Family Law Commons^™

Subsidized Lives And The Ideology Of Efficiency , Martha T. Mccluskey

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Building On Foundational Myths: Feminism And The Recovery Of "Human Nature": A Response To Martha Fineman , Peter M. Cicchino

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Contract Sports, Martha M. Ertman

Cleveland State Law Review

I explore ways that the private law of commerce can be imported to the private law of domestic relations to remedy family law's inadequacy and inequality. Existing domestic relations law posits heterosexual marriage as naturally superior to other forms of intimate affiliation, rendering the others (such as cohabitation, same-sex sexuality, and polyamory) unnatural and inferior. As such, it fails to recognize many intimate affiliations. Two examples of bridging the divide between private business law and private family law that I discuss in this essay are cohabitation contracts and Premarital Security Agreements. Importing private business models to domestic relations law has …

The Honeymoon Is Definitely Over: The Use Of Civil Rico In Divorce

San Diego Law Review

Within the field of family law, civil RICO is making an appearance in the aftermath of divorce cases. This statute appeals to both litigants and lawyers because of its generous civil provisions.8 Money is the motivating factor behind the use of civil RICO. Therefore, a vengeful ex-spouse, and his9 lawyer, have much to gain from pursuing RICO allegations.

Subsidized Lives And The Ideology Of Efficiency , Martha T. Mccluskey

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

When Fathers' Rights Are Mothers' Duties: The Failure Of Equal Protection In Miller V. Albright, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

The history of coverture and the transmission of American citizenship brings an elementary point into focus: The allocation of parental rights is always correlated with the allocation of parental responsibility. This basic legal truism, and its numerous implications for citizenship law, suggests that the principal gender injustice caused by § 1409 is not its truncation of fathers' rights, but its creation and perpetuation of a legal regime in which mothers assume full responsibility for foreign-born nonmarital children. Once we recognize this gendered operation of § 1409, broader failures of equal protection analysis come into relief. First, while the jurisprudential understanding …

Evidence Issues In Domestic Violence Civil Cases, Jane C. Murphy, Jane H. Aiken

All Faculty Scholarship

New laws and policies aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence have been adopted across the country over the last twenty years.The legal approaches taken to protect battered women and control family violence have resulted in significant changes in family law. New laws include statutes permitting civil protection or restraining orders, and laws requiring that domestic violence be considered in custody and/or visitation decisions. Both of these types of statutory reforms can provide protection to adult victims of domestic violence and their children. Evaluating a parent's fitness by considering past acts of violence to other family members results in decisions …

When Daddy Wants Out: The Issue Of Paternity, Jane C. Murphy, Cheri Wyron Levin

All Faculty Scholarship

Perhaps you've seen the signs along a number of major highways in Maryland. A pregnant Mona Lisa advertising a DNA testing company with the caption "Who's the Daddy?" With the rise in the number of children born out of wedlock in Maryland in the last several decades, paternity testing is becoming routine and family law practitioners are handling more cases in which the father or mother or both are trying to change who is named as the legal father in a paternity or divorce judgment. The law governing such cases has changed substantially since 1995. This article will guide the …

Collecting Child Support: A History Of Federal And State Initiatives, Jane C. Murphy, Naomi R. Cahn

All Faculty Scholarship

In this article we sketch an overview of the increasing federal involvement in the child-support area. Because the federal role has grown so dramatically over the past 25 years, family law practitioners need to understand the different federal programs and requirements that affect state management of child-support programs. While for many low-income parents state agencies handle child-support establishment and collection, the federalization of child support has practical implications when it comes to both establishing and enforcing child support. For example, as the time limits of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act begin to have their effects, child support …

Interstate Establishment, Enforcement, And Modification Of Child Support Orders, Patricia W. Moore

Faculty Articles

Intended to improve the collection of child support across state lines, the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act has now been in effect in all fifty states for approximately three years. This Article examines the history and operation of this statute and its companion federal statute, the Full Faith and Credit For Child Support Orders Act. Following UIFSA's structure, the Article details the provisions governing the establishment, enforcement, and modification of child support orders in the interstate context and explains which federally-promulgated forms to use in each situation. Analyzing the abundant case law already decided under these statutes, the article concludes …

Adoption In The Progressive Era: Preserving, Creating, And Re-Creating Families, Chris Guthrie, Joanna L. Grossman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The history of adoption law and practice has received scant attention from legal scholars and historians. Most of what little scholarship there is focuses on the history of adoption to the mid-nineteenth century, when the first adoption statutes emerged in the United States. Although the enactment of these statutes has been hailed as "an historic moment in the history of Anglo-American family and society" and "the most far-reaching innovation of nineteenth-century custody law," few scholars have made an effort to document the actual operation of adoption law following the enactment of these landmark statutes. This article does just that. Drawing …

In Brief, Spring/Summer 1999, New York Law School

New York Law School In Brief

No abstract provided.

