Family Law Prof Blog

Windsor v. United States

From Angelique Devaux, writing for I-CONnect:

To marry or tax me. This could be the modern Shakespeare quote heard in the oral arguments last March 27^th at the US Supreme Court in the pending case Windsor v. United States. But it is more about a story that happened in several jurisdictions around the world facing the same controversial legal and constitutional issue: whether your government should define marriage as an opposite-sex couple only, or not …?

This post explains for readers how the case came to be, and it situates its significance within a larger comparative context.

Read more here.

MR

Movie Review

From Time:

When Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) clears customs at de Gaulle Airport, his estranged wife Marie (Bèrénice Bejo) speaks to him urgently on the other side of a glass partition. They communicate with sign language and words the audience can’t hear.

If The Past (Le Passé) continued in that fashion for the next two hours, it might be an elaborate tribute to Bejo’s performance in The Artist, the virtually silent comedy that swept the Oscars in 2012. But this is the new drama from Ashgar Farhadi, the Iranian writer-director of A Separation, winner of last year’s other big Academy Award: Best Foreign-Language Feature. It’s very much a reprise of that film’s themes: grownups who tear their marriages apart, and the children who suffer in their wake.

Read more here.

MR

No-Fault Divorce

From the Washington Times:

No one can be happy with the high divorce rate in the United States, not even a family law attorney like me. Iowa legislators think making divorce more difficult by becoming the first state to prohibit no-fault divorce in cases with children would be a good first step.

Iowa House File 338 would require one of five conditions for a divorce to proceed in a marriage involving children: adultery, physical or sexual abuse, imprisonment, if one spouse is missing more than a year or if the couple has lived apart for more than two years.

Read more here.

MR

Same-Sex Marriage in Foreign Jurisdictions

From Angelique Devaux, writing for the Jurist:

In a time when France has lost its fame for crusading for human rights, "marriage for all" has been the popular name given to same-sex marriage by the French Socialists' impetus in the pursuit of equality—France has waited 13 years after the Netherlands to address an issue in line with contemporary social reality. On April 23, 2013, President François Hollande signed the bill that legalizes same-sex marriage after the issue was previously reviewed by the Constitutional Council and approved by France's Parliament.

As in the story of Windsor v. United States, same-sex marriages performed in foreign jurisdictions often create difficulties in travel which include passport and short-term visa issues, as well as total refusal of entry into certain countries where same sex marriage is prohibited and even criminalized. In anticipation of potential traveling problems, French lawmakers have included language in the new bill which states that marriage performed in a foreign jurisdiction satisfy the legal requirements of marriage in France. It is the statutory confirmation of the rule locus regit actum. An example of this legal theory can be found when one acknowledges how a wedding performed in Canada between a Frenchman and a Canadian is valid in France if all the Canadian legal requirements have been fulfilled.

Read more here.

MR

Same-Sex Marriage in Minnesota

From the Chicago Tribune:

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - Governor Mark Dayton on Tuesday made Minnesota the nation's 12th state to allow same-sex couples to marry and only the second in the Midwest, signing a bill on the steps of the state Capitol before thousands of supporters.

The Democratic governor's signature came a day after state senators approved the bill, which made Minnesota the third state this month to approve same-sex nuptials after Rhode Island and Delaware.

Read more here.

MR

Guest Post by Christine Maddox: 5 Ways Family Law Attorneys Use Social Media in Court

Have you ever heard the saying, "What goes on the Internet, stays on the Internet?" In today's world, no words have ever been truly spoken. It's this persistent nature that has lawyers and law enforcement perusing social media websites in order to prove an individual's guilt or innocence. All too often, those trying to defraud the system don't take into consideration that information shared on sites such as Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube can wind up becoming incriminating evidence.

1. Mindset - The content of your posts on social media sites can be informative when determining your mindset during the time in question. Much like how psychologists are trained to read emotions of underlying meanings, this cyber-evaluation can be quite accurate in determining a person's motivations. Language, whether spoken or written, has tell-tale signs that can determine a person's frame of mind. This task is much easier to perform if a person blatantly posts information on social media sites pertaining to his or her actions, which happens quite often.

