Family Law Commons^™

The Sleepwalker's Tour Of Divorce Law, John C. Sheldon

Maine Law Review

It's amazing what you can learn about modern divorce law from Nicholas Copernicus and Johannes Kepler. Copernicus was the 16th century churchman who dared to suggest that the sun, not the earth, lies at the center of the solar system. Kepler was the early-17th century mathematician whose three laws of planetary motion provided the foundation for modern cosmology. Neither of these pioneers had a clue what he was doing. A study of recent procedures, decisions, and statutes in Maine divorce law suggests that nothing has changed since Copernicus. Koestler could have written the same book just by attending a divorce …

Is More Parental Leave Always Better?: An Analysis Of Potential Employee Protections For Leave Offered Outside The Fmla, Natalie Bucciarelli Pedersen

Cleveland State Law Review

In the past few years, many large companies, including Netflix, Amazon and Facebook have implemented expanded—and very generous—parental leave policies. While on the surface these policies seem employee-friendly and even big-hearted, when one explores the potential consequences of taking such leave, the policies are fraught with potential dangers for employees. In a groundbreaking new study, researchers have found that employers view time off or flexible work arrangements made for an employee’s personal reasons as negatively reflecting on an employee’s work commitment. But what happens if a company decides to terminate an employee because they have taken leave and are viewed …

A Human Capital Theory Of Alimony And Tax, Tessa R. Davis

Faculty Publications

The current taxation of alimony is a broken scheme. Severed from any strong theoretical mooring, it draws lines in the sand between property settlement, child support, and alimony. The lack of coherence between the substance of alimony in family law and the tax concept of alimony (“tax alimony”) could be justified on other policy grounds, however. Yet current law, which allows the payor a deduction under §215 and requires inclusion by the recipient per §71, is difficult to interpret, resulting in frequent litigation and costly noncompliance. In short, the current concept of tax alimony fails to satisfy any of the …

Imputed Income And Incarceration: Establishing Child Support When A Parent Is Incarcerated, Heather Kolinsky, Melisa Medina

UF Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The New Law Of The Child, Anne C. Dailey, Laura A. Rosenbury

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article sets forth a new paradigm for describing, understanding, and shaping children’s relationship to law. The existing legal regime, which we term the “authorities framework,” focuses too narrowly on state and parental control over children, reducing children’s interests to those of dependency and the attainment of autonomy. In place of this limited focus, we envision a “new law of the child” that promotes a broader range of children’s present and future interests, including children’s interests in parental relationships and nonparental relationships with children and other adults; exposure to new ideas; expressions of identity; personal integrity and privacy; and participation …

Living Apart Together As A “Family Form” Among Persons Of Retirement Age: The Appropriate Family Law Response, Cynthia Grant Bowman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

As the Baby Boom generation enters retirement age, patterns of living among older persons are beginning to change. Unlike their predecessors, the Baby Boomers lived through the sexual revolution, divorced more easily and more often, and institutionalized new patterns of coupling, such as cohabitation. As a result, the rate of marriage has declined and the percent of the population classified as “single” has gone up. This age cohort has now moved into the sixty-five-plus group and makes up those we think of as the retirement generation, or the “Third Age” group. As longevity has increased and the divorce rate for …

Improving Outcomes In Child Poverty And Wellness In Appalachia In The "New Normal" Era: Infusing Empathy Into Law, Jill C. Engle

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

How Subterranean Regulation Hinders Innovation In Assisted Reproductive Technology, Myrisha S. Lewis

Faculty Publications

Most scholars believe assisted reproductive technology is subject only to minimal regulation, especially by the federal government. This belief, I contend, is wrong. In this Article, I examine agency documents, statements by officials, and letters that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has sent to physicians and researchers over the past fifteen years to reveal an overlooked regulatory program. The FDA has been targeting new forms of assisted reproductive technology that involve small genetic modifications (advanced assisted reproductive technologies or AARTs) through regulatory actions that receive little public, media, or scholarly attention. I term this method of regulation “subterranean …

Hubungan Keperdataan Antara Anak Luar Kawin Dan Orangtuanya: Studi Perbandingan Dengan Hukum Keluarga Di Belanda, Rosalinda Elsina Latumahina

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

Post Constitutional Court Decision No. 46 / PUU-VIII / 2010 dated February 17, 2012 on the amendment of Article 43 paragraph (1) of Marriage Act, many questions still raised regarding the implementation of the aforementioned article to establish civil relations between children born out of wedlock and their parents, especially with the father. The verdict by Supreme Court that rejected the lawsuit by Hj. Aisha Mochtar regarding legal status of her son, as well as several other court decisions indicate that there are various interpretations of the Article so that Article 43 paragraph (1) of Marriage Act cannot be implemented …

Miller V. Miller, 134 Nev. Adv. Op. 16 (Mar. 15, 2018), Anna Sichting

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

When the parents share joint physical custody of one minor child but one of the parents has primary physical custody of the other minor child, the district court must use additional steps in order to properly utilize the statutory child support formula. Further, the courts must make specific findings of fact if they deviate from the standard statutory formula.

