Family Law Commons^™

The End Of Annulment, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Family History: Inside And Out, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What Makes The Family Special?, Kerry Abrams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Hollingsworth V. Perry, Brief For Foreign And Comparative Law Experts Harold Hongju Koh Et. Al. As Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents, Harold Hongju Koh, Sarah H. Cleveland, Laurence R. Helfer, Ryan Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

United States V. Windsor And The Role Of State Law In Defining Rights Claims, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Windsor is best understood from a Legal Process perspective. Windsor struck down Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), which defined marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman for purposes of federal law. Much early commentary, including Professor Neomi Rao’s essay in these pages, has found Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court to be “muddled” and unclear as to its actual rationale. But the trouble with Windsor is not that the opinion is muddled or vague; the rationale is actually quite evident on the face of …

From Collaboration To Consolidation: Developing A More Expansive Model For Responding To Family Violence, Deseriee A. Kennedy

Scholarly Works

Academics and activists have frequently called for increased collaboration and communication between domestic violence and child welfare agencies as a means of more effectively responding to the impact of domestic violence on children and in recognition of the co-occurrence of domestic violence and child maltreatment. This Article reviews whether efforts based on the Greenbook and other initiatives calling for collaboration have led to any appreciable decrease in family violence. The Article finds evidence to suggest that there has not been significant improvement in the incidence or severity of family violence and more radical responses to family violence are needed. It …

Reasonable Efforts And Parent-Child Reunification, Raymond C. O'Brien

Scholarly Articles

Among the increasing number of federal statutes impacting family law two continue to impact child permanency and parental rights. First, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 mandates that state courts find that the state child welfare agency made reasonable efforts to reunite a dependent child with his or her parents prior to termination of parental rights. The child is dependent because a state court held that there was sufficient clear and convincing evidence to remove the child from the parents’ home. Often that evidence results from parental poverty, mental or physical disability, or the parents are undereducated …

Attorney Responsibility And Client Incapacity, Raymond C. O'Brien

Scholarly Articles

This Article suggests what an attorney should consider when representing a client suspected by the attorney of having diminished capacity, anticipating diminished capacity, or a client anticipating a response to the legal dilemmas posed by aging. So too, this Article suggests what an attorney should consider when retained by the family members of an allegedly incapacitate person. After providing demographics regarding aging, this Article will specifically address the attorney-client relationship in the context of the Model Rules of the American Bar Association. Next, this Article will integrate the attorney's responsibility regarding the proper execution of a Last Will and Testament, …

The Exit Myth: Family Law, Gender Roles, And Changing Attitudes Toward Female Victims Of Domestic Violence, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This Article presents a hypothesis suggesting how and why the criminal justice response to domestic violence changed, over the course of the twentieth century, from sympathy for abused women and a surprising degree of state intervention in intimate relationships to the apathy and discrimination that the battered women' movement exposed. The riddle of declining public sympathy for female victims of intimate-partner violence can only be solved by looking beyond the criminal law to the social and legal changes that created the Exit Myth.

While the situation that gave rise to the battered women's movement in the 1970s is often presumed …

Re-Problematizing Anger In Domestic Violence Advocacy, Deborah Cantrell

Publications

Feminist advocacy commits wholeheartedly to a woman’s autonomous choices about how to respond to domestic violence, prioritizing a woman’s own lived experiences and her own assessments of her needs and goals over other supposedly “objective” assessments. Feminists robustly privilege individual choices of women in part as a way of revealing anti-woman bias in the dominant, patriarchal legal system as well to reject male constructions of feminine behavior. In feminist domestic violence advocacy, scholars and advocates have argued that a woman’s autonomous choices include capacious choices about the kinds of emotions that a woman might express about being subjected to abuse. …

Prostitution 3.0?, Scott R. Peppet

Publications

This Article presents an entirely novel approach to prostitution reform focused on incremental market improvement facilitated by information law and policy. Empirical evidence from the economics and sociology of sex work shows that new, Internet-enabled, indoor forms of prostitution may be healthier, less violent, and more rewarding than traditional street prostitution. This Article argues that these existing "Prostitution 2.0" innovations have not yet improved sex markets sufficiently to warrant legalization. It suggests that creating a new "Prostitution 3.0" that solves the remaining problems of disease, violence, and coercion in prostitution markets is possible, but would require removing legal barriers to …

