Family Law Commons^™

Reflections On Obergefell And The Family-Recognition Framework's Continuing Value, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Unlike a typical law review essay, I offer reflections here based largely on my own past work in LGBT rights advocacy. Together with related scholarship, I rely on these experiences to argue that the 'family recognition" framework underlying earlier advocacy has value going forward, even after the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of nationwide marriage equality.

(Mis)Recognizing Polygamy, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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.

Child Custody Contests - Rights Of The Father; Mcdanial V. Mcdanial, Howard Walton

Akron Law Review

In an Ohio divorce action when there is a contest for the custody of a minor child, the proper standard to be employed by the court is: what arrangement will be in the best interest of the child?' In an action for modification of a custody award the same standard is applicable. A statute provides that one parent is not preferred over the other; however, all other considerations being equal, custody will normally be given to the mother, provided that she is fit.

Divorce And Alimony; Separation Agreements; Jurisdiction Of Court To Modify; Impairment Of Contract; Statutory Provisions; Wolfe V. Wolfe, John J. Lavin

Akron Law Review

WITH THE decision of Wolfe v. Wolfe 1 the Ohio Supreme Court joins the majority of American jurisdictions' which hold that where a court has the general power to modify a decree for alimony or support the exercise of that power is not affected by the fact that the decree is based on an agreement entered into by the parties to the action

Divorce And Alimony; Separation Agreements; Jurisdiction Of Court To Modify; Impairment Of Contract; Statutory Provisions; Wolfe V. Wolfe, John J. Lavin

Akron Law Review

WITH THE decision of Wolfe v. Wolfe the Ohio Supreme Court joins the majority of American jurisdictions' which hold that where a court has the general power to modify a decree for alimony or support the exercise of that power is not affected by the fact that the decree is based on an agreement entered into by the parties to the action.

“A Jewish And Democratic State:” Reflections On The Fragility Of Israeli Secularism, Zvi Triger

Pepperdine Law Review

An essay is presented in which the author explores fragility of Israeli secularism related to Jewish religion. Topics discussed are the impact of religious monopoly over personal status in Israel on Israeli secularism, the origination of religious monopoly over personal status during the Ottoman Empire's rule over Palestine, and dispute resolution of domestic cases in communities' and tribes' religious tribunals under their religious laws.

Abolish Anonymous Reporting To Child Abuse Hotlines, Dale Margolin Cecka

Catholic University Law Review

All states allow the public to anonymously report suspicions of child abuse or neglect to a toll free central phone number. An extensive examination of the policy and practices behind anonymous reporting hotlines indicates that they are widely unregulated and susceptible to abuse. The possible repercussions of an anonymous phone call create costs to the family and society which do not outweigh the potential benefit of allowing anonymous public reports. Under the guise of protecting children, the law has developed in such a way that it infringes on the fundamental rights of parents and children. At the same time, anonymous …

Obergefell'S Conservatism: Reifying Familial Fronts, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

I am delighted with the result in Obergefell v. Hodges, but I am unhappy with the Court’s reasoning. In lieu of a straightforward, and far more defensible, decision based purely on the Equal Protection Clause, Justice Kennedy’s reliance on the Due Process Clause is deeply problematic.

A substantive due process analysis required the Court to define marriage and explain its social importance. This meant the Court had to choose between competing images — social fronts — of marriage. If it had used an equal protection analysis, the Court would not have had to decide whether marriage is traditional or …

Family Law Issues For Same-Sex Couples In The Aftermath Of Minnesota's Same-Sex Marriage Law: A Family Law Attorney's Perspective, Gary A. Debele

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Postmarital Family Law: A Legal Structure For Nonmarital Families, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Family law is based on marriage, but family life increasingly is not. The American family is undergoing a seismic shift, with marriage rates steadily declining and more than four in ten children now born to unmarried parents. Children of unmarried parents fall far behind children of married parents on a variety of metrics, contributing to stark inequality among children. Poverty and related factors explain much of this differential, but new sociological evidence highlights family structure — particularly friction and dislocation between unmarried parents after their relationship ends — as a crucial part of the problem. As the trend toward nonmarital …

For Men Only: A Gap In The Rules Allows Sex Discrimination To Avoid Ethical Challenge, Michelle N. Struffolino

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

The billboard states: “Divorce: Men Only.” The reaction is one of confusion. Something just does not seem right. Isn’t this discrimination? Is the system willing to allow this message because the need to protect men’s rights in divorce outweighs the systemic and societal harms associated with the message?

Although this article focuses on the ethical issues associated with firms that exclude women from the pool of potential divorce clients, the existence of women only law firms is acknowledged. The analysis of the ethical issues raised by these gender specific firms is somewhat the same regardless of what gender is excluded. …

Family Unity Revisited: Divorce, Separation, And Death In Immigration Law, Albertina Antognini

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Families are integral to immigration law and policy, and family-based immigration accounts for the majority of legal entry into the United States. Legislative, judicial, and scholarly discussions that address immigration law's family-based categories rely nearly exclusively on the principle of family unification, which has long been a cornerstone policy of immigration law. Yet the family-based provisions of immigration law do more than unify intact families; understanding families as dynamic entities that experience change reveals an immigration system that acknowledges a flexible family structure in determining status.

