Family Law Prof Blog

Divorce Album

From Today:

Kelly Clarkson is getting real about releasing her new post-breakup album.

In a recent interview on TalkShopLive with Nancy O’Dell, the Grammy winner opened up about her emotional experience recording "Chemistry" while dealing with a divorce, and her initial hesitancy to release the raw and vulnerable new album.

Read more here.

Utah Has Lowest State Cohabitation Rate at 8%

From Axios:

Utah has the smallest share of cohabiting unmarried couples in the United States, a new report shows.

By the numbers: Of the 672,000 Utah couples who live together, just 8% are unmarried — by far the lowest in the nation, according to Census figures released last week.

• Utah also didn't have a lot of single adults, the 2020 counts showed. Of all 1.1 million Utah households, 63% include couples — the highest of any state.

The intrigue: The share of opposite-sex couples who are married — 92% — is higher than the 60% of same-sex couples who are married.

• Of note: Same-sex marriage has been legal in Utah for less than a decade.

Context: Marriage is strongly encouraged by Utah's dominant faith group, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Read more here.

Household Demographics Changing

From Axios:

The number of people living alone in the U.S. is on the incline while couples living together are decreasing, per newly released 2020 U.S. Census Bureau data.

Why it matters: The decennial census figures show the changing trends in demographics and housing for American families.

Driving the news: One-person households increased to about 28% of all U.S. households in 2020.

• That's up from 25% in 1990 and 7.7% in 1940.
• That means 0ver a quarter of occupied U.S. households in 2020 consisted of one person living alone.

Read more here.

Soap Opera for Tough Issues

From NPR:

Tsega is a teenager who wants to be a doctor. But the high schooler's parents want her to marry an older man who is well-off – and could support her parents, who are old and not rich.

That's the latest plotline in the groundbreaking soap opera Yegna, which launched its fifth season this spring in Ethiopia.

Child marriage is one of many pressing issues for teens that the show has addressed. Past plotlines have taken on cervical cancer vaccines, menstrual pads and female genital mutilation. It's also a show that seeks to create gender equity in its staff – this season the majority of its writers and directors are women.

The soap opera was created by the charity Girl Effect, as a follow-up to a magazine and radio show launched a decade ago. Yegna is Amharic for "ours." The goal has always been to provide helpful content for teen girls. The weekly show has an audience of 9.8 million, with 44% of the viewers girls age 13 to 15. Currently, Yegna is trying to reach teens in remote areas where TV may not be available, working with UNICEF to set up screenings in schools in 22 villages followed by discussions.

Read more here.

Yale Law Journal Announces the 7th Annual Student Essay Competition

The Yale Law Journal is excited to announce its seventh annual Student Essay Competition. The Journal’s Student Essay Competition challenges the next generation of legal scholars and practitioners to reflect on emerging legal problems. The Competition is open to current law students and recent law-school graduates nationwide. Up to three winners will be awarded a $300 cash prize. Winning submissions will be published in the Yale Law Journal Forum, the Journal’s online component. All Forum Essays are fully searchable and available on LexisNexis, Westlaw, and our website. Last year’s winning Essays can be viewed on our website.

Competition Topic: Emerging Issues in Law and the Family

This year, we invite submissions focusing on novel developments in the law as a result of shifting social norms, public policy, and legal developments concerning the family, broadly understood. We encourage submissions on a range of topics, including family law; children and the Constitution; immigration law's effect on families; parental rights in education; sexual orientation and gender identity; abortion, childbirth and family planning; elder law; domestic violence, and policy proposals that bear on the family. We welcome topics in related areas as well, and we hope to receive both clinical and academic submissions.

Eligibility and Submission Details

The competition is open to all current law students and recent law school graduates (JDs and LLMs from the Classes of 2019-2026) from any ABA-accredited law school. Each individual may submit only one piece. Submissions must be previously unpublished Essays and may not be submitted to other publications during the competition period.

The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2023 at 5pm ET. Submissions must be no shorter than 4,000 words and no longer than 8,000 words, including footnotes.

Essays must be submitted via the Journal’s online submissions portal. When asked to select “Submission Type,” please select “Student Essay Competition” (do not select “Forum Essay (Students)”).

