Family Law Commons^™

In Re N.D., 312 A.3d 438 (R.I. 2024), Alexandria Snyders Dykeman

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Glassie V. Doucette, 316 A.3d 1152 (R.I. 2024), Christopher M. Ray

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Practicing Justice: A Critical Self- Reflection On The Role Of Trauma In Legal Practice, Sarah Katz

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Re N.B., 312 A.3d 428 (R.I. 2024), Olivia F. Johnson

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Unfulfilled Promise Of Obergefell For Children Of Lgbtq+ Parents: Advancing Non-Discrimination Laws For Familial Association, Jeffrey Dodge

Faculty Scholarship

Since the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, same-sex marriages have increased significantly in the United States. The American Community Survey data collected in 2022 shows that there are around 1.3 million same-sex couple households in the country, up from 565,000 in 2028. Just over half of these couples are legally married, up nearly 400% from prior to Obergefell. This data not only shows the significance of Obergefell for the LGBTQ+ community, but it also frames a generational shift in attitudes on marriage and family.

With the rise in same-sex couples accessing marriage has come greater visibility, representation, and acknowledgement. …

Being Pregnant In Someone Else's Body, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Publications

No abstract provided.

Court Forms And Court Reforms: Pro Se Litigants And The Limited Success Of Standardized Family Court Forms, Caroline Rogus

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The first step in any civil lawsuit, long before a court will contemplate awarding relief, is initiating the court matter: a plaintiff must always start by effectively pleading their case. The court system rests upon the presumption that an attorney will create and file the requisite court documents—including complaints, answers, and motions—on behalf of their client. The reality, however, is that an extraordinarily high number of litigants do not have legal representation and must therefore proceed pro se and submit these documents on their own. Most jurisdictions offer pro se litigants standardized, fillable court forms. These forms are intended to …

Beyond The Bench: Historical Injustices And Future Pathways For Florida’S Family Court, David J. Blum

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis examines systemic inequities in Florida’s family law system, focusing on how legal doctrines, discretionary practices, and enforcement patterns disadvantage unwed and noncustodial fathers. Drawing on statutory analysis, case law, empirical studies, and psychological research, it evaluates several reforms designed to promote fairness while protecting child welfare. These include mandatory paternity testing at birth, a rebuttable presumption of equal custody, stronger enforcement of visitation orders, equitable tax restructuring, and improved training for legal professionals. Current Voluntary Acknowledgment of Paternity (VAP) procedures often create binding obligations without confirming biological parentage, resulting in long-term emotional, legal, and financial consequences. Research shows …

Taking From The Most Vulnerable: Legal Implications Of Seizing Federal Benefits From Foster Kids, Lucy Johnston-Walsh

Faculty Scholarship

Foster youth in some states are paying the cost of their own room and board when state and local government agencies seize a child's federal social security benefits to cover the costs of care. Other states, however, have passed laws forbidding such a practice, allowing youth to save these funds for their own financial needs. Federal social security benefits are an individual's own property and should not be taken without adequate notice, nor without an opportunity to challenge the taking. Tet too many youth who are involved in the foster care system are unaware they are even receiving benefits and …

The Impact Of Divorce Proceedings On Victims Of Domestic Violence, Quinn G. Di Ienno

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Divorce often signifies the end of conflict in relationships that individuals no longer wish to continue. However, the impact of divorce on victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) is a topic that remains underexplored. This research investigates the extent to which individuals navigating divorce proceedings are victims of IPV and aims to illuminate their experiences within the legal system. The study delves into various forms of abuse, including physical, emotional, and financial, while also addressing the challenges victims face in seeking assistance. Employing a mixed-methods research design, this study comprises a comprehensive literature review and an online survey targeting those …

How Does The Modern Supreme Court Treat The Idea Of Retribution In The Context Of Capital Punishment?, Paige Forsberg

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis explores the modern U.S. Supreme Court's treatment of retribution in the context of capital punishment, analyzing how justices have framed and justified the death penalty as a form of justice. Through the examination of key Supreme Court rulings and legal arguments, this study evaluates the evolving role of retribution in the Court’s decisions on death penalty cases, highlighting how judicial reasoning has shifted over time in response to legal, philosophical, and societal developments.

