Family Law Commons^™

Void, Voidable, And The Limits Of Finality: Reconciling Equity And Public Policy In Illinois Child Support Orders, Julie M. Pirtle

Northern Illinois University Law Review

What happens when a 2012 agreed order, which dismisses a 2009 paternity finding, waives child support, and sets no parenting time, is challenged as void twelve years later and now Mother says Father has a $63,219.60 arrearage? My client, the Father and payor of support, was facing just that scenario. It is common knowledge that an out of court agreement to modify/terminate child support is not enforceable unless it is reduced to writing and approved by the courts. However, a party to a litigation should be allowed to rely on the orders the court enters. Father has every right to …

The Restatement Of Children And The Law: Modern Regulation In A Developmental Framework, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

In May 2024, the membership of the American Law Institute approved the Restatement of Children and the Law, the first Restatement to focus on the law regulating children and families. The combined efforts of five Reporters (Elizabeth Scott, Reporter, and Richard Bonnie, Emily Buss, Clare Huntington and Solangel Maldonado, Associate Reporters), working for almost nine years, this new Restatement covers most of the legal landscape of American law's relationship to children. It is organized in four Parts: Part I, Children in Families, deals with parental rights and authority and state intervention in families; Part II, Children in Schools, covers children's …

Fatherhood, Family Law, And The Crisis Of Boys And Men, June Carbone, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Boys and men in all racial and ethnic groups and across most socioeconomic groups are struggling on many fronts, including education, employment, physical and mental health, and social integration. In these areas and more, boys and men are much worse off than they were only a few decades ago. The crisis — which is concentrated among men without college degrees — is rooted in large-scale structural changes to the economy that have decimated jobs for this group and policy choices that emphasize incarceration while doing little to address economic inequality.

The decline in male well-being is not just a problem …

The Irrationality Of Child Support Enforcement In The United States: Harming Children And Punishing The Poor, Hannah Pitcher

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

A Game Theory View Of Family Law: Planning For A 500% Family Tax, Steven J. Willis

FIU Law Review

Divorces involve money, which can prompt fierce legal battles. These include family obligations for child support, alimony, and property division. Small income changes can have huge consequences. For example, a $1,000 income increase can result in $5,000 of increased family obligations. A $10,000 increase can produce $50,000 of obligations. Or a $10,000 decrease can result in $50,000 of reduced obligations.

A Game Theory View Of Family Law: Divorce Planning For A 500% "Family-Tax", Steven J. Willis

UF Law Faculty Publications

Divorces involve money, which can prompt fierce legal battles. These include family obligations for child support, alimony, and property division. Small income changes can have huge consequences. For example, a $1,000 income increase can result in $5,000 of increased family obligations. A $10,000 increase can produce $50,000 of obligations. Or a $10,000 decrease can result in $50,000 of reduced obligations.

Pragmatic Family Law, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Family law is a central battleground for a polarized America, with seemingly endless conflict over abortion, parental control of school curricula, gender-affirming health care for children, and similar flash points. This is hardly surprising for an area of law that implicates fundamental concerns about equality, bodily autonomy, sexual liberty, gender norms, parenting, and religion. Polarization poses significant risks to children and families, but centering contestation obscures another important reality. In many areas of doctrine and policy, family law has managed to avoid polarization, even for politically and socially combustible issues. Instead, states are converging on similar rules and policies, working …

Debt Governance, Wealth Management, And The Uneven Burdens Of Child Support, Allison Tait

Northwestern University Law Review

Child support is a ubiquitous kind of debt, common to all income and wealth levels, with data showing that approximately 30% of the U.S. adult population has either been subject to paying child support or has received it. Across this field of child support debt, however, unpaid obligations look different for everyone, and in particular the experiences around child support debt diverge radically for low-income populations and high-wealth ones. On the low-income end of the spectrum, child support debt is a sophisticated and adaptive governance technology that disciplines and penalizes those living in or near poverty. Being in child support …