Please submit your Essay as a Word document. Your submission file should be titled “YLJ Essay Competition - [ESSAY TITLE]” and include a header with “YLJ Essay Competition” in the main text of your document. To ensure anonymized review, please do not include any identifying information, including name, class year, or institution, in your Essay’s body or metadata. Failure to anonymize your Essay may disqualify it from consideration by the Selection Committee.

A Selection Committee will consider all submissions anonymously. Winners will be announced in October 2023. Authors who submit winning Essays commit to publication in the Yale Law Journal Forum and agree to participate in our full editing process. This process involves both structural and substantive suggestions, as well as sourceciting for content and adherence to Bluebook style.

Disbursement of the cash prize to each winner is subject to any applicable tax reporting and withholding requirements.

Please direct questions about the Student Essay Competition to the Managing Editors, Jordan Kei-Rahn ([email protected]) and Sara Méndez ([email protected]). We look forward to reading your submissions!

300 Years to End Child Marriage

From NPR:

The world has made headway against the practice of child marriage, but progress has been frustratingly slow, according to a new report by UNICEF.

The percentage of women age 20-24 who were married in their childhood fell from 23% to 19% in the past decade. And yet, every year, 12 million girls across the world are married before the age of 18.

"The report confirms that we have made progress in eliminating child marriage," says Claudia Cappa, a senior adviser at UNICEF and an author of the new report. "But the report also indicates that the progress is not universal and is not fast enough."

At the current pace, the report says, it will take 300 years to completely eliminate the practice – long after the original target of 2030 set by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

Read more here.

Affair with Divorce Client Unethical

From ABC8 News:

Virginia’s Supreme Court weighed in this month on the contentious case of a lawyer disciplined for an affair with a client — one that mixed conservative politics, bondage and drug addiction.

Joseph Taylor Brown, an attorney practicing in Fredericksburg, will have to perform 250 hours of community service and have a public reprimand added to his record as a lawyer after he carried on an affair with a client he represented in a divorce proceeding.

Read more here.

Losing Family in Divorce

From the New York Post:

DEAR ABBY: My brother is emerging from a painful two-year-long divorce, during which his two teenage daughters and one grown daughter became estranged from him. His now-ex-wife overshared with them during the divorce and did everything she could to prevent them from seeing him, despite court orders for him to have joint custody, visitation and therapy. 

My brother isn’t perfect, but he loves his girls and wants them in his life. He’s slowly making progress with one of his minor daughters. My problem is his ex has caused them to shun the rest of their paternal relatives. My two sisters (their aunts) and I are pained by the loss of those relationships. 

We still reach out at holidays and birthdays with texts, gifts and well wishes, but we receive no response, not even a polite “thank you.” Because we stood by our brother during a terrible experience, we are “guilty by association.” Should we continue reaching out or leave them alone until they are ready to have a relationship with us again? — VICTIM OF DIVORCE

Read the advice here.

The Sound of Silence Good for Kids' Brains

From NPR:

"Silence is kind of a peak achievement in a child's ability to control themselves," Mejía-Menendez says. "We create the conditions for children to concentrate."

Unlike this classroom, the city outside is full of noise. And studies show that too much noise, particularly loud noise, can hurt a child's cognitive development, notably for language-based skills such as reading. That's because if noise is just, well, noise, it distracts developing brains and makes it more difficult for children to concentrate. But when their environment is quiet enough for them to pay attention to sounds that are important or particularly interesting to them, it is a powerful teaching tool.

"[Young children's] brains are craving sound-to-meaning connections, so it's very important that the sounds around them be nourishing and meaningful," says Nina Kraus, a neurobiologist at Northwestern University.

She believes turning down the noise in our lives starts with embracing — even enjoying — silence.

Read more here.

Memorial Day

How to Parent Adult Children

Child Labor Coming Back to U.S.

From AP:

Lawmakers in several states are embracing legislation to let children work in more hazardous occupations, for more hours on school nights and in expanded roles, including serving alcohol in bars and restaurants as young as 14.

The efforts to significantly roll back labor rules are largely led by Republican lawmakers to address worker shortages and, in some cases, run afoul of federal regulations.

Child welfare advocates worry the measures represent a coordinated push to scale back hard-won protections for minors.

Read more here.

Divorce Recommendation

From CNN:

A New York Times Magazine newsletter has caused a social media storm. In the column, a reader wrote that her husband flies first class, leaving her in economy.