Long V. Long: Law Court Ruling Changes The Disposition Of Joint Real Property On Divorce, Marc J. Veilleux

Maine Law Review

In Long v. Long the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, affirmed a district court divorce decree dividing the parties' residence of thirteen years as marital property, even though the majority of the funds used for its purchase were traceable to non-marital property the husband had acquired prior to the marriage. The governing statute instructed the district court to make an “equitable” disposition of all property acquired by the spouses during marriage, but required that it first “set apart to each spouse the spouse's [separate] property,” including property acquired during marriage by a spouse “in exchange for …

Maine's "Act To Protect Traditional Marriage And Prohibit Same-Sex Marriages": Questions Of Constitutionality Under State And Federal Law, Jennifer B. Wriggins

Maine Law Review

In 1997, Maine's Legislature passed “An Act to Protect Traditional Marriage and Prohibit Same-Sex Marriages” (Act). The summary attached to the bill states that the bill “prohibits persons of the same sex from contracting marriage.” The bill was the verbatim text of an initiative petition. Civil marriage in Maine and other states is regulated by state statute, and marriage regulation is generally considered to be within the state's police power. However, the state's power to regulate marriage is subject to constitutional limitations. I maintain that “heightened scrutiny” should be applied to the Act because the Act creates a gender-based classification, …

A Drone By Any Other Name: Purposes, End-User Trustworthiness, And Framing, But Not Terminology, Affect Public Support For Drones, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Brittany Duncan, Sebastian Elbaum, Carrick Detweiler

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

Projections indicate that, as an industry, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, commonly known as drones) could bring more than 100 000 jobs and $80 billion in economic growth to the U.S. by 2025 [1]. However, these promising projections do not account for how various publics may perceive such technologies. Understanding public perceptions is important because the attitudes of different groups can have large effects on the trajectory of a technology, strongly facilitating or hindering technology acceptance and uptake [2].

To advance understanding of U.S. public perceptions of UAV technologies, we conducted a nationwide survey of a convenience sample of 877 Americans …

The Rights Of Marriage: Obergefell, Din, And The Future Of Constitutional Family Law, Kerry Abrams

Cornell Law Review

In the summer of 2015 the United States Supreme Court handed down two groundbreaking constitutional family law decisions. One decision became famous overnight Obergefell v. Hodges declared that same-sex couples have the constitutional right to marry. The other, Kerry v. Din, went largely overlooked. That later case concerned not the right to marry but the rights of marriage. In particular, it asked whether a person has a constitutional liberty interest in living with his or her spouse. This case is suddenly of paramount importance: executive orders targeting particular groups of immigrants implicate directly this right to family reunification.

This Article …

The Marital Wealth Gap, Erez Aloni

Washington Law Review

Married couples are wealthier than people in all other family structures. The top 10% of wealth holders are, in great proportion, married. Even among the wealthiest households, married couples hold significantly more wealth than others. The Article identifies this phenomenon as the “Marital Wealth Gap,” and critiques the role of diverse legal mechanisms in creating and maintaining it. Marriage also contributes to the concentration of wealth because marriage patterns are increasingly assortative: wealth marries wealth. The law entrenches or even exacerbates these class-based marriage patterns by erecting structural barriers that hinder people from meeting across economic strata. How can the …

Judge William L. Standish And His Court Cases In Family Division, Court Of Common Pleas Of Allegheny County (1980-1987), Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

Judge William L. Standish joined R. Stanton Wettick, Jr., Lawrence W. Kaplan, and Eugene B. Strassburger III as the first four judges of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, Family Division, who handled family law cases during the decade of the 1980s when the new Divorce Code (Act 26 of 1980) ushered in a new era of change in family law. Governor Richard Thornburgh appointed William Standish as a judge on November 16, 1979, was confirmed by the Senate on March 18, 1980, and sworn-in on April 2, 1980. He was then elected to a full-term position in November …

Co-Parenting Woes: There's An App For That, Darla Jackson, Jim Calloway

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Marital Wealth Gap, Erez Aloni

All Faculty Publications

Married couples are wealthier than people in all other family structures. The top 10% of wealth holders are, in great proportion, married. Even among the wealthiest households, married couples hold significantly more wealth than others. The Article identifies this phenomenon as the “Marital Wealth Gap,” and critiques the role of diverse legal mechanisms in creating and maintaining it. Marriage also contributes to the concentration of wealth because marriage patterns are increasingly assortative: wealth marries wealth. The law entrenches or even exacerbates these class-based marriage patterns by erecting structural barriers that hinder people from meeting across economic strata.

