature of the marital relationship, a feature nonexistent in the arms-length contractual dealings with which we are accustomed to working when applying contract law. As a result, marriage is subject to a number of requirements, even at the level of contractual formation, which …
Re-Regulating The Baby Market: A Call For A Ban On Payment Of Birth Mother Living Expenses, Andrea B. Carroll
Re-Regulating The Baby Market: A Call For A Ban On Payment Of Birth Mother Living Expenses, Andrea B. Carroll
Journal Articles
More than fifty years ago, state law on domestic infant adoption changed to uniformly prohibit the practice of baby selling, a development that eliminated the “black market” for babies that many argued previously existed. Nonetheless, one need not look far to find that the United States’ domestic adoption system is broken even today, and the cost structure of the domestic adoption scheme is the greatest offender. A domestic adoption currently costs in the neighborhood of $40,0000, with the vast majority of the associated expenses coming not from the payment of any professional fees, but rather from the payment of living …
Child Support Guidelines: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Margaret F. Brinig, Douglas W. Allen
Child Support Guidelines: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Margaret F. Brinig, Douglas W. Allen
Journal Articles
Child support guideline systems do more than simply determine the amount of income to be transferred from the noncustodial to the custodial household. They create incentives, one way or another, for spouses to divorce and seek custody and support payments. We examine three cases found in North America, and find that the common method of income shares provides a decent guideline that does not create any perverse incentives for divorce. Percentage-of-obligor-income methods do worse than other systems, and can cause increases in divorce rates for families in which one spouse earns a high income. Finally, the Canadian system, which is …
Do Joint Parenting Laws Make Any Difference?, Margaret Brinig, Douglas W. Allen
Do Joint Parenting Laws Make Any Difference?, Margaret Brinig, Douglas W. Allen
Journal Articles
Using a unique data set on divorcing couples, we analyze the effects of a change in legal entitlement on the outcomes for divorcing couples. In particular, we analyze the 1997 change to custody provisions in the State of Oregon. Prior to 1997, Oregon assigned custody, based on the discretion of the court, in the best interests of the child. This was changed to a presumption- of joint parenting, which manifests in the courts encouraging and imposing joint (or shared) custody in cases that otherwise would have had sole custody arrangements. We find that the law had several implications for divorce …
Belonging And Trust: Divorce And Social Capital, Margaret F. Brinig
Belonging And Trust: Divorce And Social Capital, Margaret F. Brinig
Journal Articles
To whom do spouses belong? Do they belong to their communities as well as each other and their immediate families? These questions are explored in an empirical paper demonstrating ways in which social capital in communities may affect even the marriages of people living in them.
Parents: Trusted But Not Trustees Or (Foster) Parents As Fiduciaries, Margaret F. Brinig
Parents: Trusted But Not Trustees Or (Foster) Parents As Fiduciaries, Margaret F. Brinig
Journal Articles
Some fifteen years ago, Elizabeth and Robert Scott wrote an important article making the case that parents could be usefully described using a fiduciary model. This paper explains why their model fits foster parents better than biological or adoptive parents, at least in the sense that Tamar Frankel explains in her new book on fiduciary law.
Stories Told And Untold: Confidentiality Laws And The Master Narrative Of Child Welfare, Matthew I. Fraidin
Stories Told And Untold: Confidentiality Laws And The Master Narrative Of Child Welfare, Matthew I. Fraidin
Journal Articles
In most states, child welfare hearings and records are sealed or confidential. This means that by law, court hearings and records may not be observed. The same laws and court rules also preclude those who are authorized to enter and watch from discussing anything learned or observed in a closed courtroom or from a sealed court record with anyone not involved in the case. It is the restriction on speech—on telling stories about child welfare—with which this Article is concerned. I will argue in this Article that the insights of narrative theory and agenda-setting studies help us understand the damaging …
Resurrecting Parents Of Legal Orphans: Un-Terminating Parental Rights, Lashanda Taylor Adams
Resurrecting Parents Of Legal Orphans: Un-Terminating Parental Rights, Lashanda Taylor Adams
Journal Articles
Despite federal and state legislation that requires termination of parental rights when a child has remained in foster care for a specified period of time, studies indicate that relationships with their biological parents (and other relatives) remain important to children in foster care.3 Especially for children whose parents’ parental rights have been terminated, the connection with their biological parent remains central to their development and these children make efforts to maintain that connection. Once it becomes clear that the purpose for terminating the parental rights (i.e., freeing the child for adoption) will not be served, in an increasing number of …
Incentivizing Divorce, Andrea B. Carroll
Incentivizing Divorce, Andrea B. Carroll
Journal Articles
