Family Law Commons^™

Promoting Children's Interest Through A Responsible Research Agenda, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

I deeply wish to see more good empirical work in family law. If our system had all of the money in the world, I would wish to spend it to guarantee happy, healthy children. But since resources are scarce, and children's issues must compete with other interests that range from national security to care for the elderly, I would suggest spending a relatively modest amount to determine what programs would likely prove successful.

Usually public policy follows from the wishes of adults. In family law, this occurs although virtually all the legislation dealing with families and children begins with a …

Damage To Family Relationships As A Collateral Consequence Of Parental Incarceration, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

The most obvious and perhaps most serious collateral consequence of incarceration is family separation. Imprisonment undermines families and has a detrimental impact upon children, caretakers, and the communities in which they live. Unlike other collateral consequences, family separation has an irreversible impact upon both parents and children. The time apart is lost forever because a childhood can never be recovered.

This Essay will review the available statistical information about incarcerated parents and their children and discuss the detrimental effects of parental incarceration upon families. The Essay will conclude with some reflections about why the adverse consequences of incarceration for prisoners' …

Placing The Adoptive Self, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

[A]doption law and practices are guided by enormous cultural changes in the composition and the meaning of family. As families become increasingly blended outside the context of adoption – with combinations of blood relatives, step-relatives, de facto relatives, and ex-relatives sitting down together for Thanksgiving dinner as a matter of course – birth families and adoptive families knowing one another may not seem so very strange or threatening at all. There will simply be an expectation across communities that ordinary families will be mixed and multiple. With that in mind, we should hesitate before establishing embeddedness as the source of …

Adult Guardianship In Georgia: Are The Rights Of Proposed Wards Being Protected? Can We Tell?, Eleanor Crosby Lanier

Scholarly Works

National scrutiny of guardianship policies and practice by scholars and legal, health, and social service practitioners followed. This resulted in a succession of forums, studies, and recommendations aimed at improving the guardianship system. One such forum was the Wingspread conference, convened by the American Bar Association (ABA) in 1988. Experts from a variety of fields met to produce a groundbreaking set of recommendations for reforming guardianship. Wingspan, a second national guardianship conference addressing reform issues in 2001, produced in a second series of recommendations. The recommendations from these two conferences proposed greater protection for the proposed ward's liberty interests and …

Strangers And Brothers: A Homily On Transracial Adoption, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

The common law speaks to us in parables. Ours is Drummond v. Fulton County Department of Family and Children's Services. Just before Christmas 1973, a boy named Timmy was born to a white mother and a black father. A month later, his mother was declared unfit, and the Department of Family and Children Services placed Timmy with white foster parents - Robert and Mildred Drummond. The Drummonds were "excellent" and "loving" parents, and Timmy grew into "an extremely bright, highly verbal, outgoing 15-month baby boy." Then the Drummonds asked to adopt Timmy. The Department's reviews of the Drummonds' devotion …

For Ira Ellman: One More Reason 'Why Making Family Law Is Hard', David L. Chambers

Articles

Kate Bartlett and Ira worked together as reporters on the ALI project. I was merely one of nearly thirty advisors to the reporters. The advisors had no responsibility for drafting, no responsibility for coming up with original proposals. Our sole job was to come once a year to a meeting in Philadelphia and take potshots at the drafts that Ira, Kate, and Grace Blumberg sent to us. At the meetings, the reporters would sit on a platform and listen to our comments as we moved section by section through a draft. Ira became a master of reportership. He would nod …

Domestic Terror (The Sniper Suspect's Divorce Records Show Patterns Of Power And Control And Missed Opportunities By The System To Intervene.), Jane C. Murphy

All Faculty Scholarship

Over the past few months, we have learned much about the violent, troubled life of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad. Whether or not he pulled the trigger - some recent reports have pointed to his 17-year-old companion Lee Boyd Malvo as the main shooter - there is no doubt in the minds of domestic-violence experts that this adult is responsible for these deaths.

While many pundits conclude that we will never know what motivated the sniper suspect, to domestic violence experts his is an all-too-familiar story of a man whose relationships with the women and children - possibly including Malvo …

Family Law, Elizabeth P. Coughter, Ronald R. Tweel

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Behavioral Genetics And The Best Interests Of The Child Decision Rule, David J. Herring

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article proposes that modern child custody law should be reassessed in light of recent scientific findings. Judicial determinations of custody use the "best interests of the child" rule. The rule is justified to a large extent by the goal of maximizing child developmental outcomes. The assumption is that a child whose "best interests" are protected stands a better chance of becoming a socially well-adjusted, productive and prosperous citizen.

