Family Law Commons^™

Parents' Support Obligations To Their Adult Children, Marvin M. Moore

Akron Law Review

The average parent is likely to assume that his legal obligations to his children terminate upon the child's attainment of majority. This was, in fact, the common law rule, and it is true in a few states today. However, most jurisdictions, through statute or court decision, have made parents responsible for the maintenance of their physically or mentally incapacitated adult children, and a number of states have authorized courts to order divorced parents to help defray their post-majority childrens' high school and/or college expenses. The purpose of this article is to examine and evaluate the states' support laws insofar as …

"Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe": Disestablishment Of Paternity, Vanessa S. Browne-Barbour

Akron Law Review

Part II of this Article provides a general historical overview of paternity rules. Part III summarizes the laws addressing paternity and its disestablishment in the United States and the European Union. It discusses related cases from the high courts of both jurisdictions, which highlight the broad range of issues, interests, and consequences associated with issues of paternity. Part IV considers the adverse effects of disestablishment of paternity on a child. It recommends nationally mandated genetic testing at birth or soon thereafter. This would eliminate altogether the need for paternity disestablishment procedures, thereby avoiding their harmful effects. Part V acknowledges that …

Stop Making Court A First Stop For Many Low Income Parents, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

In the wake of the unrest over police misconduct in cities across the country, calls for reform have focused on the criminal justice system — making police, prosecutors, and criminal courts more accountable and just. While much work needs to be done in that arena, too little attention has focused on the ways in which low income families are hurt in civil courts. Many more men, women and children from low income communities of color pass through the doors of our family courts every day than those who interact with the criminal justice system. Some come to court as a …

Paved With Good Intentions: Unintended Consequences Of Federal Proposals To Integrate Child Support And Parenting Time, Lisa V. Martin, Stacy Brustin

Faculty Publications

Promoting the relationships between noncustodial parents and their children has become a federal policy priority. Recent policy proposals aim to achieve this by integrating adjudications of custody and parenting time within proceedings to establish child support. These proposals share several laudable goals, including encouraging the involvement of fathers in their children’s lives, increasing compliance with child support orders, and facilitating unmarried parents’ access to court processes for resolving custody and visitation disputes. But the simplistic solutions employed by the proposals, some of which would mandate that custody and visitation be adjudicated in all child support proceedings, pose serious risks to …

Fighting The Establishment: The Need For Procedural Reform Of Our Paternity Laws, Caroline Rogus

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Every state and the District of Columbia use voluntary acknowledgments of paternity. Created pursuant to federal law, the acknowledgment is signed by the purported biological parents and establishes paternity without requiring court involvement. Intended to be a “simple civil process” to establish paternity where the parents are unmarried, the acknowledgment is used by state governments to expedite child support litigation. But federal policy and state laws governing the acknowledgments do not sufficiently protect the interests of those men who have signed acknowledgments and who subsequently discover that they lack genetic ties to the children in question. A signatory who learns …

Two Direct Rights Of Action In Child Support Enforcement, Margaret Ryznar

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Shared Parenting Laws: Mistakes Of Pooling?, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

In their recent paper “Anti-Herding Regulation,” forthcoming in the Harvard Business Review, Ian Ayres and Joshua Mitts argue that many well-intentioned public policy regulations potentially harm rather than help situations. That is, because they seek to pool — or herd — groups of people, treating them as equal, they miss or mask important differences among the regulated, thus magnifying systematic risk. Anti-herding regulation, on the other hand, can produce socially beneficial information, in their words steering “both private and public actors toward better evidence-based outcomes.” Left to their own, or with various carrot-and-stick incentives, some groups, anyway, would instead fare …

Forgotten Fathers, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

Poor fathers like John are largely forgotten, written off as a subset of the unworthy poor. These fathers struggle with poverty – often with near hopelessness – within multiple systems in which they are either entangled or overlooked, such as child-support and welfare programs, family courts, the criminal justice system, housing programs, and the healthcare, education, and foster-care systems. For these impoverished fathers, the “end of men” is often not simply a question for purposes of discussion but a fact that is all too real. In the instances in which poor fathers are not forgotten, they are targeted as causes …

The Dischargeability In Bankruptcy Of Debts For Alimony And Property Settlements Arising From Divorce, John Francis Murphy

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

What About The Children: How Children Of Same-Sex Couples Are Left Without State-Run Support, Ann Kathryn Watson

