Family Law Prof Blog

Taping Divorces

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

It gave Johnson an idea: Why not broadcast divorce court proceedings?

"I said, ‘This is fantastic!’ " Johnson told The Tribune. "Our courts are public, and the public should know more about the courts."

The Salt Lake City-based family law attorney said his intention has always been to educate and inform — a goal, he said, that falls in line with the stated purpose of the rule allowing cameras in courtrooms.

But court administrators, judges and commissioners have questioned the lawyer’s motives and denied his requests. They also propose to change a rule.

Rather than the onus being on judges to justify why cameras should be banned from a particular court proceeding, the proposed rule states that the person applying to record a family law proceeding must prove to the judge why they ought to be allowed in.

Read more here.

MR

NJ Court Upholds Permanent Alimony

A NJ appellate court upholds a permanent alimony award here.

MR

Immunization of Kids

From the New York Times:

In a case weighing the government’s ability to require vaccination against the individual right to refuse it, a federal judge has upheld a New York City policy that bars unimmunized children from public school when another student has a vaccine-preventable disease.

Citing a 109-year-old Supreme Court ruling that gives states broad power in public health matters, Judge William F. Kuntz II of Federal District Court in Brooklyn ruled against three families who claimed that their right to free exercise of religion was violated when their children were kept from school, sometimes for a month at a time, because of the city’s immunization policies.

The Supreme Court, Judge Kuntz wrote in his ruling, has “strongly suggested that religious objectors are not constitutionally exempt from vaccinations.”

The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Patricia Finn, said she plans to appeal the decision, announced this month. On Thursday, Ms. Finn asked the district court to rehear the case.

Read more here.

MR

Review of Carbone & Cahn's "Marriage Markets"

From the Wall Street Journal,

Forget the gender gap. The fundamental divide in the United States today runs along the lines of class and marriage. College-educated Americans and their children reap the benefits of comparatively stable, happy marriages, while less-educated Americans—especially the poor and the working-class—are more likely to struggle with family lives marked by discord and marital instability. This two-tiered story, articulated powerfully by Charles Murray in his recent book, "Coming Apart," is also the one told by June Carbone and Naomi Cahn in "Marriage Markets: How Inequality Is Remaking the American Family.

Read more here.

MR

IN Same-Sex Marriage Ban Struck Down

From USA Today:

INDIANAPOLIS — A federal district judge struck down Indiana's ban on same-sex marriage Wednesday, saying the law violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

Judge Richard Young did not issue a stay on his ruling, so couples were able to marry immediately.

"These couples, when gender and sexual orientation are taken away, are in all respects like the family down the street," he wrote. "The Constitution demands that we treat them as such."

Read more here.

MR

10th Circuit Strikes Down Same-Sex Marriage Ban

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

By upholding a Utah judge’s decision, a three-member panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver became the first appeals court in the nation to rule on the issue, setting a historic precedent that voter-approved bans on same-sex marriage violate the Fourteenth Amendment rights of same-sex couples to equal protection and due process.

But the court immediatley stayed the implementation of its decision, pending an anticipated appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Utah attorney general’s office said Wednesday it will initiate that appeal.

Read more here and read the opinion here.

MR

OH family law case

Professor Marianna Brown Bettman analyzes a recent case from the Supreme Court of Ohio deciding a child in a disputed post decree custody/visitation hearing has no right to attend or be a party here.

MR

Social Media in Prenups

From Fox News:

Prenuptial agreements are evolving to include new language called a "social media clause" that protects married couples - and exes - from a digital public relations disaster.

"When they have this social media clause, each party will agree not to post, tweet, or otherwise share via social media, positive, negative, insulting, embarrassing, or flattering images or content of the other," said New York-based attorney Ann-Margaret Carrozza.

Each party can customize the prenup, but Carrozza recommends keeping it as broad as possible, to the point of including online postings that could be considered positive.

Read more here.

MR

Hat Tip: Naomi Cahn

Prenup Joke

A funny story on prenups from the satircal Onion is here.

MR

Time with Kids

From the Guardian:

Dads may deserve that card to mark Fathers' Day as research shows they spend seven times as much time interacting with their children than their own fathers did with them 40 years ago.