Retribution, long considered one of the primary justifications for capital punishment, is examined through a nuanced lens in this study. While historically viewed as a …

Exploring The Dynamics And Outcomes Of Family Engagement In Child Welfare Services: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach, Jianchao Lai, Michelle Graef, Todd Franke

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

Background: Engaging families effectively in child welfare services remains a persistent challenge, shaped by complex interactions between agency practices and family circumstances. While existing research has explored this issue, it has predominantly relied on data from agency and caseworker perspectives, often overlooking the crucial viewpoint of the families. Objectives: This study investigates families’ subjective experiences and perceptions within the child welfare system, focusing on their satisfaction with child welfare workers and overall engagement. Methods: The study draws on data collected through an evaluation of the implementation of Alternative Response in a Midwestern state. Agency administrative data is integrated with additional …

Mired In Meyer'S Mischief A Century After Fabrication Of Constitutional Parents' Rights, James G. Dwyer

Faculty Publications

The seminal Supreme Court decisions Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, now commemorated on their centenary anniversary, are odd doctrinal ducks. They are both still routinely cited as the foundation for ascribing to persons on whom the state has conferred legal parent status a right under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution. (According to Westlaw, judicial citation count for Meyer now nears 3000, and secondary-source citations have surpassed 7000.) It is a constitutional right to force states to confer on them greater legal power than the state is otherwise inclined to …

The Kincare Craze In Child Protection: Romanticism, Subterfuge, And Racial Separatism, James G. Dwyer

Faculty Publications

Among recent developments in family law, the most prevalent issue on legislative agendas has been Kincare as an alternative to non-relative foster care when maltreated children cannot remain with parents. Long an available option legally but traditionally regarded with skepticism by child protection workers, Kincare is now idealized. A steady stream of state legislative bills aims to encourage or command child protection and foster care agencies to place maltreated children in the home of relatives or friends of their parents whenever one is available, ostensibly based on an assumption that this is categorically better for children than living with unrelated …

Lost Fatherhood: Including Fathers In The Post-Dobbs Abortion Debate, Linda L. Schlueter

Faculty Articles

Scientific studies over the last five decades show the negative impact an abortion can have on the men who fathered the aborted children. These studies demonstrate that those men-even if they supported the woman's decision to have an abortion-can experience a variety of psychological problems including depression, anger, hopelessness, helplessness, broken or damaged relationships, feelings of emasculation, and loneliness. Despite these compelling studies, little or no real attention is given to involving men in the legal debate regarding abortion. The abortion debate presents a legal Rubik's Cube of thorny issues that can affect the mother, the father, and the unborn …

Leaving Pawprints On Our Hearts: Bystander Recovery For Witnessing The Negligent Killing Of A Companion Animal, John G. Browning

Animal Law Review

According to the Pew Research Center, nearly all (97%) Americans with companion animals consider their “furbabies” to be members of the family. This is reflected in a number of other areas, from state and federal laws re-garding emergency management that recognize four-legged members of the family unit to divorce and custody laws in multiple states that require courts to treat companion animals not as property, but as family members. Soci-ologists and psychologists have also documented the expanding recognition of the “multispecies family.” However, the majority of states’ laws still view companion animals as chattel property, even as more and more …

What's In A Name? Policing, Juliet., Shanée Brown

Scholarly Works

Child welfare" and "child protection" are misnomers. These terms do not accurately depict the investigatory nature of the system purported to help families, or at the very least, save endangered children. Contrary to public opinion, the "child welfare system" comprises of state actors who police parents and children. It is the naming of this system that convinces the public that these agencies are excised from the category of law enforcement, persuading many that the agencies engage in social work and not police work. Calling the system what it really is-family policing-is a step toward achieving justice for families adversely impacted …

Property Problems In The New Non-Marriage: Inheritance, Eliot Tracz

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

Marriage equality has been a hotly contested topic for many years, in both the court of public opinion and in courts of law. Major Supreme Court cases have found that marriage is a fundamental right, yet issues such as marriage outside of one’s race or to a person of the same gender have still been topics of litigation. At times, the very definition of marriage has been at issue, but throughout all of this litigation, courts have consistently defined marriage as a relationship between two people.

An Ethnography Of Love Jihad: The Governance Of Interfaith Marriages In Times Of Hindutva, Snehal Sharma

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

My doctoral research focuses on the violations of human and citizenship rights of women and religiously marginalized communities (based on religious differences) in the backdrop of right-wing movements in India. I assess the Hindu nationalist propaganda named “love jihad” to demonstrate the way it weaponizes religious exogamy. This propaganda legitimizes violence against Indian religious minorities and women as it claims that marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men are acts of terrorism against Hindus with the sole aim of increasing the Muslim population using Hindu women's bodies. I have used ethnographic research methods to explore the legal process of interfaith …

The Kincare Craze In Child Protection: Romanticism, Subterfuge, And Racial Separatism, James G. Dwyer

FIU Law Review

A deluge of federal and state legislation in recent years aims to channel maltreated children removed from parents’ custody into kin placements, responding to advocates for parents who claim this is categorically better for children than entering or remaining in foster care with biologically unrelated caregivers. The claim has romantic appeal, sufficient to beguile legislators. But the research on outcomes for children in different post-removal placements does not support it. In reality, motivations other than child welfare underlie the advocacy for this legislation. The core aim is to evade federal child-welfare mandates adopted in the 1990s and long condemned by …

