Family Law Commons^™

The Unnecessary Doctrine Of Necessaries, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that neither the traditional nor the modem necessaries doctrines are justifiable in contemporary society. Part I investigates the practical effects of both the traditional and contemporary necessaries doctrines and demonstrates that neither is an effective mechanism for providing support to a needy spouse. While a more successful support remedy might be devised to replace modem and traditional versions of the necessaries rule, Part II shows that yet another reformulation would not be worthwhile because the theoretical underpinnings of the doctrine are faulty. There is no persuasive evidence to establish the existence of the narrow support problem the …

The Battering Parent Syndrome: Inexpert Testimony As Character Evidence, Thomas N. Bulleit Jr.

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note proposes that courts refuse to give further consideration to admitting the battering parent syndrome as evidence in both civil and criminal proceedings arising out of child abuse. Part I of the Note describes the syndrome as it appears in the psychological literature. Part II suggests that current judicial attitudes favor the future admissibility of the syndrome, conditioned only on an improved showing of scientific accuracy. Part III demonstrates that regardless of scientific accuracy, the character evidence rule forbids courts from admitting the battering parent syndrome. Part IV argues that the important policies underlying the character evidence rule override …

Rethinking The Substantive Rules For Custody Disputes In Divorce, David L. Chambers

Articles

A few states, mostly in the West and South, still retain a preference in custody disputes for placing young children with their mothers. In most other states, legislatures or courts have replaced the maternal presumption with a rule directing courts to be guided solely by the child's "welfare" or "best interests." A few legislatures have created a new preference for joint custody, directing courts to consider favorably requests by a parent for such arrangements, even over the objection of the other parent. This Article argues that the trend away from the maternal presumption is sensible, but that the current best-interests …

Inequality In Marital Liabilities: The Need For Equal Protection When Modifying The Necessaries Doctrine, Debra S. Betteridge

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note contends that the "primary/secondary" modification is unconstitutional because it ignores the husband's equal protection rights while unlawfully stigmatizing women as dependent. Part I discusses how the growing independence of women has led courts to modify the common law doctrine. Part II develops the test that the Supreme Court would apply in judging the constitutionality of any modification of the doctrine. Part III applies this test to the "primary/secondary" modification and concludes that the modification is unconstitutional and, therefore, not a legitimate reformation of the common law necessaries doctrine.

Blest Be The Tie That Binds, Joan Heifetz Hollinger

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The New Family and the New Property by Mary Ann Glendon

Who Speaks For The Child: The Problems Of Proxy Consent, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Who Speaks for the Child: The Problems of Proxy Consent edited by Willard Gaylin and Ruth Macklin

Illegitimacy: An Examination Of Bastardy, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Illegitimacy: An Examination of Bastardy by Jenny Teichman

The Marriage Contract, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of the The Marriage Contract by Lenore J. Weitzman

Collaboration Between Lawyers And Mental Health Professionals: Making It Work, Donald N. Duquette

Book Chapters

Many questions presented to the court in child welfare cases are resolved with the direction, professional advice, and judgment of mental health professionals. Lawyers and judges look to a number of different professions for this guidance; chief among them are psychiatrists, psychologists, and clinical social workers. The focus of this chapter is on ways for lawyers to enhance and improve the performance of the mental health professionals in the courtroom.

This chapter presents a step-b/step process for lawyer collaboration with mental health professionals in child protection and foster care cases, which is relevant for attorneys representing the child welfare agency, …

Child Support In The Twenty-First Century, David L. Chambers

Book Chapters

Fifty years from now, or a hundred years from now, will absent parents still be held financially liable for the support of their children? Two forces have shaped our current system of private liability. The first is a perception, wholly accurate, of large numbers of children in need, children who cannot be adequately provided for by the single parent with whom they live. The second is a moral judgment about absent parents: that they can be justly required to contribute to their children's support throughout the children's minority. Change may occur in the laws of child support if there cease …

The Constitutional Status Of Marriage, Kinship, And Sexual Privacy -- Balancing The Individual And Social Interests, Bruce C. Hafen

Michigan Law Review

Today's lopsided competition between the individual and social interests has made the law a party to the contemporary haze that clouds our vision of what a family is or should be. In that sense, recent legal developments have contributed to the crisis Stanley Hauerwas has identified regarding American family life today - our inability to define "what kind of family should exist" and our inability to articulate ''why we should think of [the family] as our most basic moral institution."