See the video story here.

Paid Family Leave in MN

From ABC:

Minnesota workers will be entitled to paid time off when they're seriously ill or to care for newborns and loved ones starting in 2026 under a bill that Democratic Gov. Tim Walz signed Thursday, making his state the 12th to require those benefits.

The paid family and medical leave program will allow Minnesota workers up to 12 weeks a year off with partial pay to care for a newborn or a sick family member, and up to 12 weeks to recover from their own serious illness. Benefits will be capped at 20 weeks a year for employees who take advantage of both.

Business groups fought to block the proposal, warning that it would impose heavy costs and regulatory burdens on employers and aggravate their staffing problems. But it was hailed by supporters who said it would bring equality and fairness to the workplace.

Read more here.

Missing Children in TX

From a press release:

Today, Texas Center for the Missing (TCM), The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and Clear Channel Outdoor Americas (CCOA) (NYSE: CCO) launched a new month-long campaign across Texas calling attention to the ongoing searches for local missing children. Coinciding with National Missing Children's Day (May 25), the digital out-of-home (DOOH) campaign will highlight different missing children's cases in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio to help generate leads.

Read more here.

Vasectomies up Post-Dobbs

From the Economist:

Dr Doug Stein estimates that he has performed around 50,000 vasectomy procedures. He has been practising urology for 40 years, but still, achieving that impressive tally has meant “a lot of sunny Saturdays in windowless rooms hovering over scrotum”, he explains. Dr Stein’s experience and reputation, built up over the decades, make him a popular choice for Floridian men looking to get the snip. But in the summer of 2022 demand for his services suddenly surged.

On June 24th last year the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation, reversing its decision in Roe v Wade, and allowing states to ban abortion. Dr Stein saw registrations from potential vasectomy patients almost triple the next week.

Read more here.

Tina Turner with A Little Help from Friends, Post-Divorce

From People:

After her and Ike's public separation in 1976, [Tina Turner] had been dropped by her label, Capitol Records, and took a brief hiatus from music. In 2004, she revealed in conversation with UK outlet Female First that she was able to get back on her feet because of the help fellow musician Bowie offered.

"In 1983 David Bowie did something very special and significant for me," Turner said. "We were on the same label, but the decision had been taken not to re-sign me. David, however, had just had his contract renewed by Capitol, who wanted to take him out to dinner that night in New York to celebrate. 'I'm sorry,'  he told them, 'but I'm going to the Ritz to see my favorite singer perform.' And that was me."

It was only after Bowie's refusal that the record label "bigwig tagged along" to see Turner perform — and the rest was history. 

"Luckily it was a great show. Seeing it and the crowd's reaction turned 'round how Capitol [Records] viewed me," she continued.

"It was because of David that I got another deal, and everything else followed. I'll be ever thankful to him."

Read more here.

100 Best Children's Books, According to BBC

From BBC:

1          Where the Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak, 1963)
2          Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)
3          Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren, 1945)
4          The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943)
5          The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien, 1937)
6          Northern Lights (Philip Pullman, 1995)
7          The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (CS Lewis, 1950)
8          Winnie-the-Pooh (AA Milne and EH Shepard, 1926)
9          Charlotte's Web (EB White and Garth Williams, 1952)
10        Matilda (Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake, 1988)
11        Anne of Green Gables (LM Montgomery, 1908)
12        Fairy Tales (Hans Christian Andersen, 1827)
13        Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (JK Rowling, 1997)
14        The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle, 1969)
15        The Dark is Rising (Susan Cooper, 1973)
16        The Arrival (Shaun Tan, 2006)
17        Little Women (Louisa May Alcott, 1868)
18        Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Roald Dahl, 1964)
19        Heidi (Johanna Spyri, 1880)
20        Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd, 1947)

See more here.

2023 Symposium on Heat: Impacts on Children and Pregnancy

Please join OEHHA and the Children’s Environmental Health Center for a virtual symposium series exploring the effects of heat on children and during pregnancy. This highly interactive four-session symposium will cover physiologic considerations for children and pregnancy, strategies to combat health effects in children and during pregnancy, and important considerations for these populations in the development of heat health warning systems.

Following the sessions, this page will be updated with the links to the recorded videos.

See the sessions here.

Happy Mother's Day