Interdependencies, Families, And Children, Karen Czapanskiy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Note: English Child Custody Law, 1660-1839: The Origins Of Judicial Intervention In Parental Custody, Sarah Abramowicz

Law Faculty Research Publications

Many legal historians see pre-1839 English child custody law as consisting of near-absolute paternal rights. These historians believe that the weakening of fathers' rights began with the 1839 Custody of Infants Act, which created certain maternal custody rights. Other historians have noted that paternal custody was qualified even before 1839 by the Court of Chancerys application of the doctrine of parens patriae. This Note tells a different story and argues that the origin of incursions into the so-called "empire of the father" was the 1660 Tenures Abolition Act, a statute that ironically seemed designed to strengthen fathers' rights. The …

Machiavelli And A Unified Theory Of Economic Parental Responsibility: A Proposed Statute, Dana E. Prescott

St. Thomas Law Review

The evolution of a unified theory of economic parental responsibility derives from the coupling of modem dislocation of families and its material impact on children. Over the past three decades, the United States and much of Europe have struggled with the economic adjustments created by the dissolution of marriage as a matter of personal right rather than as an exception conferred by society. Divorce by itself, however, does not begin to define the boundaries of the adjustments, as serial relationships, remarriage and the non-marriage of parents create and compound economic uncertainty for children.

What Place For Family Privacy?, Martha Albertson Fineman

Faculty Articles

This nuclear unit is thought to be in "crisis" because of the tendency of many marriages to dissemble and dissolve. Some people claim that society is also in a state of crisis as a result of marital instability. Many are concerned by the assembling of "deviant" and competing intimate entities claiming entitlement to the benefits and privileges previously extended to marriage." The family has become the symbolic terrain for the cultural war in which our society is increasingly mired. If one believes the family is not inherently limited to any essential or natural form, but is as contrived as any …

Feminist Theory And Feminist Method: Transforming The Experience Of The Classroom, Ann Shalleck

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Rules, Responsibility And Commitment To Children: The New Language Of Morality In Family Law, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

Part One of this Article explores the meaning of morality by briefly reviewing a variety of attempts to explore the meaning of moral conduct. This Section draws on a variety of contemporary moral philosophers who have built on the classical tradition to develop a broader definition of moral behavior. This discussion provides a context for the current debate about the meaning of morality in family law and moral discourse in the no-fault era. Part One also reviews the historical debate about how law should strike a balance between promoting communitarian values and respecting autonomy and individual rights. The Article argues …

Substance Abuse, Families, And Unified Family Courts: The Creation Of A Caring Justice System, Barbara A. Babb, Judith D. Moran

All Faculty Scholarship

This article proposes an approach to family law decision-making tailored to assist families plagued by substance abuse. Substance abuse is linked to social, health, and economic problems facing Americans today and is a factor for a substantial number of family law litigants. By failing to address substance abuse issues, the family repeatedly may need to seek court intervention. The unified family court model is the concept of a single court that coordinates the work of independent agencies and tribunals, each with some limited role in resolving the problems incident to a family's legal matters. Professor Babb has created an interdisciplinary …

Count The Brown Faces: Where Is The “Family” In The Family Law Of Child Protective Services, Ana M. Novoa

Faculty Articles

Can a system developed from intrusion into the lives of the poor be reconstituted to provide services that will nurture the quality of the lives of all children? If not, then the system should be scrapped and start over. 
Child Protective Services (CPS) has never recovered from its roots in distrust and discrimination against the poor and its mistaken defense of a false moral high-ground, which is perceived from the narrow focus of child-saving rather than on the legitimate and long term needs of children. The foster care system’s lack of concern for natural parents reflects centuries of a dual …

Where We Stand: An Analysis Of America's Family Law Adjudicatory Systems And The Mandate To Establish Unified Family Courts, Barbara A. Babb