In response to those two questions, this Article considers whether, as a constitutional matter, the courts should recognize claims by …

The Coming Curtailment Of Compulsory Child Support, David L. Chambers

Articles

Absent parents ought to contribute to the support of their minor children and states can appropriately invoke the force of law to compel them to do so. Stated so generally, even absent parents behind in their payments would probably agree. Since so many others agree as well, and since the numbers of single-parent children have mushroomed, systems of governmentally compelled support in this country have grown enormously. By the early part of the next century, if current laws remain in force and current population trends continue, most of America's children on any given day will be entitled to support from …

Protecting Individual Liberties In The Context Of Screening For Child Abuse, Donald N. Duquette

Book Chapters

A central role of the law in our society is to act as buffer between individual citizens and society at large. When personal freedom or liberty is at stake, the law acts as arbiter between individuals and government and allows liberty to be abrogated only after "due process of law." Due process is an attempt to insure fair treatment of all concerned-a quest for fairness. In what follows due process will be discussed further together with some examples of the due process model as applied to the child protection system. Certain risks to personal freedom are inherent in child protection. …

Cults, Deprogrammers, And The Necessity Defense, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note considers the applicability of the necessity defense in criminal prosecutions of parents and deprogrammers. Part I explores the conflicting policies that underlie the traditional necessity defense, and suggests that courts replace their unitary approach to necessity with a "choice of evils" defense - for actors reasonably attempting to avoid a greater evil - and a "compulsion" defense - for actors reacting understandably to the pressure of circumstances. Part II applies these defenses to deprogramming cases, and concludes that rarely may they be advanced successfully.

Bankruptcy Court Jurisdiction To Modify Alimony Payments Of Chapter 13 Debtors, Peter Swiecicki

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article examines a bankruptcy court's power to modify a chapter 13 debtor's alimony payments. Part I discusses the bankruptcy court's jurisdiction in chapter 13 cases and the connection between the chapter 13 case and alimony modification proceedings. It then outlines the domestic relations limitation and the resulting conflict between bankruptcy courts and state courts with respect to alimony modification. Part II analyzes various arguments for and against allowing bankruptcy courts to hear alimony modification requests in chapter 13 cases. This analysis reveals that any state interests are far outweighed by the substantial benefits to be gained from consolidating the …

Parenting At And After Divorce: A Search For New Models, Carol S. Bruch

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Surviving the Breakup: How Children and Parents Cope with Divorce by Judith S. Wallerstein and Joan Berlin Kelly

The Legal Aspects Of Child Abuse And Neglect, Donald N. Duquette

Book Chapters

The law is an essential partner with the medical, social work, and mental health professions in identifying and responding to children who may be abused and neglected and their families. The law governs reporting of suspected child abuse and neglect and outlines the duties of the child protection agency in responding to those reports. Statutes and court rules determine the circumstances under which a child suspected of being abused or neglected may be detained in a hospital or removed from his home on an emergency basis. Child abuse and neglect laws in all states aim to facilitate the benevolent intervention …

Legal Roles, Donald N. Duquette

Book Chapters

Attorneys may be involved at various stages in the management of cases of child abuse and neglect. However, typically they become important only on those cases which go to court. There are in fact three separate attorney roles, with requirements which vary according to whom the attorney represents. These roles are the child's attorney, the agency attorney, and the parents' attorney.

Interviewing The Child, Donald N. Duquette, Janet Stubbs

Book Chapters

The attorney representing a child needs to gather considerable information about his client. He needs to know the nature of the child's home environment, his present placement, his condition and adaptation to placement if the child is out of the home, his reasonable preferences for placement. He needs to know the age of the child, the child's capabilities and limitations, the number of siblings, the make-up of the family, the circumstances which led to removal, the legal and social alternatives available to the child and his family.