Marriage is an important relationship, both for the parties to it and for society as a whole. Its benefits, stemming from the economies of scale and joint consumption inherent in the relationship, are largely unquestionable. And when marriage fails, the results are rather staggering. Economically, it is estimated that the annual cost of divorce to American taxpayers approaches $30 billion. From a social science perspective, the negative impacts of divorce on women and children have long been decried. In the face of these facts, we expect family law to fulfill a certain role. It should channel parties into the relationship …
Finding Power, Fighting Power (Or The Perpetual Motion Machine), Mae Quinn
Finding Power, Fighting Power (Or The Perpetual Motion Machine), Mae Quinn
Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
The One-Size-Fits-All Family, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
The One-Size-Fits-All Family, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
Journal Articles
Family policy and the law based on it assume universals. That is, if marriage improves the welfare of the majority of couples and their children, it is worth pushing as a policy initiative. Further, laws will be written (or kept on the books) that privilege marriage over other family forms. Similarly, research that tells us that divorce harms children except following the relatively small number of highly conflicted marriages, spawns efforts to preserve troubled marriages or even to roll back liberal or relatively inexpensive divorce laws. With yet another example, since adopted children mostly do better than children left either …
The State As Batterer: Learning From Family Law To Address American's Family-Like Racial Dysfunction, Angela Mae Kupenda
The State As Batterer: Learning From Family Law To Address American's Family-Like Racial Dysfunction, Angela Mae Kupenda
Journal Articles
The women's movement for equality bootstrapped to the movement for equality for Blacks. Now the reverse can happen. This Article uses family law and the plight of some battered women, as a lens to address analogous racial conflicts in the broader American family.
Follow The Money: Federal, State, And Local Funding Strategies For Child Welfare Services And The Impact Of Local Levies On Adoptions In Ohio, Susan V. Mangold, Catherine Cerulli
Follow The Money: Federal, State, And Local Funding Strategies For Child Welfare Services And The Impact Of Local Levies On Adoptions In Ohio, Susan V. Mangold, Catherine Cerulli
Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
In Good Times And In Debt: The Evolution Of Marital Agency And The Meaning Of Marriage, Marie T. Reilly
In Good Times And In Debt: The Evolution Of Marital Agency And The Meaning Of Marriage, Marie T. Reilly
Journal Articles
A married person sometimes acts solely for herself and at other times on behalf of her spouse. If she incurs debt solely for herself, then only she is liable to the creditor. If, however, she incurs debt both for herself and on behalf of her spouse, both are liable – the debtor directly and the spouse indirectly by imputed liability. Before married women’s property reform, imputed marital liability followed from marital status. As marriage changed to recognize the legal individuality of both spouses, so too did the scope of a spouse’s imputed liability for the debts of the other spouse. …
Are All Contracts Alike?, Margaret F. Brinig
Are All Contracts Alike?, Margaret F. Brinig
Journal Articles
This Article compares two sets of contracts that are structurally and contextually similar. They originate in two quite different fields, however: the commercial arena and the family. The contracts come from two separate empirical investigations. The first investigation studied 131 telecommunication interconnection agreements made between SBC Communications, Inc. ("SBC") and various local phone companies in Michigan beginning in 1998. The second investigation involved 141 divorce cases granted in 1998 in Johnson County, Iowa, all of which involved children, and 130 of which involved contracts, or "stipulations" as they are called locally. Though each empirical project has been described separately elsewhere, …
Red Thread Or Slender Reed: Deconstructing Prof. Bartholet's Mythology Of International Adoption, Johanna Oreskovic, Trish Maskew
Red Thread Or Slender Reed: Deconstructing Prof. Bartholet's Mythology Of International Adoption, Johanna Oreskovic, Trish Maskew
Journal Articles
No abstract provided.
Legal Status And Effect On Children, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
Legal Status And Effect On Children, Margaret F. Brinig, Steven L. Nock
Journal Articles
One of the haunting claims of each poor, unmarried mother in Edin and Kefalas' Promises I Can Keep is that at least she can guarantee she will love her child, even though she cannot promise to make a lifelong commitment to a mate. That love, each young mother says, will be a sustaining gift both to her and the child. Similarly, in work done by sociologists McLanahan and Garfinkel to counteract the claim that it was not single parenting that made children's prospects dim, but poverty, sociologists have found that many of the bad effects of single parenting go away …
Children's Beliefs And Family Law, Margaret F. Brinig
Children's Beliefs And Family Law, Margaret F. Brinig
Journal Articles
In a recent series of opinions authored by Justice Stevens, the Court has recognized that children may have independent religious rights, and that these may be in conflict with their parents'. The questions for this piece are whether considering children's rights independently is a good thing whether it is warranted by children's actual religious preferences and whether children's religious activities actually do anything measurable for the children.
I do not advocate that the Supreme Court become more involved with family law than it has been since the substantive due process days of Meyer and Pierce. I am also not one …