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

States should enact legislation affording same-sex partners the same rights and responsibilities to their children as opposite-sex partners. Although federal law mandates specific duties owed to the child, the language is silent about whether it applies to same-sex partners. Moreover, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. Some states—namely Texas—have passed their own version of DOMA. These states have subsequently denied same-sex partners the same rights granted to opposite-sex partners—such as conservatorship, visitation, and child support. Same-sex partners have used DOMA as a legal strategy to either avoid …

Supporting Children, Balancing Lives, Katharine K. Baker

Pepperdine Law Review

This paper examines how U.S. child support policy validates traditional divisions of labor and thereby hinders individual attempts to achieve an acceptable work/family balance. It argues that by using the household as the relevant unit of measurement for child support purposes, family law doctrine legitimates the specialization contracts that arise within households. These specialization contracts, used most extensively in wealthy, elite households, undermine attempts to distribute caretaking and provider roles more equally between parents. The article suggest that by dispensing with the household as the relevant unit of measurement and treating all parents individually, each with a responsibility to caretake …

Don't Forget Dad: Addressing Women's Poverty By Rethinking Forced And Outdated Child Support Policies, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

In the dialogues regarding reducing poverty among women, especially mothers, the inextricably linked issues surrounding low-income men must be simultaneously considered. In social policy addressing women’s poverty, poor fathers have too often been considered primarily as an enemy to be pursued rather than a fellow victim of poverty’s wrath, and potential partner towards the cure. We want someone to blame, and many assume that poor single mothers are best served by always being encouraged — and even forced — to pursue the noncustodial fathers for financial support through adversarial means. Mothers applying for public assistance are forced to sue the …

Child Support Guidelines And Divorce Incentives, Margaret F. Brinig, Douglas W. Allen

Journal Articles

A child support guideline is a formula used to calculate support payments based on a few family characteristics. Guidelines began replacing court awarded support payments in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and were eventually mandated by the federal government in 1988. Two fundamentally different types of guidelines are used: percentage of obligor income, and income shares models. This paper explores the incentives to divorce under the two schemes, and uses the NLSY data set to test the key predictions. We find that percentage of obligor income models are destabilizing for some families with high incomes. This may explain why …

Family Law, Ronald R. Tweel, Elizabeth P. Coughter, Jason P. Seiden

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Undermining Kulko At Home And Abroad, John J. Sampson

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Preglimony, Shari Motro

Law Faculty Publications

Unmarried lovers who conceive are strangers in the eyes of the law. If the woman terminates the pregnancy, the man owes her nothing. If she takes the pregnancy to term, the man's obligation to support her is limited. The law reflects this lovers-as-strangers presumption by making a man's obligation towards a woman with whom he conceives derivative of his paternity-related obligations; his duty is towards his child, not towards the woman in her own right. Thus, a pregnant woman's lost wages and other personal costs are her private problem, and if there is no child at the end of the …

Deadbeats, Deadbrokes, And Prisoners, Ann Cammett

Scholarly Works

Historically, child support policy has targeted absent parents with aggressive enforcement measures. Such an approach is based on an economic resource model that is increasingly irrelevant, even counterproductive, for many low-income families. Specifically, modern day mass incarceration has radically skewed the paradigm on which the child support system is based, removing millions of parents from the formal economy entirely, diminishing their income opportunities after release, and rendering them ineffective economic actors. Such a flawed policy approach creates unintended consequences for the children of these parents by compromising a core non-monetary goal of child support system – parent-child engagement – as …

Use And Disposition Of Life Insurance In Dissolution Of Marriage, Jani Maurer

Barry Law Review

This article explores life insurance considerations in Florida dissolution of marriage proceedings, reviews current applicable law, and suggests methods of effectively dealing with life insurance in the divorce context.

Child Support Guidelines: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Margaret F. Brinig, Douglas W. Allen

Journal Articles

Child support guideline systems do more than simply determine the amount of income to be transferred from the noncustodial to the custodial household. They create incentives, one way or another, for spouses to divorce and seek custody and support payments. We examine three cases found in North America, and find that the common method of income shares provides a decent guideline that does not create any perverse incentives for divorce. Percentage-of-obligor-income methods do worse than other systems, and can cause increases in divorce rates for families in which one spouse earns a high income. Finally, the Canadian system, which is …

High-Income Child Support Guidelines: Harmonizing The Need For Limits With The Best Interests Of The Child, Laura Raatjes