2. Time and Place - Establishing time and place is important in any alibi. If there is contrary evidence posted online, it could be easily condemning of your actions. It doesn't take a high-tech CSI investigation team to read the posted time and dates listed on nearly any piece of content you submit online. Some features of online activity can even stamp the very location you were in by use of GPS within a few meters. While this feature has great possibilities for other innovations down the line, it can also point a finger right at you in terms of determining your location at any given moment.

3. Personal Interaction - The very nature of social media sites is personal interaction with others. If you are trying to convince a court that you didn't or did have communication with an individual, your social messages could relate a different story. Twitter messages have incriminated a great amount of people from those committing criminal acts to those posting embarrassing statements that were created in the heat of the moment.

4. Actions - All too often, people will admit to committing particular actions without thinking of the ramifications of doing so. As cameras of some kind are prevalent in the pockets of four billion people around the planet, it is all too easy to simply upload a short video to YouTube and share it with everyone you know. In a matter of minutes, your actions can be seen by thousands of people. While you may appreciate the popularity this could bring you, it is also a great way to incriminate yourself.

5. Changing Laws - Precedents have been established that will allow a court to obtain usernames and passwords of those involved in order to establish grounds for cases. If there is probably cause that content within an individual's private account on a social media site can be used to base guilt or innocence, the court can order that information to be accessed by counsel. One such case of this happening was in 2011 as Stephen and Courtney Gallion was ordered to "swap" passwords and usernames of all social media sites they used to opposing legal counsel. 

If you post personal information on the Internet in any form, it is safe to assume that it will be there until the end of time. Never post information about yourself if you don't want everyone to read what it is your doing. Those fun and embarrassing stories and photos will follow you around for as long as you live.

Author Bio:

This post is contributed by Christine Maddox. Currently she is pursuing her Master’s degree from University of Texas as well as blogging for www.4nannies.com. She loves to write anything related to parenting, kids, nanny care etc. She can be reached via email at: christine.4nannies @ gmail.com.

 

Wedding Planning with Divorced Parents

From the New York Times:

For some couples, deciding where to seat narcoleptic Uncle Reginald is the least of their wedding planning worries. Those with divorced parents are assured of having quite a few more hours of anxiety as they engage in additional negotiations with them.

“There are all kinds of minefields, from where does everyone sit to the receiving line,” said the etiquette expert Peggy Post, a director of the Emily Post Institute. “It’s particularly tricky when estranged parents do not want to be in the vicinity of each other.”

Read more here.

MR

Same-Sex in Delaware

From Jurist:

Delaware Governor Jack Markell signed a same-sex marriage bill into law on Tuesday, making Delaware the eleventh US state to legalize same-sex marriage, and the second to do so in the past week.

Read more here.

MR

Hat Tip: Angelique Devaux

Divorce in China

From Time:

Long queues of happy couples waiting to get married might be a common sight in Las Vegas. But lines of happily married couples waiting to get divorced? Only in China.

In major cities across the country last month, thousands of couples rushed to their local divorce registry office to dissolve their marriages in order to benefit from fast-expiring tax breaks on property investments for unmarried individuals. Local media reported long waits at registries in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and elsewhere as savvy investors sought to buy or sell a second home before the government introduced strict new regulations that would force married homeowners to pay hefty taxes on the sale of second properties.

Read more here.

MR

Kids' College After Divorce

From US News:

When Mary Thate and her now ex-husband divorced, she had no idea where her children would go to college. As a couple, they had put aside money for their three children's college education. Early on in the divorce process, they decided to stay in touch and save individually for the collegiate needs of their children.

Saving for college after a divorce is a process of communication. However, the communication is easier if a framework is set up during the divorce settlement, says Mike Fitzgerald, chairman of the College Savings Plans Network.

Read more here.

MR

Sharia Law in Florida

From the Palm Beach Post:

Florida lawmakers are poised to pass a controversial law banning courts from using foreign law, after a split Senate committee signed off on the measure.

The bill (SB 58) would ban courts or other administrative authorities form using religious or foreign law in deciding matters related to family law, including divorce and child custody. The House approved a similar measure last year but it died on the Senate floor.

Read more here.

