Family Law Commons^™

The Payoffs And Pitfalls Of Laws That Encourage Shared Parenting: Lessons From The Australian Experience, Patrick Parkinson

Dalhousie Law Journal

A fierce argument is raging in various jurisdictions around the world about whether legislation should encourage shared parenting when mothers and fathers live apart. Much attention has been paid to changes to the law in Australia in 2006; however, there are many myths about the impact of those legislative changes. This article explains the changes and places them in the context of developments across the western world in the law of parenting after separation. It then reviews the research evidence on the effects of the 2006 reforms, particularly in terms of the encouragement of shared care. The article concludes by …

Investigating Integrated Domestic Violence Courts: Lessons From New York, Jennifer Koshan

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Extensive law and policy reforms in the area of domestic violence have occurred in the last several decades in the United States and Canada, the latest being the development of specialized domestic violence (DV) courts. DV courts typically operate in the criminal realm, particularly in Canada. A recent innovation that is relatively unique in the United States is integrated domestic violence (IDV) courts, where criminal, civil, and family matters are heard together in a one judge/one family model. This article examines the literature on DV and IDV courts in Canada and the United States, and situates these reforms in the …

Transgender Inpportunity And Inequality: Evaluating The Crossroads Between Immigration And Transgender Individuals, Alexandra Caggiano

Seattle University Law Review

Despite being married to a U.S. citizen, non-citizen transgender individuals and non-citizen spouses married to transgender U.S. citizens still face deportation today due to current immigration policies. When forced to return to their home countries, transgender individuals are likely to encounter violence from those who perpetuate hate towards transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. Instead of protecting these individuals, the United States continues to send people back to their native countries solely because those individuals do not fall within the narrowly constructed definition of marriage some states use that is legally recognized by federal courts. Transgender individuals receive disparate treatment as …

He Loves Me? He Loves Me Not? He Wants To Keep Me From Testifying?, Cynthia Ford

Faculty Journal Articles & Other Writings

This article discusses spousal privilege as it exists in Montana.

Roe'S Effects On Family Law, Lynne Marie Kohm

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Women Kill Newborns: The Rhetoric Of Vulnerability, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter explores feminist jurisprudence regarding women who commit acts of violence, focusing specifically on questions of agency in neonaticide (killing a newborn). A case study approach illustrates the debate in feminist theory between same-treatment and different-treatment of women as compared to men. While some feminist criminologists urge that women who kill must be viewed the same as men (as having agency and responsibility), other feminists question this approach and point out that women who commit crimes that intersect with family law receive disproportionately harsh treatment and should be treated differently than men.

This chapter contends that the paradox raised …

The Development Of A Non-Profit Organization, Keep In Touch, As A Solution To The Problem Of Visitation, Shalom Z. Lapoint, Shalom Z. Lapoint

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This project discusses the development of Keep in Touch. Keep in Touch is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which is designed to aid the visitation process. Visitation is concerned with children and their families who have been separated. Reasons for separation vary; however, many children have been separated and would benefit greatly from a local visitation program. Items such as children’s rights, California’s mandatory mediation law, and the current conditions of the family court house in San Bernardino County are all discussed and examined as supporting evidence to the problem of family visitation. The goal of Keep in Touch is …

Facilitating Forgiveness And Reconciliation In “Good Enough” Marriages, Solangel Maldonado

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

The article offers information on the long-term effects of divorce on children and parents under the analysis of the social science literatures. It informs that the U.S. Courts should encourage reconciliation between low-discord parents which in turn would help to save their marriage and protect their children from negative psychological effects of their divorce.

The Ever-Shrinking Case For A Constitutional Right To Same-Sex Marriage, James G. Dwyer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Toward A Child-Centered Approach To Evaluating Claims Of Alienation In High-Conflict Custody Disputes, Allison M. Nichols

Michigan Law Review

Theories of parental alienation abound in high-conflict custody cases. The image of one parent brainwashing a child against the other parent fits with what we think we know about family dynamics during divorce. The concept of a diagnosable “Parental Alienation Syndrome” (“PAS”) developed as an attempt to explain this phenomenon, but it has been widely discredited by mental health professionals and thus fails the standard for evidentiary admissibility. Nevertheless, PAS and related theories continue to influence the decisions of family courts, and even in jurisdictions that explicitly reject such theories, judges still face the daunting task of resolving these volatile …