The principal aim of this Article is to present a more complete description of …

Is Japan Ready To Legalize Same-Sex Marriage?, Yuki Arai

Cornell Law School LL.M. Student Research Papers

Marriage is one of the most significant stages in one’s life. For many decades, gays and lesbians have been excluded from the legal institution of marriage solely because of their sexual orientation. However, the situation concerning same-sex marriage has drastically changed in many societies including the U.S. in the past several years. This recent wave of the opening of same-sex marriage has yet to reach my home country, Japan. In Japanese society where no religion opposing to same-sex activity is influential, gays and lesbians have not been persecuted criminally or religiously, which caused the absence of gay and lesbian rights …

The Child-Welfare System And The Limits Of Determinacy, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

To read Robert Mnookin’s seminal 1975 article, Child-Custody Adjudication: Judicial Functions in the Face of Indeterminacy, is to see a blueprint for legislative action. To a remarkable degree, the reforms Mnookin proposed to the child-welfare system are what Congress and the states adopted in the following two decades. And yet reading Mnookin’s article is also a Groundhog Day experience. The problems he described with the child-welfare system nearly forty years ago sound all too familiar today.

Mnookin famously argued that the best-interests standard was indeterminate in the context of the child-welfare system. According to Mnookin, this open-ended standard created …

Immigration's Family Values, Kerry Abrams, R. Kent Piacenti

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Testing The Boundaries Of Family Privacy: The Special Case Of Pediatric Sibling Transplants, Doriane Lambelet Coleman

Faculty Scholarship

A six-year-old girl suffers third-degree burns over eighty percent of her body. Her chance of survival with minimal scarring is said to depend on her identical twin sister’s availability as an organ source. There are other transplant options—including the parents—but because the twins’ skin is “equivalent,” a “sibling transplant” is likely to result in a better medical and aesthetic outcome for the burned twin. Her doctor thus proposes to harvest her healthy sister’s skin on “her backside from her bra line down to the bottom of her buttocks or possibly her thighs.” This procedure would be repeated up to three …

From Citizenship To Custody: Unwed Fathers Abroad And At Home, Albertina Antognini

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The sex-based distinctions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) have been remarkably resilient in the face of numerous equal protection challenges. In Miller v. Albright, Nguyen v. INS, and most recently United States v. Flores-Villar — collectively the "citizenship transmission cases" — the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the INA’s provisions that require unwed fathers, but not unwed mothers, to take a series of affirmative steps in order to transmit citizenship to their children born abroad.

The conventional account of these citizenship transmission cases is that the Court upholds sex-based distinctions that would otherwise fail …

Equal Protection For Unmarried Cohabitors: An Insider's Look At Marvin V. Marvin , Marvin M. Mitchelson, William J. Glucksman

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

In A Divorce Or Dissolution Who Gets The Pension Rights: Domestic Relations Law And Retirement Plans , Henry Alan Pattiz

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Marvin V. Marvin: The Scope Of Equity With Respect To Non-Marital Relationships, John F. Dellagrotta

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Changing American Family: Can The Courts Catch Up?, George Thomas

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Expatriate Domestic Relations Law In Mexican California , David J. Langum

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

How To Give The Dog A Home: Using Mediation To Solve Companion Animal Custody Disputes, Emily Franklin

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

The article presents information on the domestication of dogs with respect to the resolution of the custody disputes of the animals and the method of mediation for the solving the disputes of companion animals in the U.S. Companion animals are considered as the essential part of the family in the country. Information on the requirement of mediation with respect to the animal law and the family law of the U.S. is also presented.

Mediation Of Marital Disputes Before It Is Too Late: A Proposal For Premarital Contract Provisions For Mediation Of Disputes Within The Intact Family And At Separation , Robert F. Cochran Jr.

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Globalization And Law: Law Beyond The State, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

The chapter provides an introduction into law and globalization for sociolegal studies. Instead of treating globalization as an external factor that impacts the law, globalization and law are here viewed as intertwined. I suggest that three types of globalization should be distinguished—globalization as empirical phenomenon, globalization as theory, and globalization as ideology. I go on to discuss one central theme of globalization, namely in what way society, and therefore law, move beyond the state. This is done along the three classical elements of the state—territory, population/citizenship, and government. The role of all of these elements is shifting, suggesting we need …

Staging The Family, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

For many critical aspects of family life, all the world truly is a stage. When a parent scolds a child on the playground, all eyes turn to watch and judge. When an executive’s wife hosts a work party, the guests are witness to traditional gender roles. And when two fathers attend a back-to-school night for their child, other parents take note of this relatively new family configuration. Family is popularly considered intimate and personal, but in reality much of family life is lived in the public eye.

These performances of family and familial roles do not simply communicate messages to …

Family History: Inside And Out, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Adjudicating The Intersection Of Marital Immigration, Domestic Violence, And Spousal Murder: China-Taiwan Marriages And Competing Legal Domains, Sara L. Friedman

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Cross-border marriages and other forms of family reunification dominate officially recognized migratory flows around the world today, and they offer the most widely recognized path to naturalized citizenship in destination countries. At the same time, however, transnational marriages may also rest on shaky foundations precisely because immigrant spouses depend on their citizen partner for legal status. When marriages fail due to domestic violence, they expose the incompatibility of different legal domains organized around domestic violence prevention and immigration regulation. This Article examines the legal conflicts that emerged in response to a recent case in Taiwan involving an immigrant wife from …

In Search Of Parity: Child Custody/Visitation And Child Support For Lesbian Couples Under “Companion” Cases Debra H. And In Re H.M., Jason C. Beekman

Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers

The United States is engaged in a national debate over whether to grant same-sex couples the rights and privileges of marriage.  Supporters of marriage equality flood the media with images of jubilant same-sex couples simply wanting the chance to say their “I dos” and have the state formally recognize their shared love and commitment. The unfortunate reality is, however, that many homosexual relationships, like heterosexual relationships, dissolve. Marriage rights play as important a role at a relationship’s dissolution as they do at a relationship’s inception. This paper focuses on one such issue often left out of the public discourse over …