Absent Fathers And Child Maintenance Rights In The Copperbelt Province Of Zambia: The Dilemma Of A Postcolonial Bemba Matrilineal Practice, Mutale Mulenga-Kaunda

Zambia Social Science Journal

Being matrilineal and matrilocal, the Bemba people believe that “children belong to the mother”. This cultural belief and practice is so resilient that even in the event of divorce men have lost paternity rights to their children. Colonisation shifted Bemba women’s status as men were forced to migrate to work in the mines on the Copperbelt, leaving women to raise children as single mothers often without support from their absent husbands. Yet, even though Bemba people believe that children belong to the mother, the responsibility of raising children was traditionally shared with the father of the child. In postcolonial Zambia, …

Debt Governance, Wealth Management, And The Uneven Burdens Of Child Support, Allison Anna Tait

Law Faculty Publications

Child support is a ubiquitous kind of debt, common to all income and wealth levels, with data showing that approximately 30% of the U.S. adult population has either been subject to paying child support or has received it. Across this field of child support debt, however, unpaid obligations look different for everyone, and in particular the experiences around child support debt diverge radically for low-income populations and high-wealth ones. On the low-income end of the spectrum, child support debt is a sophisticated and adaptive governance technology that disciplines and penalizes those living in or near poverty. Being in child support …

The Institutions Of Family Law, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Family law scholarship is thriving, with scholars using varied methodologies to analyze intimate partner violence, cohabitation, child maltreatment, juvenile misconduct, and child custody, to name but a few areas of study. Despite the richness of this discourse, however, most family law scholars ignore a key tool deployed in virtually every other legal-academic domain: institutional analysis. This methodology, which plays a foundational role in legal scholarship, focuses on four basic questions. Scholars often begin empirically, identifying the specific legal, social, and economic institutions that shape an area of legal regulation. Beyond descriptive accounts, scholars analyze how authority is and should be …

Child Support And Joint Physical Custody, Raymond C. O'Brien

Catholic University Law Review

Child custody has evolved to the point where, at a minimum, states provide a mediated process by which parents may formulate parenting plans with court-appointed assistance. At a maximum state legislatures and courts increasingly consider joint physical custody awards. While joint physical custody safeguards the fundamental rights of parents, it nonetheless prompts practical concerns in awarding child support. Today, child support begins with state statutory guidelines, but the guidelines often fail to adequately address the economic consequences of two complete residences, one supported by a parent with fewer economic resources, and the fact that oftentimes the child drifts from one …

Family Law By The Numbers: The Story That Casebooks Tell, Laura T. Kessler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents the findings of a content analysis of 86 family law casebooks published in the United States from 1960 to 2019. Its purpose is to critically assess the discipline of family law with the aim of informing our understandings of family law’s history and exposing its ideological foundations and consequences. Although legal thinkers have written several intellectual histories of family law, this is the first quantitative look at the field.

The study finds that coverage of marriage and divorce in family law casebooks has decreased by almost half relative to other topics since the 1960s. In contrast, pages …

Producing Justice In Poor People’S Courts: Four Models Of State Legal Actors, Tonya L. Brito

Lewis & Clark Law Review

This Article examines how judges and government attorneys produce justice in poor people’s courts, which are characterized by a substantial volume of cases, socioeconomically disadvantaged litigants, and an absence or asymmetry of representation. The Article’s findings are drawn from an extensive qualitative empirical study of one type of poor people’s court, specifically family court proceedings where the state is pursuing child support from low- and no-income noncustodial fathers. Focusing on the judges and government lawyers who handle these cases, and drawing from their own accounts as well as on ethnographic in-court observations, I identify four distinct models of state legal …

Getting Blood From Stones: Results And Policy Implications Of An Empirical Investigation Of Child Support Practice In St. Joseph County, Indiana Paternity Actions, Margaret F. Brinig, Marsha Garrison

Journal Articles

Today, there is consensus that the current system of calculating and enforcing support obligations does not work well for disadvantaged families, most of which are nonmarital. Nonmarital children are less likely to have support orders established than marital children, and they are much less likely to experience full payment.