Common And Uncommon Families In The American Constitutional Order, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This essay reviews Professor Mark E. Brandon’s aptly named book, States of Union: Family and Change in the American Constitutional Order, which challenges the familiar story that the U.S. constitutional and political order have rested upon a particular, unchanging form of family – monogamous, heterosexual, permanent, and reproductive – and on the family values generated by that family form. That story also maintains that such family form and the legal norms that sustained it remained relatively undisturbed for centuries until the dramatic transformation spurred in part, beginning the 1960s, by the U.S. Supreme Court’s constitutionalizing of family and marriage through, …

Same-Sex Divorce, Tracy A. Thomas

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Same-sex marriage is now legal in seventeen states and sixteen countries. The question increasingly being asked is how these couples can divorce. For those who remain in their home state or in a marriage equality state, the divorce process should be the same as for any other marriage. The problem arises because people are transient; couples often relocate for jobs or family, or they initially traveled out of their home state for the marriage. “In a highly mobile society, state bans on same-sex marriage have in many cases made untying the knot far harder than tying it in the first …

Summary Of Gonzales-Alpizar V. Griffith, 130 Nev. Adv. Op. 2, Michael Paretti

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined two issues: (1) whether the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act (UIFSA) allows for the enforcement of a foreign support order; and (2) whether a foreign support order is enforceable under the doctrine of comity.

Axelrod V. State, Asher Grunis, Miriam Naor, Elyakim Rubinstein

Translated Opinions

The petition urges the Court to compel the Knesset to legislate the matter of marriages between those who cannot (as in cases of intermarriage) or wish not to marry under religious law and are therefore excluded from marrying in Israel. Holding that the Court cannot order the Legislature to legislate outside of correcting a constitutional flaw in existing statutes, President Grunis and Deputy President Naor declined to intervene. In his concurrence, Justice Rubinstein finds that as current marriage laws exclude large portions of the population, the State cannot continue to ignore this reality and violate citizens' right to marry. He …

An Assessment Of Supervisory Well-Being In A Statewide Guardian Ad Litem Program, David K. Pooler, Johnny Jones

Journal of Adolescent and Family Health

Guardian ad Litem programs recruit, train, and supervise volunteers who are court-appointed to represent and advocate for the best interests of children in family court proceedings involving allegations of abuse or neglect. This manuscript presents the results of an assessment of supervisory well-being. We assessed 81 supervisors on four measures of well-being and presented a staff development workshop to discuss the findings. The assessment found that Guardian ad Litem supervisors had less social support, lower self-esteem, stronger caregiving identities, and more distress than a comparison group of social workers. We discuss the salience of leadership and supervisory support in promoting …

Bargaining In The Shadow Of The Best-Interests Standard: The Close Connection Between Substance And Process In Resolving Divorce-Related Parenting Disputes, Jana B. Singer

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, written for a Symposium celebrating the child custody scholarship of Professor Robert Mnookin, examines the close connection between changes in substantive child custody doctrine and changes in custody dispute resolution processes over the past 30 years. Part I of the article explores how the widespread adoption of an unmediated “best interest of the child” standard, and the ensuing rejection of the sole custody paradigm, precipitated a shift from adversarial to non-adversarial resolution of divorce-related parenting disputes. Part II of the essay reverses the direction of the analytic lens and considers how the shift from adversarial to non-adversarial dispute …

Unexpected Links Between Baby Markets And Intergenerational Justice, Martha M. Ertman

Faculty Scholarship

Intergenerational justice does not require increased government regulation of reproductive technologies in the United States. Arguments tarring reproductive technologies as unnatural or immoral fail to withstand close scrutiny, and moreover ignore competing moral concerns like the liberty and equality of people to form families in different ways, as well as the interests of children born via assisted reproduction in having their families recognized just as coitally conceived children’s families are recognized. Embryo markets, in contrast, might present different challenges, requiring a separate analysis of their potential impact on intergenerational justice.

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 …

Children As Proto-Citizens: Equal Protection, Citizenship, And Lessons From The Child-Centered Cases, Catherine E. Smith, Susannah W. Pollvogt

Scholarly Articles

The rights of children have recently taken a prominent role in the popular and judicial consciousness. This is largely due to litigation over marriage equality. In authoring the majority opinion in United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), Justice Kennedy cited tangible and psychic harm to the children of same-sex couples as a basis for invalidating the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Post-Windsor, myriad state and federal courts similarly have recognized the manner in which state-level marriage bans inflict harm on the children of same-sex couples. Yet, while courts have recognized the significance of harm to children …

Chapter 743 Lowers Adoption Costs: More Families Made Whole, More Children Kept Safe, Jacquelyn Loyd

McGeorge Law Review

No abstract provided.