All Faculty Scholarship

The volume and scope of family law cases in contemporary American society, as well as their unending nature both individually and systemically, exacerbate the difficulty of their resolution. To address this crisis, the American Bar Association and others have recommended court reform, specifically, the establishment of unified family courts in all jurisdictions. A unified family court is a single forum within which to adjudicate the full range of family law issues, based on the notion that court effectiveness and efficiency increase when the court resolves a family's legal problems in as few appearances as possible. The model is based on …

Contested Adoption And The Liberty Interest Of The Child, Marcus T. Boccaccini, Eleanor Willlemsen

St. Thomas Law Review

The Supreme Court of the United States has gone to significant lengths to outline an unwed father's rights in adoption cases, but has yet to address the child's rights in similar cases. It is these constitutionally protected rights, which are usually referred to as "liberty interests," that will be discussed in this Article.

Comparativist Ruminations From The Bayou On Child Custody Jurisdiction: The Uccja, The Pkpa, And The Hague Convention On Child Abduction, Christopher L. Blakesley

Scholarly Works

Interstate and international jurisdictional problems are often vexing. They are worse in matters of child custody. In the past, jurisdiction to obtain custody or to modify a custody decree required only presence or domicile. The United States population is transient and custody decisions are subject to modification. The volatility of child custody disputes and the tendency of parents to move to different and separate jurisdictions traditionally caused and continue to cause difficult problems for children, parents, and the legal system. Before the promulgation of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA) and the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act (PKPA), it was …

Reconceiving The Family: Challenging The Paradigm Of The Exclusive Family, Alison Harvinson Young

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Kentucky Law Survey: Family Law, Louise Everett Graham

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article addresses some of the family law developments occurring since the Kentucky Law Journal last published a Kentucky law survey. Space limitations preclude discussion of every post-1985 change. Instead, this Article focuses on general trends, significant cases, and legislative developments.

Inquiry into family law developments in Kentucky is timely, not only because of the social importance of family relations, but also because of other contemporaneous efforts at family law reform. The American Law Institute ("ALl") is currently considering a final draft of principles governing family dissolution. That draft, and the discussions that surround its ultimate acceptance or rejection by …

American Family Law: History -- Whostory, Ana M. Novoa

Faculty Articles

Family law should be rooted in preserving and protecting intimate relationships; instead, it is rooted in preserving those domestic systems that created or expanded the economic empire of the "Founding Fathers," the white males of the colonial northeast. This northeastern colonial perspective continues to underpin most of the basic assumptions in family law. Concurrently, with the increased privatization of the cooperative virtues, Americans have developed an excessive preoccupation with self and a cult of consumerism.

Consumerism has driven American society toward increased individualism and narcissism. A by-product of the increased individual-consumer culture is the mistaken belief that our personal values …

An Interdisciplinary Approach To Family Law Jurisprudence: Application Of An Ecological And Therapeutic Perspective, Barbara A. Babb

All Faculty Scholarship

Traditionally, the legal system has attempted to fashion morality in determining family legal issues rather than to devise legal remedies that accommodate how families live. This approach must change, and a new approach based on legal realism that effectuates the well-being of families and children must be developed. This article proposes an interdisciplinary approach based on an ecological and therapeutic jurisprudential paradigm to resolve family legal proceedings. An ecological approach, emanating from the ecology of human development social science paradigm, is one in which family law decision-makers consider factors beyond their conceptions of the family. This approach urges decision-makers to …

Child Support Arrearages: What Statute Of Limitations (If Any) Applies, Harry Truman Moore

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Interprovincial Enforcement Of Maintenance Orders: New Principles, New Approaches, Lynn Walsworth

Dalhousie Law Journal

The author points out that the existing legislative scheme for interprovincial enforcement of maintenance orders is premised on common law rules which have nowbeen rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada. Those same Supreme Court decisions have opened the door for new legislative approaches to intra-Canadian enforcement of these obligations. This paper surveys a variety of new responses based on models in other federal states and on conventions implementing international maintenance enforcement schemes. It examines the pros and cons of each and concludes that any one of them would be superior to the scheme now in force in Canada.

The Family Franchise: Elderly Parents And Adult Siblings, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

In this paper, I am going to concentrate on one family transition where we have established substantial legal barriers-that of emancipation. However, I will briefly allude to other "broken families," such as the divorcing family and the family divided by adoption.

As students of the family, we are preoccupied with divorce. We write about families in crisis and use the fabric of their lives worn thin and stretched to the breaking point to develop our ideas about what families are and even what they ought to be. In a way, of course, law teaching and the Socratic method drive us …