Family Law Commons^™

Delivery Of Legal Services To Children In The Boston Area, Tamar Ezer

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For Ira Ellman: One More Reason 'Why Making Family Law Is Hard', David L. Chambers

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Kate Bartlett and Ira worked together as reporters on the ALI project. I was merely one of nearly thirty advisors to the reporters. The advisors had no responsibility for drafting, no responsibility for coming up with original proposals. Our sole job was to come once a year to a meeting in Philadelphia and take potshots at the drafts that Ira, Kate, and Grace Blumberg sent to us. At the meetings, the reporters would sit on a platform and listen to our comments as we moved section by section through a draft. Ira became a master of reportership. He would nod …

Strangers And Brothers: A Homily On Transracial Adoption, Carl E. Schneider

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The common law speaks to us in parables. Ours is Drummond v. Fulton County Department of Family and Children's Services. Just before Christmas 1973, a boy named Timmy was born to a white mother and a black father. A month later, his mother was declared unfit, and the Department of Family and Children Services placed Timmy with white foster parents - Robert and Mildred Drummond. The Drummonds were "excellent" and "loving" parents, and Timmy grew into "an extremely bright, highly verbal, outgoing 15-month baby boy." Then the Drummonds asked to adopt Timmy. The Department's reviews of the Drummonds' devotion …

Children's Rights In Israel: An End To Corporal Punishment, Tamar Ezer

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Private Pathologies And Public Policies: Race, Class, And The Failure Of Child Welfare (Book Review), Charlton C. Copeland

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Valuation, Allocation, And Distribution Of Retirement Plans At Divorce: Where Are We?, Elizabeth Brandt

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For The Best Of Friends And For Lovers Of All Sorts, A Status Other Than Marriage (Symposium: Unmarried Partners And The Legacy Of Marvin V. Marvin)" , David L. Chambers

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American governments have recently begun to experiment with new familial statuses for gay male and lesbian couples, who have demanded the right to marry but have been appeased with more modest forms of recognition.4 What I propose here is quite different. It is a status for people who have close bonds but do not want to be married to each other. I call this status "designated friends." Once registered, "designated friends" would obtain a limited number of privileges and undertake a limited number of responsibilities relating to the care for the other when ill or incapacitated or upon death, but …

Foster Care: The Border Of Family Identity Maintaining, (Re)Creating, Destroying, Zanita E. Fenton

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"Please Let Me Be Heard:" The Right Of A Florida Foster Child To Due Process Prior To Being Committed To A Long-Term, Locked Psychiatric Institution, Bernard P. Perlmutter, Caroline S. Salisbury

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Internet Sexual Predators: Protecting Children In The Global Community, Madeleine M. Plasencia

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The Internet, serving as the largest network of computers in the world, has provided the horizontal parallax over which all can participate in communication and transaction, education and entertainment4 It also serves a community of participants and beneficiaries whose goals are not always shared or legal. The rise of this advanced technology has led to a new "red light district."

Unlike the physical spaces available for the distribution of pornography and sexual favors for money, the Internet, with its lack of structure, has led to an unimaginable amount of pornography available for any on-line spectator.' Information necessary for consummation of …

The Challenge To Rural States Of Procedural Reform In High Conflict Custody Cases, Elizabeth Brandt

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Legal Representation For Children In Protection Proceedings: Two Distinct Lawyer Roles Are Required, Donald N. Duquette

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The thesis of this article is that it is a mistake to try to develop a single lawyer role for children in protection cases which tries to accommodate their developing capacities from infants to articulate teens. Sometimes a child needs a traditional attorney; sometimes a best interests advocate. We should adopt different standards for the different lawyer roles. Trying to define a single lawyer role for children of all ages and all capacities is an impossible task. This article argues that we should resolve the ambivalence not by adopting a client-directed or a best interests approach, but by having two …

Conceiving Nonmarital Fathers' Rights: An Inquiry Into The Constitutionality Of West Virginia's Adoption Statute, Lisa Kelly

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When do the rights of nonmarital fathers to their children quicken? Is it only upon the father's establishment of a substantial economic and emotional relationship with his child? Do such fathers' interests gel only after the ink has dried on an order or affidavit in which paternity is established or acknowledged? Do there fundamental rights lie inchoate in the beating hearts of the newborn or gestating child? How should the law regard the role of the nonmarital father in the adoption context? Should there be one standard for all or two-one for fathers of infants and another for fathers or …

Due Process Rights Of The Second Parent In Child Protection Proceedings, Donald N. Duquette

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When one parent is charged with child neglect or abuse under MCL 712A.2(b)and the other parent is not an active participant in the abuse, is absent, or is not part of the same household, what process is due the second parent?' If the second parent comes forward and asks for custody, should he or she be able to get it, absent a finding of neglect or abuse as to that parent? Or is the child a ward of the Family Court, based on the misconduct or maltreatment of one parent so that the second parent is subject to the court's …

Civilizing The Natives: Marriage In Post-Apartheid South Africa, David L. Chambers

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South Africa is a land of many cultures. For several hundred years, British and Afrikaaner whites controlled the country, systematically manipulating black people to the whites' advantage. For the most part, however, whites tolerated the continuation within black communities of traditional marriage practices that white Christians considered uncivilized. In 1994, South Africa changed governments. A black majority Parliament came to power, adopting a consitution dedicated to equality and human dignity. Four years later, Parliament adopted a new marriage law that, though permitting some of the external trappings of the traditional marriage system to continue, eliminated by law much of the …