Interstate Enforcement Of Child Protection Orders, Donald N. Duquette

Book Chapters

Child protection orders issued by local courts are sometimes violated. As long as the children and the other parties involved remain within the court's jurisdiction, enforcement problems, although they exist, are less complicated than the problems presented when the child is out of the court's jurisdiction. A child may be removed from the jurisdiction during visitation, contrary to the court's order. A child, visiting in another jurisdiction, may not be returned as ordered by the court. A child placed out of the jurisdiction by the court may now be in jeopardy because of an unauthorized removal from placement or other …

Thinking About Public Policy Toward Abuse And Neglect Of Children: A Review Of Before The Best Interests Of The Child, Michael S. Wald

Michigan Law Review

A review of Before the Best Interests of the Child by Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud, and Albert J. Solnit

Father In Jail, David C. Baldus

Michigan Law Review

A review of Making Fathers Pay: The Enforcement of Child Support by David L. Chambers

Liberty And Lawyers In Child Protection, Donald N. Duquette

Book Chapters

The distinguishing feature of the juvenile or family court which sets it apart from, all other elements of the child protection system is that the court acts as arbiter of personal liberty. When society at large, through child protective services, attempts to intervene in the private life of a family on behalf of a child, the court must assure that the rights of the parents, the rights of the child, and the rights of. the society are protected and are abridged only after full and fair and objective court process. Only the court can abridge these personal rights in other …

The Estate Tax Marital Deduction, Harold Dubroff, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

The estate tax marital deduction, section 2056 of the Internal Revenue Code, was enacted in 1948, along with the split-income provisions of the income tax law and the marital deduction and split-gift provisions of the gift tax law. The purpose was to give married residents of common law states approximately the same federal tax advantages that were available to married residents of community property states. Ordinarily, upon the death of a married resident of a community property state, only one-half of the community property is taxed in the decedent's estate. Section 2056 achieves approximately the same result for married residents …

What Causes Fundamental Legal Ideas? Marital Property In England And France In The Thirteenth Century, Charles Donahue Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Categorizing broadly, the marital property systems of the Western nations today are divided into two types: those in which husband and wife own all property separately except those items that they have expressly agreed to hold jointly (in a nontechnical sense) and those in which husband and wife own a substantial portion or even all of their property jointly unless they have expressly agreed to hold it separately. The system of separate property is the "common law" system, in force in most jurisdictions where the Anglo-American common law is in force. The system of joint property is the community property …

The Haitian Vacation: The Applicability Of Sham Doctrine To Year-End Divorces, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines the propriety of applying the sham doctrine to tax-motivated divorces. Section I outlines the evolution of the sham doctrine from its exposition in Gregory v. Helvering through its expression in two different tests for commercial transactions. Section II then studies the relationship between state divorce law and the marital status provisions of the Internal Revenue Code to demonstrate the clear congressional preference for incorporating state law by reference rather than creating an independent federal law of marriage. It also examines the history of the 1969 Tax Reform Act in a vain effort to discern a congressional desire …

Comparative Family Law: Law And Social Change?, Charles Donahue Jr.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of State, Law and Family: Family Law in Transition in the United States and Western Europe by Mary Ann Glendon

Unmarried Couples And Unjust Enrichment: From Status To Contract And Back Again?, Robert C. Casad

Michigan Law Review

In recent years, litigation over property arrangements between unmarried cohabitants has posed some old questions in a new light and has yielded some new answers. One of the most intriguing of these questions is whether a cohabitant has a right, upon dissolution of the relationship, to remuneration for household services rendered during the relationship. A spouse who contributed household services in an actual marriage, of course, may upon divorce receive a share of the property acquired by the other spouse during the marriage or may receive a monetary award as compensation for the contributions made to the other during the …

Prohibiting Nonaccess Testimony By Spouses: Does Lord Mansfield's Rule Protect Illegitimates?, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Not surprisingly, there has been widespread disagreement concerning the validity of the policies advanced in support of Lord Mansfield's Rule and the efficacy of the rule to promote those policies. This Note assesses the validity of this rule of evidence in order to determine whether it is the most appropriate method of safeguarding the interests affected by the litigation of legitimacy. First, the historical development and justifications for Lord Mansfield's Rule are identified, and, in section II, the extent of the current acceptance of the rule in the United States is delineated. Section III analyzes traditional arguments advanced in support …

Comparative Reflections Of The "New Matrimonial Jurisprudence" Of The Roman Catholic Church, Charles Donahue Jr.

Michigan Law Review

A recent review of some developments in the law of the Roman Catholic Church concerning the annulment of marriages suggested to me that these developments might be of interest to an audience wider than that composed of those professionally or religiously concerned with the activities of the Church's tribunals. In particular, these developments may reveal something about the problem of incorporating the findings of modern psychology and psychiatry into a legal system, about the ways courts behave when confronted with social change, and perhaps even about the problematic relationship between law and morality. What follows, then, is a series of …