Family Law Commons^™

On The Duties And Rights Of Parents, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

The law of the family is the law of the absurd. Law is a system of rules administered institutionally, and thus it must treat people categorically. When law regulates economic life, it finds people at arguably their most schematic, motivated-perhaps-by a relatively unitary conception of their interest pursued in relatively rational ways. But in family life, people are at their least schematic and at their most frustratingly human, various, idiosyncratic, irrational, and perverse, and the law's efforts to affect them are thus often quixotic. In Parents as Fiduciaries, 1 Professor Scott and Dean Scott strikingly and boldly deploy the …

Children's Rights In Intercountry Adoption: Towards A New Goal, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

Each year, hundreds of thousands of children languish in foster or institutional care worldwide, while at the same time, thousands of adults, married and unmarried alike, are denied children because of “shortages.” How did this tragedy occur, and why does it continue to be repeated daily in countries around the world? The unfortunate truth is that many of the legal and societal norms now in place effectively prohibit needy children from finding suitable homes. While potential parents in Western countries cry out for babies of their own, millions of children live in physical and psychological poverty in underfunded orphanages around …

Imagining Children's Rights, Suellyn Scarnecchia

Articles

Today, I will tell you some stories about real, live children, whose futures have been determined by our legal system. To speak of children's rights hypothetically, raises images of children suing to go live with their rich uncle or suing to demand a Nintendo system from their parents. I hope that by bringing you stories of the legal system's treatment of real children, you will have a better understanding of what I mean by children's rights and why they must be recognized. Although children's rights have been recognized in limited ways in the areas of free speech, criminal law and …

A Child's Right To Protection From Transfer Trauma In A Contested Adoption Case, Suellyn Scarnecchia

Articles

On August 2, 1993, I arrived at the home of Jan, Robby, and Jessica DeBoer' a few hours before the transfer. At 2:00 P.M. I would carry Jessica out of her home and deliver her to the parents who had won the case,2 her biological mother and father. This task probably would have been easier had I not spent eight days in the trial court listening to the experts explain that this transfer from one set of parents to another would harm Jessica.3 It would have been easier had I not recently obtained affidavits from other experts to persuade the …

Myths And Moms: Images Of Women And Termination Of Parental Rights, Odeana R. Neal

All Faculty Scholarship

For most of us, the word "mother" evokes a myriad of often conflicting images and emotions, expectations and disappointments, and gratitude and blame. What a mother is - our own mothers and the class of people who are mothers - means much more than that a woman has given birth. We expect mothers to provide their children with all the love, caring, nurturing, and emotional fulfillment that we perceive those children need and desire; we expect her to be all things that we want her to be when we need her to be them. A woman who can fulfill the …

Fathers, The Welfare System, And The Virtues And Perils Of Child-Support Enforcement, David L. Chambers

Articles

For half a century, Aid to Families with Dependent Children ("AFDC")' -the program of federally supported cash assistance to low-income families with children-has been oddly conceived. Congress has chosen to make assistance available almost solely to low-income single-parent families, not all low-income parents with children. At first many of the eligible single parents were women whose husbands had died. Over time, a growing majority were women who had been married to their children's father but who had separated or divorced. Today, to an ever increasing extent, they are women who were never married to the fathers of their children.2

Providing Justice For Children In Disputed Adoptions: A Feminist Perspective, Meghan S. Skelton

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

No abstract provided.

Divorce, Custody, Gender, And The Limits Of Law: On Dividing The Child, Lee E. Teitelbaum

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Dividing the Child: Social and Legal Dilemmas of Custody by Elanor E. Maccoby and Robert H. Mnookin

Exceptions To Marital Communications Of Privileges For Crimes Done To Children Of Either Spouse, Henry A. Escoto

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Black Identity And Child Placement: The Best Interests Of Black And Biracial Children, Kim Forde-Mazrui

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this Note is to question whether racial matching by courts and child-placement agencies serves the best interests of Black children. The principle that guides this Note's analysis is that racial matching is justified only if such a policy better serves the interests of Black children than a policy in which race is not a factor in a child-placement determination. This Note also questions whether racial matching serves the interests of biracial children and those of Black people as a cultural group.