The Baker [Baker V. State, 744 A.2d 864 (Vt. 1999)] Case, Civil Unions, And The Recognition Of Our Common Humanity: An Introduction And A Speculation, David L. Chambers

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Every. Vermonter seems to know about two recent decisions of the Vermont Supreme Court. In the first, the court struck down the system of local financing of public schools. Like similar decisions in many other states, the school financing case led to a struggle in the legislature and difficulties for legislators at election time. In the second and even more controversial decision, the court reached an outcome that no other state supreme court had ever reached: it held unconstitutional the state's marriage law on the ground that it inappropriately denied the legal benefits of marriage to same-sex couples. This decision, …

The Enlightenment Case For Vouchers, John O. Mcginnis

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Afterword And Response: What Digging Does And Does Not Do, Patricia D. White

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Family Law In The Age Of Distrust, Carl E. Scheider

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I have been invited to examine the relationship between American culture and American family law at the end of the century. No doubt I was foolish to accept the invitation, since the topic can hardly be sketched, much less discussed, within the compass of even a lengthy article. On the other hand, that happy fault forces me to accept the luxury of writing a speculative essay and of eschewing the footnotes that are the misery (and majesty) of the academic lawyer. But even thus set free I am still enchained. Family law is shaped by more cultural forces than I …

West Virginia's Adoption Statute: A History Of A Work In Progress, Lisa Kelly

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More than two years have passed since the Legislature reformed West Virginia's adoption statute. The goal of this article is to provide a kind of legislative history to deepen the reader's understanding of the current statute. This history will include an explanation of the West Virginia Law Institute's Proposal, as well as the Legislature's reaction to it. In Part II, I will detail this history. In Part III, I will explain the operation of the current statute, with mention of the few recent adoption decisions that have construed various provisions. In Part IV, I will look at some of the …

Family Law And Gay And Lesbian Family Issues In The Twentieth Century, David L. Chambers, Nancy D. Polikoff

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Over these thirty years, lesbians and gay men have increasingly challenged conventional definitions of marriage and the family. In this brief article, we tell the story of gay people and family law in the United States across this period. We divide our discussion into two sections: issues regarding the recognition of the same-sex couple relationship and issues regarding gay men and lesbians as parents. These issues overlap, of course, but since family law discussions commonly treat adult-adult issues of all sorts separately from parent-child issues, we believe it convenient and helpful to do so as well.

A Child's Right To Physical Integrity, Suellyn Scarnecchia

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As we wring our hands over increasing reports of severe child abuse and how violent many of our children have become, it might be time to reassess policies that give parents and others the license to use even the most mild forms of violence against our children.

Lesbian Divorce: A Commentary On The Legal Issues, David L. Chambers

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Lesbian couples who break up will find themselves in an awkward position under the law for two separable but related reasons. The first is that, because they were unmarried, they are subjected by the law to much the same uneven and ambivalent treatment to which unmarried heterosexual couples are subjected. The second, of course, is that they are gay or lesbian and thus regarded with special disfavor even in some states that have become more tolerant of unmarried heterosexual relationships. As a law teacher who is gay and who writes about family law issues relating to gay men and lesbians, …

Domestic Violence In Black And White: Racialized Gender Stereotypes In Gender Violence, Zanita E. Fenton

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Uniform Premarital Agreements Act And The Reality Of Premarital Agreements In Idaho, Elizabeth Brandt

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Polygamy And Same-Sex Marriage, David L. Chambers

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In the American federal system, state governments bear the responsibility for enacting the laws that define the persons who are permitted to marry. The federal government, throughout our history, has accepted these definitions and built upon them, fixing legal consequences for those who validly marry under state law. Only twice in American history has Congress intervened to reject the determinations that states might make about who can marry. The first occasion was in the late nineteenth century when Congress enacted a series of statutes aimed at the Mormon Church, prohibiting polygamy in the Western territories and punishing the Church and …

Marriage Today: Legal Consequences For Same Sex And Opposite Sex Couples, David L. Chambers

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Laws that treat married persons in a different manner than they treat single persons permeate nearly every field of social regulation in this country -- taxation, otrts, evidence, social welfare, inheritance, adoption, and on and on.

Divining The Deep And Inscrutable: Toward A Gender-Neutral, Child-Centered Approach To Child Name Change Proceedings, Lisa Kelly

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While largely a matter of social convention, the surnames that children bear have been regulated by the law as well. In certain circumstances, the law has attempted to regulate the surnames given to children at birth, but more often the law has come into play when a change of name is sought for the child: It is at this point that the law dictates to family members what it values and what it will forbid as the law goes about the business of enforcing societal norms. This article will look at the role of naming and name changing and the …

What About The Children? Are Family Lawyers The Same (Ethically) As Criminal Lawyers? A Morality Play, Robert H. Aronson

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A fictional account of a lawyer, representing a woman in a divorce case, who learns from her client that her live-in boyfriend has hit her and her five-year-old daughter. Is her ethical duty to protect the child greater than her responsibility to maintain the attorney-client privilege. She discusses the matter with two evidence professors in search of a solution.

What If? The Legal Consequences Of Marriage And The Legal Needs Of Lesbian And Gay Male Couples, David L. Chambers

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Laws that treat married persons in a different manner than they treat single persons permeate nearly every field of social regulation in this country - taxation, torts, evidence, social welfare, inheritance, adoption, and on and on. In this article I inquire into the patterns these laws form and the central benefits and obligations that marriage entails, a task few scholars have undertaken in recent years. I have done so because same-sex couples, a large group not previously eligible to marry under the laws of any American jurisdiction, may be on the brink of securing the opportunity to do so in …