Family Law Commons^™

Protecting Children By Preserving Parenthood, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

Establishing legal parentage, once a relatively straightforward matter of marriage and biology, has become increasingly complex. The determination of legal status as mother may now involve several women making claims based on genetic contribution, contract, status as gestational carrier or other bases. The debate about the best choice for children when adults are competing for parental status is ongoing, lively and filled with many voices. Less attention has been paid to a much larger, second category of cases - cases in which the law is faced with resolving the legal status of the one adult who may be available to …

Marriage, Biology, And Paternity: The Case For Revitalizing The Marital Presumption, Jana B. Singer

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the recent history and current status of the marital presumption of paternity. It explores the social, economic and legal developments that have contributed to the erosion of the presumption, focusing in particular on the efforts of federal and state governments to identify and collect financial support from unmarried biological fathers. The article then describes the procedural and equitable doctrines that some courts and legislatures have used to bolster the marital presumption in the face of conflicting biological evidence. Finding these approaches problematic, the article advocates a revitalized marital presumption as a substantive rule of law. It argues …

Addressing Putative Fathers In Child Protection Proceedings: Is 'John Doe' Still Alive?, Frank E. Vandervort, W. Lansat

Articles

In practice, it seems, KH is not widely understood. Child protection petitions for temporary custody continue to name multiple men as the "father" of a child when there is a legal father. Some courts insist on terminating the parental rights of "John Doe" when no man has established paternity. After KH, are such actions necessary? Are they permissible?

The Plight Of Putative Father: Public Policy V. Paternity Fraud, Maegan Padgett

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal Images Of Fatherhood: Welfare Reform, Child Support Enforcement, And Fatherless Children, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article analyzes the issue of paternity disestablishment, an issue courts and legislatures have been struggling with over the last several years. For a variety of reasons explored in this Article, an increasing number of fathers have filed requests to set aside paternity orders seeking to be relieved of the legal obligations of fatherhood. As a result families have been destabilized and children are becoming fatherless. The implications for the future of the family are profound. Although some scholars have examined this phenomenon, none have addressed the link between paternity disestablishment and welfare reform.

This Article explores the law's evolving …

Legal Images Of Fatherhood: Welfare Reform, Child Support Enforcement, And Fatherless Children, Jane C. Murphy

ExpressO

This Article analyzes the issue of paternity disestablishment, an issue courts and legislatures have been struggling with over the last several years. For a variety of reasons explored in this Article, an increasing number of fathers have filed requests to set aside paternity orders seeking to be relieved of the legal obligations of fatherhood. As a result families have been destabilized and children are becoming fatherless. The implications for the future of the family are profound. Although some scholars have examined this phenomenon, none have addressed the link between paternity disestablishment and welfare reform.

This Article explores the law's evolving …

The Paradox Of Unmarried Fathers And The Constitution: Biology "Plus" Defines Relationships; Biology Alone Safeguards The Public Fisc, Laura Oren

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

No abstract provided.

Ub Viewpoint – Defining Legal Fatherhood: Part Ii, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ub Viewpoint – Changing Roles Of Fatherhood, Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Illegitimate Children’S Rights In Probate Proceedings—In Re Estate Of James A. Palmer, Deceased, Robert A. Mcleod

William Mitchell Law Review

The transfer of a person's assets after death has been an important element in the law beginning with the Magna Carta, and is firmly rooted in American jurisprudence. Defining children and heirs for probate purposes remains a difficult issue. In particular, the determination of children and heirs in an age when the birth of “illegitimate” children is common makes the proper and just determination of heirship a recurring and timely topic. The Minnesota Probate Code defines the term “child” and provides: “a person is the child of the person's parents regardless of the marital status of the parents and the …

Beyond Conception: Legal Determinations Of Filiation In The Context Of Assisted Reproductive Technologies, Roxanne Mykitiuk

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article argues that legal determinations of filiation are normative ideological constructions about how societal relations between parents and children should be ordered. They am based upon particular understandings of the relationship between biological and social facts and, as this article demonstrates, operate to create an asymmetrical relationship between the categories between paternity and maternity I suggest that fairly recent developments in reproductive and genetic filiation have been made and offer the potential for an expanded understanding of relatedness or kinship which does not take the two-parent-one of each sex-model of the family as its normative form. While the examples …

Rethink The Laws Relating To Fathers (Change: With The Decline In Married Mothers And Traditional Families, The Legal Image Of Dads Needs Re-Examination), Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

This "marital presumption" permitted courts to assume a set of biological facts in the name of preserving the sanctity and stability of what was assumed to be the cornerstone of a healthy society — the traditional family of husband, wife and children. In the last decades of the 20th century, science developed paternity testing with results approaching certainty. Despite the availability of DNA testing, the marital presumption is still used in many courtrooms to answer the question of who is the legal father. What one scholar has called "the law's struggle to preserve the fiction of an older moral order" …