Being Pregnant In Someone Else's Body, Jennifer S. Hendricks

FIU Law Review

In the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning the right to abortion, now is a critical time to re-assess how legal feminism theorizes the pregnant body. Before Dobbs, feminist legal scholarship had blazed a path of anti-maternalism, a stance rooted in liberal, formalist notions of equality that denigrates the “feminine” and too often minimizes the importance of reproductive issues both as tools of sex-based subordination in the present and as foundations for liberation in the future. Anti-maternalism is attractive to legal scholars because it minimizes sex and gender differences and may appear to be gender-inclusive. It has produced arguments that …

Fifty Years Of Protecting The Surviving Spouse: The Origin And Evolution Of Florida's Elective Share, Flavia Argamasilla

FIU Law Review

Currently, Florida’s elective share framework calculates the amount a surviving spouse is entitled to based on a decedent’s “elective estate.” Although this “elective estate” represents a significant improvement from previous law, where a decedent was free to completely disinherit a surviving spouse, issues still loom regarding the fairness of the framework. Granting a surviving spouse a fixed share of 30 percent of the decedent’s “elective estate” regardless of the length of the marriage can lead to inequitable outcomes. For instance, a surviving spouse who was married to the decedent for any period of time, one month even, can elect to …

Promoting Financial Empowerment Via 401(K) Plan Domestic Abuse Victim Distributions, Samantha Prince

Faculty Scholarship

Domestic violence is sadly and shockingly all too prevalent in the United States. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, more than one in four women and one in seven men in this country are subject to domestic abuse “affecting an estimated 10 million people every year.”

Finances and financial abuse play a significant role in 99% of domestic abuse cases. “[L]acking financial knowledge or resources is the number one indicator of whether a domestic violence victim will stay, leave, or return to an abusive relationship.”When abusers have control over financial assets, victims are monetarily paralyzed and have little …

A Right To Be Born?: What Dobbs Could Mean For Artificial Reproductive Technologies, Stewart Chang

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Kids Aren’T Alright: Creating Greater Protections For The Children Of Family Vloggers, Annie Dunn

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Tenth Anniversary Of Marriage Equality: How Traditional Marriage Law Led To Constitutional Protection For Same-Sex Marriage, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This essay explores how the history of interstate marriage recognition law was central to the Supreme Court’s recognition of constitutional protection for the right of same-sex couples to marry. Prior to the 1990s, there were essentially no laws on same-sex marriage in the United States. That changed in the 1990s, when the Hawaii Supreme Court issued a ruling in Baehr v. Lewin that made authorization of same-sex marriage seem inevitable in that state. The threat fueled the adoption first of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996 and then mini-DOMAs in most states. Those laws were broad and …

Who Decides: The Role Of Parental Rights In Abortion And Gender-Affirming-Care Decisions For Minors, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The American legal system presumes that children’s interests are best protected by their parents and, secondarily, by the state’s parens patriae authority. Yet this structure falters when parental authority and state power are infused with political and ideological agendas. This Essay examines how these dynamics have distorted decision-making authority in two contexts—minors’ access to abortion and gender-affirming medical care—and allowed children’s welfare and autonomy to be sacrificed to partisan aims. The law is inconsistent on the role of parental rights—typically empowering parents to grant or withhold consent to a minor’s abortion but categorically stripping them of the power to consent …

The Racial History Of Marital Privilege, Jessica Dixon Weaver

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Serena Mayeri’s Marital Privilege: Marriage, Inequality, and the Transformation of American Law unearths forgotten racial and political battles centered on establishing equal benefits and opportunities for unmarried parents and couples. It is the first book that grapples with the racial motivations of the late twentieth-century United States government withdrawal or manipulation of a host of laws that center the normative White, married, heterosexual couple. Marital Privilege emphasizes how both federal and state governments marginalize poor people to limited spaces within a weak economic safety net, often leaving families at the intersection of poverty and race unable to take advantage of …

Formal Victories And Roads Not Taken: Excavating Departures And Throughlines In Challenges To The Place Of Marriage, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

A decade after Obergefell, Professor Mayeri’s fascinating and meticulously detailed new book, Marital Privilege: Marriage, Inequality, and the Transformation of American Law, tells the stories of “marriage’s challengers,”from the 1960s to the beginning of the twenty-first century.¹⁶ Along with the stories of some “well-known” lawyers, advocates, and scholars, Mayeri also “rescu[es]” the stories of now “obscure” Americans who “pushed marital boundaries” to protect their parental rights, their careers, or their “freedom to make decisions about their bodies and families.”¹⁷ Such rescue allows readers to “see change as a bottom-up as well as a top-down process.”¹⁸ Mayeri …