MR

Children's Rights in UK

From Family Law Week:

In a judgment which strongly upheld children's rights under the UNCRC, Lord Justice Moses (sitting with Mr Justice Parker) has held that the UK government's practice of treating 17 year olds as adults, the failure to inform the parents of their child's arrest and the failure to provide an independent, appropriate adult to 17 year old children when detained and questioned at a police station about alleged criminal offences is "inconsistent with the UNCRC and the views of the United Nations Committee of the Rights of the Child."

Read more here.

MR

Child Support in England

From Family Law Week:

The Child Support system has been in a state of continuous revolution since its inception, and this shows no sign of stopping. A somewhat telling example of this is the name. In 2008 the Child Support Agency (CSA) was re-branded as the Child Maintenance Enforcement Commission (CMEC). One rather suspects that it was hoped that this would symbolise the beginning of a new more efficient era. However, rather like the Consignia/Royal Mail debacle, the change of name fooled nobody, but confused many. In Summer 2012 CMEC was abolished, and the name was changed back to the CSA again.

This article is about the new 'gross income' scheme. As will be seen, this is currently only in force for a tiny minority of new applicants ('the pilot group'). However, it is likely that the gross income scheme will be brought in for all new applicants at some future date. Therefore, practitioners have an element of choice: they could advise clients to wait for the gross income scheme to come into force for all applicants before they approach the CSA for a maintenance calculation, or, alternatively, they could advise clients to apply now in order to get into the current 'net income' scheme before it ends.

Read more here.

MR

 

Divorce with Technology

From the Wall Street Journal:

Even the divorce process is getting easier thanks to technology.

Meet Wevorce, a startup coming out of esteemed startup “school” Y Combinator. It’s an online service that breaks the process of getting a divorce into discrete steps that are easily managed without having to get into a messy court battle.

Read more here.

MR

Divorce in North Carolina

From the Charlotte Observer:

A pair of Republican lawmakers want to make it harder to get a divorce in North Carolina by making estranged couples wait longer and go to counseling.

The Healthy Marriage Act would extend to two years the current one-year waiting period in order for a divorce to be finalized. During that time, the couple would have to complete courses on improving their communications skills and learning better conflict resolution techniques.

Couples who have children would have to take at least a four-hour class on the effect of divorce on children.

Read more here.

MR

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/04/03/3958172/nc-legislators-propose-more-rigorous.html#storylink=cpy

For Sale

From the New York Times:

Lucky are the few who move out of their houses simply because they have tired of the view or suddenly possess the means to trade up. More often, it is a change in life circumstances that pushes people out into the housing market, something like a new job, a new husband or a new baby.

And lurking with quiet devastation behind many “for sale” signs is the big, sad shift that almost always requires that somebody move out: divorce.

Read more here.

MR

FMLA

People in support of family-friendly workplace policies are continuing to speak out about the shortcomings of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), “the only federally mandated policy covering families in the workplace.”  For instance, the FMLA only applies to businesses employing 50 or more people.  However, many employers feel the FMLA does not need to go any further because almost 60% of U. S. workers are covered by the policy, and the provisions have been used in excess of 100 million times to help workers manage newborn care and family health crises, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families.  Opponents of the proposed changes argue extending coverage to small businesses would do more harm than good, imposing heavy financial burdens on “mom-and-pop” businesses.  Per the Labor Department, about 35% of national employers offer paid maternity leave for all or most employees and about 30% offer paid paternity leave for all or most employees.  However, amongst large corporations and law firms that offer paid maternity and paternity leaves as perks to help obtain top talent, it is important to note “employers tend not to offer the paid leave to lower-skilled workers, surveys show.”

Read more here.

MR

Divorce on Finances

This article here outlines five (sometimes unexpected) ways in which divorce can impact your finances:  legal expenses, childcare expense(s), taxes, retirement planning, and insurance. 

MR

Kids of Divorced Parents Smoke More

From the Atlantic:

Out of 19,000 U.S adults, the odds of having smoked 100 or more cigarettes increased by 48 and 39 percent for sons and daughters, respectively, of separated or divorced parents.

Read more here.

MR

Same-Sex Divorce

From Forbes:

Among the issues raised by the gay marriage debate is tax equality. Yet the right to file joint tax returns is nothing compared to what happens when a relationship dissolves. When a married couple splits, there’s no limit on the money or property the two can transfer tax-free between them.

Read more here.

MR