While the time focused on their offspring still comes in at a fairly low average of 35 minutes a day for working fathers, it is far higher than the five minutes registered in 1974. Mothers' quality time with their kids has also risen over the same period, from 15 minutes a day to an hour.

Read more here.

MR

Fining Parents in England For...

From the Guardian:

Teachers should confront "bad parents" and heads should be given powers to fine mothers and fathers who fail to support their children's education, the chief inspector of schools has said.

Sir Michael Wilshaw called for headteachers to be given the authority to impose financial penalties on parents who allow homework to be left undone, miss parents' evenings or fail to read with their children.

The head of the schools watchdog, Ofsted, also said that poverty was too often used as an excuse for educational failure among white working-class families, whose children were often outperformed by those from immigrant communities.

Read more here.

MR

CA's Court-Aided 1-Day Divorce

From the New York Times:

MARISSA YORK, a real estate broker in Manhattan, used a $50 online do-it-yourself divorce kit when she and her husband of more than nine years decided to part ways. Their breakup was relatively amicable, she said, so she figured they could save money by avoiding lawyers. “We didn’t want to drag it out over months or years,” she said.

But after the courthouse clerk rejected her filing because the document formatting was incorrect, she had the paperwork reviewed by a lawyer, who informed her that if she waited six more months to file, she would be entitled to a portion of her husband’s pension benefits. She ended up paying about $10,000 in legal fees, which was worth it because she received part of the pension, she said. “If I had to do it over, I would hire an attorney immediately,” she said.

Read more here.

MR

Hat Tip: Naomi Cahn

Childhood Mortality

From TIME:

The news on the childhood mortality front is both very good and very bad. Millions have been saved, but millions are still dying. Melinda Gates, in an address to the World Health Assembly, offers some smart solutions.

Read more here.

MR

Unmarried Fathers' Rights

From Professor Clare Huntington (Fordham Law), writing for the New York Times:

The fathers’ rights movement contends that the treatment of fathers and mothers is unequal under the law, but the real difference is between married and unmarried fathers.

My research shows that family law makes it much harder for unmarried fathers to sustain a relationship with their children. In most states, if a child is born to married parents, the mother’s husband is automatically established as the legal father. By contrast, unmarried fathers have to take additional steps to establish parentage.

Read more here.

MR

Tough Dating

From the Atlantic:

Think modern dating is tough? Try hunting for a husband or wife in the Druze community—adherents are forbidden from marrying outside of the faith.

Read more here.

MR

Divorces Create Millionaires

From the Telegraph:

High profile divorces are bolstering the number of female multi-millionaires with the trend expected to continue as more wealthy couples square up in British courts this year.

The number of women on the Sunday Times Rich List has risen by nearly 50 per cent in 10 years, from 78 to 114.

However just two women, JK Rowling, 48, and Tamara Mellon, 46, have made fortunes in their own right. The rest have inherited their vast wealth or own businesses jointly with their husbands, or have won it in divorce hearings.

Read more here.

MR

 

 

Reluctant Grandmas

From Daily Mail:

Many 50-somethings are loath to swap careers and killer heels for knitting bootees. But their unwillingness to embrace grandmotherhood is sparking controversy. 

Read more here.

MR

Older First-Time Moms

From CDC:

A recent NCHS Data Brief, drawing on data collected through the National Vital Statistics System, has received nationwide media attention for its findings on first-time births to older mothers. Data Brief No. 152, "First Births to Older Women Continue to Rise," found significant increases over the past four decades in the average age of women at the birth of their first child. The study's authors, T. J. Mathews and Dr. Brady Hamilton, ascribed this increase in part to the shift in first births to women 35 years and older.

Read more here.

MR

Father's Rights

Hanna Rosin, writing for Slate, considers the fathers' rights movement here.

MR

Mother-Daughter Relationships

From Vox:

Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, analyzed hours' worth of conversations between mothers and daughters for her book You're Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation. She discovered a central tension in the mother-daughter relationship: mothers want to protect their daughters, so they offer advice that they think will make their daughters' lives easier. Daughters, on the other hand, want approval from their mothers, so they interpret this advice as criticism, as proof that they're imperfect.

Read more here.

MR

Hat Tip: SH