In this paper, we report data on parenting time, child support calculation, and enforcement actions in a population of nonmarital children for whom paternity actions were brought, in 2008 or 2010, in St. Joseph County, Indiana. The computerized, court-based record system we utilized to collect data gave us access to information …

Fisco V. Department Of Human Services: The Inequity Of Equitable Defenses In Child Support Arrearage Cases, Rebecca C. Raskin

Maine Law Review

On August 8, 1995, using a federal law targeting the most egregious deadbeat fathers, FBI agents arrested Jeffrey Nichols for failing to pay approximately $580,000 in child support. Although the law is fairly new, the problem of child support enforcement has troubled this country for decades. In the early 1970s, child support enforcement was so inadequate that the federal government spent $7.6 billion annually on welfare to provide for single parents. The government has tried to remedy the problem, but seventy-five percent of custodial mothers in this country continue either to lack child support orders or to receive less than …

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

UF Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The “Legal Stranger” And Parent: A Love Story?, Kellie Mahoney

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

It Takes A Village: Empowering The Dead Broke Parent, Wendy Tolson Ross

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Reforming The Processes For Challenging Voluntary Acknowledgments Of Paternity, Jeffrey A. Parness, David A. Saxe

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Voluntary acknowledgements of paternity (VAPs) significantly determine male legal parentage at birth for many children born of sex to unwed mothers in the United States. VAP processes are chiefly dictated by the federal Social Security Act, which places certain mandates on states participating in federally-subsidized welfare programs. These processes include norms on effective VAP establishments and on VAP disestablishments, either via early rescissions (within sixty days) by signatories or via later contests (after sixty days) by challengers, including signatories. The norms are driven by the Act’s desire to increase reimbursements of state child welfare payments from unwed fathers regardless of …

In The "Best Interests" Of The Disabled: Legislating Morality And The Power To Initiate Support Orders For Disabled Adults In Ohio, Kalynne Proctor

Cleveland State Law Review

Today’s reality is that many families have children who are faced with disabling conditions that prevent them from relinquishing their dependency on others. Often, the need for specialized treatment and care does not terminate once a severely disabled child reaches adulthood. While typically parents are relieved of their legal parental obligations to their adult-aged children, this is not the same case for parents with severely disabled children. In some respects, Ohio has recognized the financial difficulties divorced parents face when they are the sole caregivers of disabled adult children. Although Ohio law requires that the noncustodial parent in a divorce …

Prenatal Abandonment: 'Horton Hatches The Egg' In The Supreme Court And Thirty-Four States, Mary M. Beck

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article addresses an issue critical to forty-one percent of fathers in the United States: prenatal abandonment. Under prenatal abandonment theory, fathers can lose their parental rights to non-marital children if they do not provide prenatal support to the mothers of their children. This is true even if the mothers have not notified the fathers of the pregnancy and if the mothers or fathers are unsure of the fathers’ paternity. While this result may seem counterintuitive, it is necessitated by demographic trends. Prenatal abandonment theory has been structured to protect mothers, fathers, and fetuses in response to a number of …

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, January 2017, Daugirdas Kristina, Julian Davis Mortenson

Articles

In this section: • Congress Overrides Obama’s Veto to Pass Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act • U.S. Federal Court of Appeals Upholds United Nations’ Immunity in Case Related to Cholera in Haiti • U.S.-Russian Agreements on Syria Break Down as the Syrian Conflict Continues • Russia Suspends Bilateral Agreement with United States on Disposal of Weapons-Grade Plutonium • The United States Makes Payment to Family of Italian Killed in CIA Air Strike • United States Ratifies Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance

Child Support Collections To Offset Out Of Home Placement Costs: A Study Of Cost Effectiveness, Trish Skophammer

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

Families experiencing out-of-home placement (OHP) are in crisis. The fact that a child has been removed from the home means the family has become involved with the child welfare or juvenile justice system. Families that experience OHP are disproportionately poor, and the reasons for OHP often stem from poverty. Because OHP is expensive, and society values parental responsibility, federal and state laws require that parents be referred to the child support system to help offset the cost of OHP through child support collections. This study explores practices around OHP cases in the child support system and adds to the small …

Chickens And Eggs: Does Custody Move Support, Or Vise-Versa?, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

Most, if not all, of the theoretical work on child support presupposes that it becomes an issue only when couples separate, that is, that the flow moves between custody and child support and that the duty to make monetary payments is typically owed by the noncustodial parent. (I realize, of course, that there can be issues regarding the identity of the payor and that there are criminal and civil actions possible when parents refuse or neglect to provide support to dependent children.) Some empirical work confirms the relationship between the two. For example, Judith Seltzer, Weiss and Willis, and Brinig …

Family Law, Allison Anna Tait

Law Faculty Publications

In the past year, Virginia courts have addressed a range of family law questions—new and old—that reflect the changing landscape of families and marriage. Questions related to same-sex marriage and divorce have begun to appear on Virginia court dockets, including an important case the Supreme Court of Virginia decided this year with respect to same-sex couples cohabiting and the termination of spousal support. Family law courts also saw shifts in gender norms—wives paying spousal support to their husbands and fathers being awarded physical custody of their children. These legal questions tested the limits of statutory language and helped to expand …

Valdez V. Aguilar, 132 Nev. Adv. Op. 37 (May 26, 2016), Kory Koerperich

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined that NRS 425.360(4) does not exempt a noncustodial parent, who receives public assistance, from a court-ordered child support obligation to the custodial parent of their child. NRS 425.360(4) only exempts a parent from a debt for support owed to the Division of Welfare and Supportive Services.

Recent Development: Sieglein V. Schmidt: Pursuant To § 1-206(B) Of The Estates And Trusts Article, Artificial Insemination Encompasses In Vitro Fertilization Using Donated Sperm; A Court May Use The Goldberger Factors To Determine Voluntary Impoverishment; A Trial Court Can Issue A Permanent Injunction For Harassment Based On § 1-203(A) Of The Family Law Article., Virginia J. Yeoman

University of Baltimore Law Forum

The Court of Appeals of Maryland held that the term “artificial insemination” includes in vitro fertilization using donated sperm, and that a consenting husband is presumed to be the father of the child born as a result of the procedure. Sieglein v. Schmidt, 447 Md. 647, 652, 136 A.3d 751, 754 (2016). The court also held that the circuit court did not abuse its discretion in finding the husband to be voluntarily impoverished or in issuing a permanent injunction based on harassment. Id.

Alimony's Job Lock, Margaret Ryznar

Akron Law Review

In family law, courts often prevent people who owe alimony from changing jobs. If a job change is accompanied by a salary decrease, the court will not necessarily readjust the alimony obligation and instead impute the higher income to the obligor. This Article introduces the term “job lock” to describe this situation, borrowing the term from the health care context, wherein job immobility due to health insurance concerns has received significant scrutiny. This Article draws similar attention to the alimony context, proposing a balancing test to assist courts interested in alleviating job lock under certain circumstances.

The Effect Of The Change In The Age Of Majority On Prior Divorce Decrees Providing For Child Support, Stephen F. Ahern

Akron Law Review

The purpose of this article is to consider the effect of the statutory change in the age of majority on the construction and enforcement of support orders entered prior to the effective date of the new statutory age. The goal is to provide the domestic relations practitioner with a shorthand guide as to how these issues have been decided in Ohio and in other states and, finally, to provide an analysis of these decisions.