Family Law Prof Blog

Online Accounts after a Death

From Rock Center:

The Stassen family is one of a growing number of families battling online companies to gain access to a deceased loved one’s digital assets. 

Digital assets include email, social media accounts, digital photos and online banking accounts and records.  The Stassens think Benjamin’s online life might provide a clue into their son’s last days and as the heirs of his estate, they feel they have a right to get access to his accounts.

Read more here.

MR

Hat Tip: Naomi Cahn

Changes in IN Child Support Laws

From thestarpress.com:

Effective July 1, the obligation for non-custodial parents to pay child support in Indiana will end with their offspring's 19th birthday.

While support payers have long had the right to have a child in their late teens or early 20s declared emancipated, the presumptive age for the end of support payments has been the child's 21st birthday.

        ...

Under the revised law, "children" who are college-bound will retain the ability to seek court-ordered financial assistance with those expenses from their parents -- provided the parents aren't married to one another.

In Indiana, the children of married parents have no such right to seek court-ordered support for their education expenses.

Read more here.

MR

COA on DOMA

From the New York Times:

BOSTON (AP) — A battle over a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman appears headed for the Supreme Court after an appeals court ruled Thursday that denying benefits to married gay couples is unconstitutional.

Read more here.

MR

Hat Tip: Naomi Cahn

Weddings & Divorces Post-IPO

From ft.com's Tech Hub:

“A lot of people who work at Facebook are in their 20s and 30s,” says Sophie Lai, a wedding planner based in Sunnyvale. “I hope, at the IPO, people get cash and start thinking ‘it’s time to settle down and get married’.”

Jean Marks, a wedding planner in Palo Alto, said the budgets people have been willing to set for weddings have been going up, particularly among technology entrepreneurs who sell their start-ups.

“We have had a bubble of fairly extravagant weddings in last five years,” she says.

At the high end, Ms Marks has worked on weddings costing between $300,000 and $500,000, with one financier hosting a $1m reception. The average wedding costs between $65,000 and $75,000 for 150 people, she says.

At the same time that a windfall can make couples feel ready to tie the knot, it can also give unhappy couples the confidence and financial stability to split. Or, as newly minted millionaires wrestle with the responsibility that money brings, some get frazzled and difficult to be around, while others develop a sense of entitlement that leaves them discontent in their relationship.

Read more here.

MR

Hat Tip: Gus Hurwitz

NY Divorce Laws

From the Wall Street Journal:

A state commission tasked with reviewing a contentious aspect of New York's divorce reform laws is four months behind in delivering an expected report, raising concerns that lawmakers will have little time to address recommendations before their session ends in June.

The independent Law Revision Commission now expects to submit its report May 31. Though the commission's suggestions aren't binding, several legislators have said they are waiting for the report before proposing amendments.

The law was one of a package of 2010 reforms that made New York the last state in the country to adopt no-fault divorce. It set a strict formula for awarding temporary alimony, the money one spouse gives the other during the divorce process.

Since its passage, the statute has come under criticism from many lawyers in the state, who say that the formula may work well for lower-income spouses with few assets but frequently produces lopsided awards for wealthier couples with more complex financial situations.

Read more here.

MR

Back to Murphy Brown

An editorial from the Washington Post:

On May 19, 1992, as the presidential campaign season was heating up, Vice President Dan Quayle delivered a family-values speech that came to define him nearly as much as his spelling talents. Speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California, he chided Murphy Brown — the fictional 40-something, divorced news anchor played by Candice Bergen on a CBS sitcom — for her decision to have a child outside of marriage.

...

Twenty years later, Quayle’s words seem less controversial than prophetic. The number of single parents in America has increased dramatically: The proportion of children born outside marriage has risen from roughly 30 percent in 1992 to 41 percent in 2009. For women under age 30, more than half of babies are born out of wedlock. A lifestyle once associated with poverty has become mainstream. The only group of parents for whom marriage continues to be the norm is the college-educated.

Read more here.

MR

HT: NC

US Sperm in Demand

From the Daily:

Demand for American sperm is surging — up by as much as 40 percent in the last five years — as other countries clamor for genetic material with the “Made in America” label.

U.S. sperm sales are highest in the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Israel, Australia, Chile, Spain and Sweden, and demand is set to increase even more in the years ahead.

“In the last three years, we have shipped to about 60 countries,” said Scott Brown, a spokesman for California Cryobank, the largest sperm bank in the world with $23 million in sales last year.

Read more here.

MR

Hat Tip: Naomi Cahn

Father of 30 Children Asks for State Help

From MSNBC:

Desmond Hatchett of Knoxville, Tenn., doesn't deny fathering 30 children, by 11 mothers no less -- instead, he's pleading with the state to help him out with child support.

Hatchett, just 33, appeared in court this week to make his case, WREG-TV reported.

Holding a minimum wage job, Hatchett already gives half his pay to the children's mothers but because he has a minimum wage job some moms get just $1.49 a month in support.

...

WREG noted that Hatchett had not broken any laws fathering so many children, and that the state had no means to require him to stop.

Read more here.

MR

Hat Tip: Kathleen Rand Reed

Debunking Marriage Myths

An editorial from the Washington Post:

Late spring is upon us, and with it comes wedding season. It’s a magical time of year that inspires a peculiar mix of sentimental stories about chance meetings that led to love and gloomy commentaries about the chances of actual marital bliss. Both the sentiment and the gloom are based on misguided ideas about the history and evolution of modern marriage — myths that, from this day forward, we should divorce from our notion of wedded bliss.

Read more here.

MR

Hat Tip: Naomi Cahn

Memorial Day