Family Law Commons^™

Sacred Children, Taboo Tradeoffs, And Distorted Discourses, Sean Hannon Williams

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article brings together three literatures—bioethics, psychological research on taboo tradeoffs, and family law—to reveal pervasive distortions in current family law scholarship and judicial reasoning. Empirical work in bioethics shows that child welfare occupies a unique moral sphere. People routinely resist making tradeoffs between spheres. Just as sacrificing adult lives for money is taboo, so too is sacrificing child welfare for adult welfare. When faced with the prospect of these tradeoffs, people engage in a predictable set of avoidance and moral mitigation strategies. Across five case studies, this Article shows how child welfare has talismanic qualities which, even in the …

The New Maternity, Courtney Megan Cahill

Scholarly Publications

Constitutional law has long assumed that mothers andfathers are fundamentally different. Maternity, that law posits, is certain, obvious, and monolithic - consolidated in an easily identifiable person who is at once a biological, social, and legal parent. Paternity, in contrast, is construed as uncertain, nonobvious, relative, and often unclear. Over time, constitutional law has grown more insistent about the obviousness of motherhood. It also has cemented its idea of maternity into a fundamental principle of sex equality law that applies in settings - like transgender rights - that have nothing to do with certain mothers and uncertain fathers.

Constitutional law's …

Restructuring Rebuttal Of The Marital Presumption For The Modern Era, Jessica Feinberg

Articles

The marital presumption of paternity, which arose from English common law, has served as a core component of the law governing parentage in the United States since the nation’s inception. Pursuant to the marital presumption, a husband is presumed to be the legal father of any child born to or conceived by his wife during the marriage. Historically, the marital presumption was extremely difficult to rebut, generally requiring proof of the husband’s non-access to his wife during the time of conception, the husband’s sterility or impotence, or adultery on the part of the wife. As these early grounds for rebuttal …

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 …

Appeals Court Denies Sperm Donor Paternity Test, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

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 …

Paternity Un(Certainty): How The Law Surrounding Paternity Challenges Negatively Impacts Family Relationships And Women's Sexuality, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

It is popularly believed that false paternity rates are 10-30%, and that thousands of unsuspecting men are supporting children who are not theirs. These reported rates of false paternity have become urban legend, demonizing women as over-sexualized partners who shouldn’t be trusted. This in turn has influenced laws regarding paternity, which have evolved to allow men to dis-establish paternity years after a child’s birth, even when there has been an adjudication or acknowledgment of paternity. This article argues that society should be cautious about elevating science as the highest consideration in truth claims about paternity. It examines the incoherent and …

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

Faculty Publications

Under prenatal abandonment theory, fathers can lose their parental rights to nonmarital 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 social factors: the link between pregnancy and increased rates of sexual assault, domestic violence, and domestic homicide; …

Rights Of Incarcerated Parents, Angélica Cházaro

Chapters in Books

This chapter discusses the childcare and custody rights of incarcerated parents. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, an estimated 809,800 state and federal prisoners were parents to children under the age of eighteen in 2007. There are approximately 1,706,600 children under the age of eighteen who have a parent in prison.

As a parent in prison, you may fear that your child will not be cared for, that you will lose your child, or that your relationship with your child will suffer while you are incarcerated. This Chapter focuses on New York state law and describes how the law …

The Dna Default And Its Discontents: Establishing Modern Parenthood, Katharine Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

Most contemporary family law scholarship assumes that propriety of a DNA default for establishing parenthood - a presumption that, in the absence of marriage, whoever had the sex with the mother that resulted in the child should be the father of the child. This article problematizes that DNA default. It demonstrates how the DNA default necessarily magnifies the legal and social importance of sex, discounts the legal significance of women's reproductive labor, and marginalizes all children living outside the binary, heteronormative norm that a genetic regime necessarily edifies. When scrutinized, the DNA default looks just as moralistic and exclusionary as …

Outliving Love: Marital Estrangement In An African Insurance Market, Casey Golomski

Anthropology

Marital estrangement and formal divorce are vital conjunctures for married women’s kinship relations and life course, where a horizon of future possibilities are revalued and negotiated at the interstices of custom, law, and social and ritual obligations. In this article, after delineating the forms of customary and civil marriage and the possibilities for divorce or estrangement from each, I describe how some married women in Swaziland and South Africa mediate this complex social field for their children and families through pensions and continuing to pay for their partners’ insurance coverage. This was not solely out of avarice to reap future …

Understanding Your Domestic Relations Rights In Virginia, 2016-2017, Julie Ellen Mcconnell

Law Faculty Publications

The Metropolitan Richmond Women’s Bar Association has published this booklet to help you understand the general legal circumstances that you may face in resolving domestic relations problems under Virginia law. Each person faces unique circumstances that may not be specifically addressed in a broad overview. This booklet is not intended to provide specific advice to you or to address your specific situation. You should use this document only as an introduction to understanding your legal rights.