Somebody's Child: Evaluating The Erosion Of The Marital Presumption Of Paternity, Theresa Glennon

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Abortions Of The Parental Prerogatives Of Unwed Natural Fathers: Deterring Lost Paternity, Jeffrey A. Parness

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Scientific Testing & Proof Of Paternity: Some Controversy And Key Issues For Family Law Counsel, Christopher L. Blakesley

Scholarly Works

Blood and tissue testing, especially DNA matching, have become important elements of both criminal and paternity or maternity litigation. Such scientific testing has become so important that it has taken on aspects that may cause it to benefit or to do harm to the judicial process or to any given case. This article focuses on the value and the dangers surrounding this interesting subject.

The 1995 Louisiana Supreme Court decision in Pace v. State reemphasized the importance of DNA testing generally and the significance of blood and tissue genetic testing used to exclude paternity. The advances in and importance of …

If Anybody Ask You Who I Am: An Outsider's Story Of The Duty To Establish Paternity, Lisa Kelly

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

If Anybody Asks You Who I Am: An Outsider's Story Of The Duty To Establish Paternity, Lisa Kelly

Articles

This story is fictional but true. There is no one particular Minerva Copeland, James Walker, or Judge Jennings. Lake Village and Helena also are intended to be fictional places. I chose a format using endnotes instead of footnotes in an effort not to disrupt the flow of the narrative. The endnotes, however, are an integral part of this article and serve to provide the reader with the background necessary to understand the legal and social context in which this piece operates.

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.

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 …

Putative Fathers And Parental Interests: A Search For Protection, Stacy Lynn Hill

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Plemel As A Primer On Proving Paternity, David H. Kaye

Faculty Scholarship

Although in the past courts only permitted genetic evidence in paternity suits to prove that an accused man was not the father, with the advent of new genetic tests, which easily can exclude ninety to nitey-five percent of the population in most cases, the supreme courts of Massachusetts, Oregon, and Utah have held that various genetic tests may be used to prove paternity. While a positive move, the admissibility of genetic proof of paternity raises serious questions as to the manner in which this evidence should be presented in court. In the interests of efficiency, some jurisdictions seem to dispense …

The Uniform Reciprocal Enforcement Of Support Act And The Defense Of Non-Paternity: A Functional Analysis, Richard P. Perna

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Kentucky Law Survey: Domestic Relations, Louise Everett Graham

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In the decade since Kentucky's adoption of the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act, the state's courts have faced the task of interpreting it in domestic relations litigation. This past year was no exception. A number of problems before Kentucky courts were recurrent issues. For example, the divisibility of educational degrees acquired by one spouse again required court assessment. Similarly, issues surrounding both maintenance and child support reappeared. These recurrent issues, along with new issues requiring court solution, heavily burdened trial and appellate courts. This Survey will discuss court resolutions of significant problems in the areas of marital property, maintenance and …

The Rights Of An Illegitimate Child Post - Gomez V. Perez: A Legitimate Situation., Deborah J. Venezia

St. Mary's Law Journal

Throughout Texas history the legal status of illegitimacy has prevented an illegitimate child from enjoying the right of parental support guaranteed to a legitimate child. The United States Supreme Court’s decision in Gomez v. Perez rendered unconstitutional the denial of an illegitimate child’s right to parental support on the basis of his illegitimacy. In response to Gomez, the Texas Legislature enacted Chapter 13 of the Texas Family Code (TFC) which provides for voluntary legitimation of an illegitimate child by the father. Section 13.01 gave an illegitimate child, whose natural father did not voluntarily acknowledge paternity, procedure to establish the parent-child …

Evidence--The Admissibility Of Polygraph Test Results In Paternity Cases, Dale F. Sheppard

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Equal Protection For The Illegitimate, Harry D. Krause

Michigan Law Review

In our time the general constitutional phrase promising equal protection has become specific law. It has been used to invalidate many state statutes which discriminated on the basis of race or other arbitrary criteria. Definite rules have been developed for this process of invalidation. These rules will be applied below to state and federal legislation that favors the legitimate child and discriminates against the illegitimate in matters of inheritance rights, rights of support, rights of name and custody, and social welfare. The question that will be asked is whether state and federal legislation may constitutionally discriminate between children on the …

Evidence--Competency To Husband And Wife To Testify To Nonaccess During Time Of Conception, Lewis Charles Pellegrin

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Public Policy Considerations In Rulings On The Uniform Act On Blood Tests To Determine Paternity, Robert Johnston

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Conclusiveness Of Blood Tests In Paternity Suits - State V. Pernell, James P. Lewis, Larry H. Pozanek

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.