How can the …

Lnk Market Community Conversations, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Usda Value Added Producer Grant Steering Committee

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

This report details the procedures and results from two public engagements conducted around the possibility of a year-round public market that might be situated in or near Lincoln’s downtown area. The purpose of these engagements was to uncover and explore the range of responses, hopes, concerns, and perceived benefits, barriers, and facilitators of a year-round Lincoln market.

A multi-pronged approach was used in which recruitment survey responses from about 135 persons was combined with pre-post surveys and in-depth conversations with 60 persons as shown in Figure 1.1.

The final report includes all three strands of information: from the recruitment surveys, …

What Judges Need To Know: Schemas, Implicit Bias, And Empirical Research On Lgbt Parenting And Demographics, Todd Brower

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

No abstract provided.

Predictive Neglect And "Unfit" Mothers - When Having A Mental Illness Means The State Takes Your Child, Amelia Lyte

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

No abstract provided.

Connecting Children And Incarcerated Parents, Christine M. Scartz, Sandra Barnhill, Alfredo Fargione

Working in the Public Interest Conferences

Incarcerated parents are significantly more likely to have their parental rights terminated simply due to their incarceration. Panelists will discuss how to combat TPRs, advocate for visitation, and ensure case plan services are being provided.

The History Of Forcible Removal Of Children In The Us, Andrea L. Dennis, William A. Thorne, Carlyn Hicks

Working in the Public Interest Conferences

Child welfare agencies currently remove children of color at rates double and triple their proportion of the population. Panelists discuss the historical removal of Native, African-American and Latinx children as well as how to improve conditions today.

Power In The Age Of In/Equality: Economic Abuse, Masculinities, And The Long Road To Marriage Equality, Arianne Renan Barzilay

Akron Law Review

In an era when women have achieved formal legal equality, patriarchal power endures. In this article I take on a largely neglected subject: economic abuse. While this phenomenon has recently begun to generate awareness as a form of intimate partner violence, it currently lacks a theory and history with which to deeply understand it. A failure to recognize the profound roots enabling economic abuse contributes to its perpetuation, trivialization, and marginalization in legal thought. Such a failure has broad implications for gender equality. This Article offers both a history and a theory with which to understand the phenomenon’s deep roots. …

Surrogate Mothers, Gestational Carriers, And A Pragmatic Adaptation Of The Uniform Parentage Act Of 2000, John C. Sheldon

Maine Law Review

Recent medical advances that permit human conception without intercourse, in combination with sociological changes in our country, dramatically enlarge the population of adults who can produce or raise children. The legal price for this broadening of opportunity, however, is a diminishment of certainty: We are no longer sure whom we should identify as a child's parents. These are important questions, of course, because ready answers will quickly dampen disputes about custody and will immediately establish support obligations and the children's eligibility for health insurance, for inheritance, for Workers' Compensation benefits, and for Social Security survivor benefits. But as important as …

Champions For Justice 2018, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Ménage À What? The Fundamental Right To Plural Marriage, Renuka Santhanagopalan

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Sb 201 - Sick Leave, Mary Elizabeth D. Steinhaus, Chadwick L. Williams

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act amends Georgia’s general provisions relating to labor and industrial relations by adding a new provision that requires qualifying employers to allow their employees to use sick leave to care for immediate family members.

Hb 359 - Power Of Attorney, Roma A. Amin, Catherine V. Schutz

Georgia State University Law Review

The bill would have repealed and replaced Georgia’s Power of Attorney for the Care of a Minor Child Act. The category of people who could be given power of attorney for the care of a minor child would have expanded from only grandparents and great-grandparents to a broad category of the child’s relatives, and anyone associated with a non-profit organization focused on child or family services or a licensed child-placing agency.

Old Issues New Perspectives, Ronald Griffin

Faculty Books and Book Contributions

The book commences with Ronald C. Griffin‟s essay Ghost Town: The Death of Marriage, the Birth of Cohabitation, and the Emergence of the Single Woman. In his essay he revisits the history of marriage, the economics of marriage, the rise and demise of childhood, the emergence of new couplings and the social traumas that come with them.