Family Law Commons^™

Law, Science, And History: Reflections Upon In The Best Interests Of The Child, Peggy C. Davis

Michigan Law Review

A Review of In the Best Interests of the Child by Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud, Albert J. Solnit, and Sonja Goldstein

Legislatures And Legal Change: The Reform Of Divorce Law, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

A Review of A Silent Revolution: Routine Policy Making and the Transformation of Divorce Law in the United States by Herbert Jacob

The Legal History Of The Family, Lee E. Teitelbaum

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America by Michael Grossberg

Consider The Consequences, Martha Minow

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America by Lenore J. Weitzman

Moral Discourse And Family Law, Lee E. Teitelbaum

Michigan Law Review

It seems appropriate in the early stages of an experiment in legal publishing to say something about it, if only because few forms have been as resistant to innovation as the law review. The creation of a section for correspondence regarding recent articles provides a medium for conducting just the national discourse which scholarship aspires to provoke and which does occur in private conversations or letters and, occasionally, in panels at professional meetings. To talk in print about a colleague's work - to praise it, qualify it, pursue suggested or alternate lines of thought - is not only an enjoyable …

Moral Discourse And The Transformation Of American Family Law, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

Family law has undergone momentous change in recent decades. In this Article, Professor Schneider proposes that the transformation in family law can be understood as a diminution in the law's discourse in moral terms about the relations between family members and as a transfer of moral decisions from the law to the people the law once regulated. Professor Schneider identifies countertrends and limits to the changes he describes, and then investigates the reasons for the changes. He hypothesizes that four forces helped change family law and moral discourse within family law: the legal tradition of noninterference in family affairs; the …

Heartbalm Statutes And Deceit Actions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note considers whether actions in deceit based on fraudulent marriage promises should be deemed barred by the heartbalm statutes. It determines that they should not. Part I examines the policies and arguments against the common law breach of promise to marry action that are embodied in the heartbalm statutes and looks at the limits courts have placed on the reach of the statutes. Part II re-examines the deceit action in light of the purposes of the heartbalm acts and their intended scope, as well as in light of criticism of the action by the courts and commentators. In particular, …

The Establishment Clause And Religion In Child Custody Disputes: Factoring Religion Into The Best Interest Equation, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines when judges deciding custody disputes may consider potential custodians' religious practices without violating the establishment clause of the first amendment to the Constitution. Although courts agree that they may not prefer one parent to another for religious reasons when both parents are religious and neither parent's religious practices threaten the child's health or safety, some courts believe that they may constitutionally prefer a religious parent to a nonreligious parent. Part I argues that courts violate the establishment clause by preferring religion to nonreligion when there is no showing that the child has personal religious convictions. Part II …

The Treatment Of Mandatory Tax Withholdings In Calculating Afdc Benefits: Fairness As A Relevant Inference In Ascertaining Congressional Intent, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note contends that the more appropriate construction of the statute is to view mandatory tax withholdings as nonincome and nonwork expense items. Part I traces the pre-OBRA legislative and administrative history and examines the judicial interpretations of 42 U.S.C. section 602(a)(7) "income" and section 602(a)(8) "earned income." It concludes that under the "availability" principle, tax withholdings have always been regarded as nonincome items distinct from work expenses. It contends that, notwithstanding contradictory language in the regulations implementing section 602(a)(8), the status of tax withholdings as nonincome items under section 602(a)(7) is controlling. Part II considers the legislative history and …

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 Marriage Contract, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

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

Illegitimacy: An Examination Of Bastardy, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

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

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

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 …

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.

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

Father In Jail, David C. Baldus

Michigan Law Review

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

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

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 …

Rheinstein: Marriage Stability, Divorce, And The Law, Robert F. Drinan, Michael Wheeler

Michigan Law Review

A Book Review of Marriage Stability, Divorce, and the Law by Max Rheinstein