Whatever Happened To The American Dream?, Susan P. Leviton

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Finite Horizons: The American Family, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

In the summer of 1992, while I was reading and thinking about Martha Minow's latest book, I was struck with my double role as a responsible adult. Vacationing in the north woods of Wisconsin with my mother, I suddenly needed to care for her as well as my own small children. Generational connections, important before, swelled hugely in crisis. As I caught my breath between hospital runs and kids' activities, I was thankful that I had received so much from my parents during my childhood. And I resolved to rethink the relationships between parents and children, adults and elderly.

Policy …

Mommy Has A Blue Wheelchair: Recognizing The Parental Rights Of People With Disabilities, Michael Ashley Stein

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

War And P.E.A.C.E.: A Preliminary Report And A Model Statute On An Interdisciplinary Educational Program For Divorcing And Separating Parents, Andrew Schepard

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article is a report on P.E.A.C.E. (Parent Education and Custody Effectiveness), an interdisciplinary attempt to create a parent education program in New York. P.E.A.C.E. is an educational program that provides information to parents on three topics: the legal process for determining custody and child support; the effects of divorce and separation on adults; and the effects of divorce and separation on children, and how parents can help children cope with this difficult transition. P.E.A.C.E. is education-nothing more. It is not mediation or therapy. Parents do not talk to each other directly during P.E.A.C.E. sessions and the program makes no …

Designating Male Parents At Birth, Jeffrey A. Parness

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In focusing on legal designations of male parentage as of the time of birth, this Essay first reviews the methods by which such designations currently are made. The difficulties raised by contemporary methods then will be explored, together with suggested reforms involving laws that could promote earlier, more complete, and more accurate designations of male parentage as of the time of a child's birth.

Child Care Enterprise, Community Development, And Work, Peter R. Pitegoff

Faculty Publications

Child care enterprise can be a vehicle for community-based economic development. Beyond the critical goal of child care service, day care as an enterprise can help build capacity for job creation and entrepreneurship in the inner city and in disadvantaged communities. Stable child care institutions with quality jobs can sound a counterpoint to the feminization of poverty. The demand for child care services is substantial and growing. In single parent families and in households with two working parents, day care is essential to enable parents to work or go to school. Further, high quality early childhood programs can have a …

Child Protection Law, Suellyn Scarnecchia

Book Chapters

The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution protect a parent's custodial rights. However, such rights are not absolute and may be terminated. There is no substantive due-process right to live together as a family. Doe v Oettle, 97 Mich App 183, 293 NW2d 760 (1980). Parents are not held to ideal standards in the care of their children but to minimum statutory standards. Fritts v Krugh, 354 Mich 97, 92 NW2d 604 (1958).

Implementing Custody Mediation In Family Court: Some Comments On The Jefferson County Family Court Experience, Louise Everett Graham

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The Jefferson Family Court's custody mediation service was developed as part of a larger program creating the first family court system in Kentucky. The mediation service's connection with the Family Court has influenced both practical and policy aspects of its development. Any description of the mediation project necessarily entails some description of the court system that created it.

This Article describes the structure of the Jefferson Family Court and the custody mediation process as it has developed in Jefferson County. A review of one community's approach to custody mediation may be useful not only as a blueprint for a system's …

Starting Down The Road To Reform: Kentucky's New Long-Arm Statute For Family Obligations, Louise Everett Graham

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Kentucky has long needed a comprehensive family law provision for its long-arm statute. Before the general long-arm statute was amended by the 1992 General Assembly, it addressed only a narrow class of paternity cases among its specific jurisdictional provisions, ignoring the need for long-arm jurisdiction in other domestic relations cases. A second long-arm statute provided jurisdiction over some nonresidents to establish or enforce child support obligations. In the contexts of divorce and child support, Kentucky's failure to claim constitutionally available jurisdiction deprived Kentucky residents of important protection.