Recent child development studies have shown that so-called "shared environment, "or home environment factors have little effect on child development so long as the shared environment is minimally adequate. Genetics and …

Will Sex Prevail Over The Best Interest Of The Child?, Elizabeth C. Barcena

Buffalo Women's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The "Unborn Child" Regulation: An Inefficient Legal Approach To Providing Prenatal Care, Bethany J. Gilbert

Buffalo Women's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Parental Duties And The Right Of Homosexual Minors To Refuse "Reparative" Therapy, John Alan Cohan

Buffalo Women's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Domestic Violence And Joint Custody: New York Is Not Measuring Up, Tonia Ettinger

Buffalo Women's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Parens Patriae: Protecting Our Children Or Crossing The Line? The Lingering Smoke Debate, Tonia Ettinger

Buffalo Women's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Human Cloning: Beyond The Realm Of The Constitutional Right To Procreative Liberty, Maureen Mcbrien

Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Towards A National Putative Father Registry Database, Mary M. Beck

Faculty Publications

This Article analyzes putative father registries and proposes federal legislation to create a national database that will enhance and connect the state and local registries. Issues and events leading to the development of registries are reviewed in Part I. Putative father registry mechanics and applicable case law are analyzed in Parts II and III.

The First Amendment And "Virtual" Child Pornography, Michael B. Landau

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Domestic Relations, Robin Jean Davis, Louis J. Palmer Jr.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Child Care Characteristics And Quality In Nebraska, Carolyn P. Edwards, Lisa Knoche, Abbie Raikes, Helen Raikes, Julia C. Torquati, Brian Wilcox, Lanette Christensen

Center on Children, Families, and the Law (and Related Organizations): Publications

The Midwest Child Care Research Consortium conducted a study of child care quality and characteristics of the child care work force in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri to help states establish a baseline for tracking quality over time, following initiatives, policy and other changes. The measures are not based on Nebraska child care licensing standards. Rather, using research-based measures of quality, they assess the extent to which quality indicators are present among the child care settings and in the work force. The current study included a random telephone survey of 2022 Midwestern child care providers (508 from Nebraska), conducted during …

Mandatory Motherhood And Frustrated Fatherhood: The Supreme Court's Preservation Of Gender Discrimination In American Citizenship Law, Erin Chlopak

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Parent’S Right To Choose: The Constitutionality Of Grandparent Visitation According To Troxel V. Granville, Robert A. Sedler

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Tom Green, Common-Law Marriage, And The Illegality Of Putative Polygamy, Ryan D. Tenney

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Self-Definition In The Constitution Of Faith And Family, David D. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Can We Go Home Now?" Expediting Adoption And Termination Of Parental Rights Appeals In Ohio State Courts, Susan C. Wawrose

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Griswold, The Fda, And The State Legislator: The Regulation Of Mifeprex, Paige Kremser

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

No abstract provided.

Incentives For Hiring Welfare-To-Work Participants, Mary L. Heen

Law Faculty Publications

The Job Creation and Worker Assistance Act of 2002, signed into law by President Bush on March 9th, extends the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) and the Welfare-to-Work Tax Credit (WtW) for two more years. The credits provide employers with tax incentives to hire former long-term welfare recipients and certain other economically disadvantaged workers, a goal that comports with the welfare-to-work focus of welfare reform legislation adopted by Congress in 1996. This article describes these employer tax credits, explains how they have evolved from prior versions of similar targeted tax credits, and considers their operation as tax-delivered subsidies.

Domestic Violence At The Top Of New England: Law Enforcement Incident Reports From Aroostook County, Maine, Carolyn Ball, Kenneth Nichols

New England Journal of Public Policy

Although domestic violence is an issue regularly discussed in magazines, newspapers, and elsewhere, many law enforcement agencies including many in New England do not have the capacity to track these incidents and the relationship between the victim and the offender. Through an analysis of law enforcement data from Maine’s Aroostook County, in 1997 and 1998, this article analyzes the problem of domestic violence in rural, northern Maine from a law enforcement perspective. Among the findings are the following: the reported severity of physical injury is low, the victim’s contact with the police is unlikely to be the first incident of …

United Nations Policy And The Family: Redefining The Ties That Bind: A Study Of History, Forces And Trends, Maria Sophia Aguirre, Ann Wolfgram

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Rodriguez V. Rodriguez: Fault As A Determinative Factor In Alimony Awards In Nevada And Other Community Property Jurisdictions , Catherine Mazzeo

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

What's Yours Is Mine: Reform Of The Property Division Regime For Unmarried Couples In New Zealand, Virginia Grainer

Washington International Law Journal

In February 2002, when the Property (Relationships) Act came into force, unmarried couples in New Zealand became subject to the same legislative regime for division of property that has applied to married couples since the 1970s. The statutory regime is based on a deferred community property principle. Both partners are free to deal with their own property during the relationship, but at the end of the relationship all property is classified as either relationship property or separate property. Relationship property usually includes all property acquired by either party during the relationship. There is a presumption that this property must be …