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Providing for the needs of children of separated parents lies at the heart of state child support laws. But what about providing for the special needs of children of high-income obligors and ensuring consistency in a system often marked by unpredictability and high emotions? This Note examines the manifold problems that discretionary high-income child support decisions can cause: inequitable settlement, increased litigation, injured family structures, and inconsistent decisions. This Note also proposes a solution: to set higher thresholds for triggering a high-income analysis and to require high-income parents to contribute to post-secondary educational trusts. Finally, this Note explains that, as …

The Illusory Imputation Of Income In Marital Settlement Agreements: "The Future Ain't What It Used To Be", Timothy L. Arcaro, Laura Miller Cancilla

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A More Humane Vision Of Family Law: Holistic Approach Needed To Shield Children From The Trauma Of Breakups, Barbara A. Babb, Mitchell K. Karpf

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Chalimony: Seeking Equity Between Parents Of Children With Disabilities And Chronic Illnesses, Karen Czapanskiy

Faculty Scholarship

Many thousands of children experience serious disabling conditions such as autism and debilitating chronic illnesses such as asthma. Caring for these children is often so demanding that caregiving parents cannot remain employed outside the home. Parental resources available to these children are also limited because an unusually high percentage of them live with only one parent. Nonetheless, surprisingly few cases involving families with a disabled or chronically ill child appear in the family law case law or scholarly literature. Even where child support and alimony are concerned, these families are seen only at the margins.

In my recent article, I …

Indian Law: Dangerous Gamble: Child Support, Casino Dividends, And The Fate Of The Indian Family, Marcia A. Yablon-Zug

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Legal Strategies To Address Child Support Obligations For Nonresident Fathers In The Child Welfare System, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

The legal and practical issues surrounding child support obligations have enormous impact on families in the child welfare system. Unfortunately, these issues are often ignored, overlooked, or misunderstood. A much-needed effort to engage nonresident fathers in the child welfare system is underway, but those efforts will often be derailed if child support is not properly addressed. This article sheds light on the legal and policy concerns regarding child support enforcement in child protection cases and provides legal strategies for advocates to address those concerns. While primarily aimed at advocates for nonresident fathers, this article should also benefit advocates for custodial …

Collateral Children: Consequence And Illegality At The Intersection Of Foster Care And Child Support, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article is the third in a series addressing the conflict between state revenue maximization strategies and the missions of state agencies serving low-income children. The Article examines the policy of foster care cost recovery through child support enforcement. When children are removed from poor families and placed in foster care, federal law requires child welfare agencies to initiate child support obligations against the parents. Resulting payments do not benefit the children but are converted into a government funding stream to reimburse the costs of foster care. This cost recovery effort often subordinates the child welfare system’s primary goals of …

Child Support And (In) Ability To Pay: The Case For The Cost Shares Model, Pamela Foohey

Scholarly Works

Currently enacted child support guidelines primarily focus on maintaining children's economic well-being when a single household is split into two. This article argues that this focus discounts another consideration which, when combined with the current analysis, could further advance children's well-being: the ability of parents to pay. An analysis of payment characteristics demonstrates that lower child support obligations may increase the amount of child support paid on average. Lowering presumptive obligations will make lower-income parents better able and more likely to pay their obligations, thereby increasing the amount of child support paid to lower-income children, while at most only marginally …

Multiple Families, Multiple Goals, Multiple Failures: The Need For “Limited Equalization” As A Theory Of Child Support, Adrienne Jennings Lockie

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Current child support laws are based on flawed assumptions about families that fail to reflect family complexity and the realities of parenting. Further, there has been little reevaluation of the stated goals of child support law since they were first implemented thirty years ago. The stated goals — fiscal savings, children’s economic well-being, and parental involvement — have not been achieved and are increasingly unlikely to be achieved because they ignore the way that children in multiple families — families in which at least one parent has had another child with a different partner —compete for the limited resources of …

No More Secret Adoptions: Providing Unwed Biological Fathers With Actual Notice Of The Florida Putative Father Registry, Timothy L. Arcaro

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Child Support Harming Children: Subordinating The Best Interests Of Children To The Fiscal Interests Of The State, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the government policy of seeking reimbursement of welfare costs through child support enforcement. Under our welfare program, Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), custodial parents applying for benefits are required to establish child support obligations against the absent parents and to assign the resulting child support payments to the government. As a result, half of the $105 billion in national child support debt is owed to the government rather than to children. The government's fiscal interests are in direct conflict with the best interests of the children - the controlling legal standard in child support matters. The …