Recent amendments to Kentucky statutes fill previous gaps and expand Kentucky's jurisdiction in …

Evolution And Revolution In Family Law, Victoria M. Mather

Faculty Articles

Family law has significantly changed over the last twenty-five years, and certain areas will likely continue to change. Family law tends to follow, rather than lead, social upheaval and adjustment in family decisions and structures. The most important legal changes in family law are a result of massive shifts in American social, political, and economic constructs in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

Family law will continue to evolve because of three critical developments. First is the expansion of the concept of what constitutes a “family” in the modern context. Next is the treatment of children as autonomous individuals, separate and …

Public Relief

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

State-Interest Analysis And The Channelling Function In Family Law, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

I want to develop some themes I advanced in my article entitled State-Interest Analysis in Fourteenth Amendment "Privacy" Law: An Essay on the Constitutionalization of Social issues. In that article I noted that while courts and commentators have lavished effort on the fundamental-rights side of privacy law, they have scanted the state-interest side, thereby producing crucial weaknesses in that law. I felt that state~interest discussions in privacy cases often seemed to me unsatisfying. This is an attempt to see why. A major difficulty is that states tend to advance and courts tend to accept quite narrow specifications of a statute's …

Religion And Child Custody, Carl E. Schneider

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Essay, I want to reflect on some problems at the intersection of religion, law, and the family. Specifically, I will explore the ways courts may consider a parent's religiously motivated behavior in making decisions about the custody of children. More precisely still, I will ask two questions. First, may a court refuse to award custody because of a parent's religiously motivated behavior in a dispute between a natural mother and a natural father? Second, when should a court agree to resolve a dispute between divorced parents over the religious upbringing of their children? These are topics of quiet …

The Channelling Function In Family Law, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

On an occasion such as this, we are called to step back from our daily work to seek what Justice Holmes called a "liberal view" of our subject. Today, I propose to do so by exploring a function of family law that I believe is basic, that underlies much of family law, that resonates with the deepest purposes of culture but that is rarely addressed expressly-namely, what I call the "channelling function." As I will soon explain at length, in the channelling function the law recruits, builds, shapes, sustains; and promotes social institutions. My exploration of this topic will have …

Minor Changes: Emancipating Children In Modem Times, Carol Sanger, Eleanor Willemsen

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article reports on the use of still another mechanism for removing children in conflict with their parents: statutory emancipation, the process by which minors attain legal adulthood before reaching the age of majority. Statutorily emancipated minors can sign binding contracts, own property, keep their earnings, and disobey their parents. Although under eighteen, they are "considered as being over the age of majority" in most of their dealings with parents and third parties. Thus, while emancipated minors can sign contracts and stay out late, their adult status also means that their parents are no longer responsible for the minors' support. …

Discretion, Rules, And Law: Child Custody And The Umda's Best-Interest Standard, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

One barrier facing any attempt to devise a uniform law for diverse jurisdictions is the occasional - perhaps even frequent - difficulty of writing rules that will accurately guide judges. The law's ordinary solution to that difficulty is to give judges some measure of discretion. This article inquires into the nature and legitimacy of that technique. It does so by analyzing a particularly controversial provision of the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act (UMDA). Section 402 of that Act states: "The court shall determine custody in accordance with the best interest of the child." It then instructs the court to "consider …

Recognizing Child Abuse: A Guide For The Concerned, Denise Esposito

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Recognizing Child Abuse: A Guide for the Concerned by Douglas J. Besharov

Allocating The Costs Of Parental Free Exercise : Striking A New Balance Between Sincere Religious Belief And A Child's Right To Medical Treatment, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Beyond Parens Patriae: Assuring Timely, Informed, Compassionate Decicisionmaking For Hiv-Positive Children In Foster Care, Deborah J. Weimer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Stemming The Modification Of Child-Support Orders By Responding Courts: A Proposal To Amend Ruresa's Antisupersession Clause, Jane H. Gorham

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note examines the practice of using the Act to modify existing child-support orders. Part I explores the question of whether the Act's enforcement mechanisms were designed to permit the responding court to modify existing support orders. It emphasizes the problems involved with concurrent support orders and modification and describes the range of positions courts have taken to support or oppose allowing responding courts to modify support orders. Part II explores the federal child-support enforcement programs, their interstate applications, and their relationship to the Act's enforcement mechanisms. The analysis in these parts leads to Part III, which proposes an amendment …