This booklet is based on laws in effect in Virginia on July 1, 2016. Because laws are always subject to change, you should consult …

"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 …

Dangers In De Facto Parenthood, Jeffrey A. Parness

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

In Re Lisa R. 13 Cal. 3d 336, 532 P.2d 123, 119 Cal. Rptr. 475 (1975), Elliot Shelton

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Who's Your Daddy? Defining Paternity Rights In The Context Of Free, Private Sperm Donation, Lauren Gill

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Astrue V. Capato: Relegating Posthumously Conceived Children To Second-Class Citizens, Nicole M. Barnard

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Child's Right To Be Heard And Represented In Judicial Proceedings , Howard A. Davidson

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Cutting Edge Issues In Family And Matrimonial Law: An Annotated Bibliography, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

This bibliography covers law review articles published, for the most part, after 2007. Articles for which the title is self-explanatory or that concern only a single case, state, or statute are cited, but not annotated. Property-related issues will appear in the fall 2011 bibliography.

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.

Partitioning Paternity: The German Approach To A Disjuncture Between Genetic And Legal Paternity With Implications For American Courts, Shelly Ann Kamei

San Diego International Law Journal

This paper will address the strengths and weaknesses of the German approach as well as the potential use of this approach by American states, with particular emphasis given to the conflict between the right to know one’s origins and a child’s right to care and support. Part II discusses the challenge of defining legal paternity in an age of genetic certainty. It will first give a brief explanation of how courts have used functional–social and genetic considerations in defining legal paternity. It will then evaluate the legal implications of this approach on the rights of the father, mother, and child. …

Which Came First The Parent Or The Child?, Mary P. Byrn, Jenni Vainik Ives

Faculty Scholarship

From the moment a child is born, she is a juridical person endowed with constitutional rights. A child’s parents, however, do not become legal parents until a state statute grants them the fundamental right to raise one’s child. The state, therefore, exercises considerable power and discretion when it drafts the parentage statutes that determine who becomes a legal parent. This article asserts that the state, through its parens patriae power, has a duty to act as an agent for children when it drafts its parentage statutes. In particular, the state must adopt parentage statutes that satisfy children’s fundamental right to …

Two Fathers, One Dad: Allocating The Paternal Obligations Between The Men Involved In The Artificial Insemination Process, Browne C. Lewis

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Nadya Suleman used sperm from a man she knows to conceive fourteen children using assisted reproduction. It is clear that Suleman is the legal mother of the children. The unanswered question is: "Are the children legally fatherless?" The answer to this question is important because experts predict that it will take well over one million dollars to support the children until they reach the age of majority. My article seeks to provide some insight into the resolution of this issue. Although Suleman did not conceived using artificial insemination, the information examined in my article may be applied to her situation. …

The Family Law Doctrine Of Equivalence, Amy L. Wax

Michigan Law Review

Students of patent law learn the doctrine of equivalents. According to the doctrine, a patent protects an invention that does "the same work in substantially the same way, and accomplish[ es] substantially the same result," as the device described in the patent, even if it differs "'in name, form, or shape." In her new book, Nancy Polikoff has fashioned something like a parallel doctrine for families. Let's call it (with a slight play on words) the family law Doctrine of Equivalence. In today's world, according to Polikoff, a broad set of relationships now plays the same role as marriage and …

Advocating For The Constitutional Rights Of Nonresident Fathers, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

Months after a child welaare case is petitioned, a nonresident father appears in court and requests custody of his children who are living in foster care. Little is known about the father, and immediately, the system-judge, caseworkers, and attorneys view him with suspicion and caution, inquiring about his whereabouts and his prior involvement in the children's lives. Those doubts, in turn, raise complicated questions about his legal rights to his children. As a practioner working in the child welfare system, you're likely to face this scenario. The largest percentage of child victims of abuse and neglect come from households headed …

My Two Dads: Disaggregating Biological And Social Paternity, Melanie B. Jacobs

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Examines the question of what the basis for establishing fatherhood should be. Explores how legal parentage is determined, examines the two-parent paradigm, and compares biological and social paternity in order to recognize two legal fathers.

Parentage At Birth: Birthfathers And Social Fatherhood, Nancy E. Dowd

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.