Why Eu Work-Family Reconciliation Policies Fail In Italy: A Feminist Legal Analysis, Chrystal Orozco

Master's Theses

Following the establishment of the European Parental Leave Directive (96/34/EC), the female employment rate in Italy is still ranked the third lowest in the European Union (EU) and Italian women continue to do twice as much household work as Italian men. Parents, especially women, struggle to find a balance between professional work and their family lives in a society that encourages the traditional gendered roles of the housewife and the breadwinner. The following study is a theoretical analysis of the Parental Leave Directive and the potential domestic influences that may prevent Italy from progressing socially towards gender equality. This study …

Summary Of Devries V. Gallio, 128 Nev. Adv. Op. 63, Wade Beavers

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court considered whether the district court abused its discretion in failing to award ex-husband (DeVries) an interest in ex-wife’s (Gallio’s) cattle company after having labored there without compensation, ostensibly increasing the value of the business. The Court also considered whether the district court abused its discretion in failing to award the ex-husband requested spousal support.

Marriage Pluralism, Family Law Jurisdiction, And Sex Equality In The United States, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

In many regions of the world, rights guaranteed under the civil law, including rights to gender equality within marriage and rights in the distribution of family property and child custody upon divorce, are in conflict with the principles of religious law. Women's rights issues are often at the heart of these tensions, which present pressing challenges for theorists, lawyers, and policymakers. This anthology brings together leading scholars and activists doing innovative work in Jewish law, Muslim law, Christian law, and African customary law. Using examples drawn from a variety of nations and religions, they interrogate the utility of recent theoretical …

Commentary On Marriage Grants: Article Iii & Same-Sex Marriage, Neal Devins, Tara Leigh Grove

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

The Case For Reforming The Program's Spouse Benefits While "Saving Social Security", Peter W. Martin

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

The Social Security Act currently provides secondary benefits to the wives or widows of covered workers who retire, become disabled, or die. To qualify, a woman must have been married to the worker for a short period and must be old (sixty-two, dropping to sixty in the case of a widow, fifty in the case of a disabled widow) or caring for children under sixteen. If a wife’s or widow’s primary retired-worker or disability benefits equal or exceed her secondary benefit entitlement, she receives only the primary benefits. However, if her secondary benefit amount is greater she receives both her …

Beyond Law Enforcement: Camreta V. Greene, Child Protection Investigations, And The Need To Reform The Fourth Amendment Special Needs Doctrine, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Publications

The Fourth Amendment “special needs” doctrine distinguishes between searches and seizures that serve the “normal need for law enforcement” and those that serve some other “special need,” excusing non-law enforcement searches and seizures from the warrant and probable cause requirements. The Supreme Court has never justified drawing this bright line exclusively around law enforcement searches and seizures but not those that threaten important non-criminal constitutional rights.

Child protection investigations illustrate the problem: Millions of times each year, state child protection authorities search families’ homes, and seize children for interviews about alleged maltreatment. Only a minority of these investigations involve an …

Domestic Relations, Barry B. Mcgough, Elinor H. Hitt

Mercer Law Review

This Article addresses significant case law and statutory changes that arose during the survey period.2 Legislation passed by the Georgia General Assembly in 2011 regarding the appellate procedure and in 2012 regarding grandparent visitation rights took effect, and the Georgia Supreme Court continued to accept nonfrivolous appeals in divorce cases, providing guidance regarding domestic relations law.

Guidelines For Child Protection Mediation, Kelly Browe Olson Co-Editor

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Age Of Marital Capacity: Reconsidering Civil Recognition Of Adolescent Marriage, Vivian E. Hamilton

Faculty Publications

Age at marriage has for decades been the strongest and most unequivocal predictor of marital failure. The likelihood of divorce nears eighty percent for those who marry in mid-adolescence, then drops steadily. Delaying marriage until the mid-twenties reduces one’s likelihood of divorce to thirty percent. Women who marry at age twenty-one or younger, moreover – and one in ten U.S. women do – experience worse mental and physical health, attain less education, and earn lower wages than those who marry later. Post-divorce, they and their children tend to endure even greater economic deprivation and instability than do never-married mothers, who …