Family Law Prof Blog

Pennsylvania Guardianship Rules Change

From JD Supra:

Pennsylvania’s Powers of Attorney and guardianship rules will change in 2019, providing additional protection to the elderly at a time when they are at their most vulnerable.

A guardian is an individual or entity appointed by the Court to make decisions for an incapacitated person. The law in Pennsylvania defines an incapacitated person as, “An adult whose ability to receive and evaluate information effectively and communicate decisions in any way is impaired to such a significant extent that he is partially or totally unable to manage his financial resources or to meet essential requirements for his physical health and safety.”

A Judge sitting in Orphan’s Court decides if an individual is incapacitated. The process begins with an interested party filing a Petition with the Court.  Then, a hearing is scheduled.  More persons, referred to as “potentially aggrieved parties” such as a fiancée, best friend or business partner, will need to be served with notice and have the right to legally participate in the hearing. Previously, medical testimony was taken from a doctor or psychologist who has treated or examined the alleged incapacitated person. The new guardianship rules require an “Expert Report” instead of deposition testimony.

Read more here.

The Weight of the Conscience Protection Rule on LGBTQ Rights

From Rewire News:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced last week that it is close to finalizing a conscience protection rule that would allow people to discriminate in health-care settings under cover of law.

The final rule is at the Office of Management and Budget for review and not available to the public. But under the draft rule, which has been made public, health-care providers would be able to refuse to provide treatment, referrals, or assistance with procedures if these activities would violate their stated religious or moral convictions. The deliberately vague language could apply to everyone from receptionists refusing to book appointments to scrub nurses refusing to assist with emergency surgery.

Read more here.

Arizona Law Determines Fate of Frozen Embryos in Divorce

From ABA Journal:

For more than two decades, state courts have wrestled with how to settle disputes over frozen embryos when couples divorce or otherwise split. In such cases, one spouse typically wants to keep the embryos to eventually conceive children, while the other doesn’t.

Courts have tended to side with the party who doesn’t wish to be-come a parent on the grounds that no one can be forced to procreate. But at times, rulings have gone the other way—especially in instances where the frozen embryos represent a person’s only chance of having biological children—leaving a split in the courts and uncertainty for litigants.

But a first-of-its-kind law would end that uncertainty in Arizona. The state’s Parental Right to Embryo law, which took effect in July, requires courts in divorce proceedings to award in vitro embryos to the spouse who intends to allow them to “develop to birth.”

Read more here.

Abortion Bans Proposed in Colorado, Indiana, and Texas

From Rewire News:

Lawmakers in Colorado, Indiana, and Texas want to criminalize abortion, a lawmaker in Oklahoma is trying to prohibit abortion when the sex of the fetus is known, and transgender students are being targeted again in Indiana and South Dakota.

Colorado

Last Monday, lawmakers in the state house of representatives introduced the “Protect Human Life at Conception Act,” a fetal homicide bill that would prohibit terminating or causing the termination of a pregnancy, beginning at the moment of conception.

Read more here.

Parents' Protest against Teaching about LGBT Rights in UK School

From BBC News:

Some parents at Parkfield Community School in Birmingham claim the teachings contradict the Islamic faith.

Mariam Ahmed, whose daughter attends the school, has organised a petition against the "No Outsiders" project.

The school said it aimed to educate children so they were able to accept differences in society.

Ms Ahmed said: "Sorry at this age it's totally wrong. Children at this age don't even know if they are coming or going, let alone knowing what sexual orientation they will become."

Asma and Mohammed Jdaitawi added: "It's good to teach children about respect and values but the sexual orientation aspect is against our principles."

Read more here.

Separation of Families Existed Before Family Separation Policy

From The Guardian:

The Trump administration may have separated thousands of migrant children from their parents at the border for up to a year before family separation was a publicly known practice, according to a stunning government review of the health department’s role in family separation.

A report by the health department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) published on Thursday said officials at the health department estimated “thousands of separated children” were put in health department care before a court order in June 2018 ordered the reunification of 2,600 other children.

“The total number of children separated from a parent or guardian by immigration authorities is unknown,” the report said.

Read more here.

Jayme Closs Found Alive, Escapes Captor

From USA Today:

Nearly three months after her parents were shot dead in their Wisconsin home and a nationwide search began to locate the missing 13-year-old girl, Jayme Closs has been found alive. 

The girl described by friends as a "sweet and shy" middle schooler was found in a neighborhood in northwestern Wisconsin about an hour's drive from her home in Barron, Wisconsin. 

The girl described by friends as a "sweet and shy" middle schooler was found in a neighborhood in northwestern Wisconsin about an hour's drive from her home in Barron, Wisconsin. 

The Barron County Sheriff's Department said that 21-year-old suspect Jake Patterson was arrested Thursday in Jayme's disappearance. 

Read more here.

Gay Singaporean Man Can Adopt Son Born Via Surrogacy

From CNN:

A gay Singaporean doctor has won the right to adopt a child he fathered in the United States through a surrogate, in a landmark ruling for the socially conservative country.

On Monday, Singapore's High Court overturned a 2017 ruling in which a district judge said the man could not legally adopt the child because he was conceived through in vitro fertilization -- a process limited to heterosexual married couples in Singapore -- and brought to term through surrogacy, which is technically banned.

Under Singapore law, children born out of wedlock are considered illegitimate and do not have the same rights as those born to married couples, unless legally adopted.

Read more here.

Violence Against Women Act Expires

From NPR:

The partial shutdown of the U.S. government, which is affecting more than 800,000 federal workers and numerous government agencies, also has consequences for the Violence Against Women Act, which expired at midnight on Friday.

Separately, both the House and the Senate passed spending deals that included clauses that would have extended VAWA until Feb. 8.

But because the law's future became inextricably tied to the larger budget debate, which hinges on a dispute between Democrats and Republicans over funding for a border wall, it was not reauthorized.

VAWA funds and administers numerous programs assisting survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. Its expiration does not prevent all of these programs from being administered — according to The Washington Post, grants already awarded under the law will not be affected. But future payment requests from programs that receive VAWA funding will be delayed until the law is reauthorized.

Read more here.

Can't Pay Child Support During Government Shutdown?

From Feldesman, Tucker, Leifer, and Fidell:

There are few absolutes in the world of divorce, but the unyielding nature of the obligation to make court-ordered child support and alimony payments is one of them.  The failure to do so can have dire consequences – the possibility of jail time, a requirement to pay your ex-spouse’s attorney’s fees, garnishment of future pay and liens on assets, revocation of your driver’s license, and a negative impact on your professional and personal reputation, to name a few.

So if you are one of the many who is experiencing a loss of income due to the government shutdown and you have legally-enforceable support obligations, what are your options?

First, the worst thing to do – just stop paying without any advance notice.  This leaves you exposed to accumulating arrearages, on which interest will begin to accumulate.  Plus, it makes it impossible for your ex-spouse to plan how to meet the financial needs of the children who are, after all, your children as well.

Read more here.

DC Schools to Give Families "Non-Binary" Option

From The Washington Post:

The District’s public school system is slated to become among the first in the nation to let families select “non-binary” — rather than male or female — when indicating the gender of their child on enrollment forms.

The option is scheduled to go into effect for the next school year, and school system leaders said it is part of a broader effort to ensure that transgender and non-binary students feel welcome in classrooms in the nation’s capital.

“We value the whole child at [D.C. Public Schools], and have worked diligently to ensure our schools are safe and inclusive for all students, staff, and families,” interim chancellor Amanda Alexander said in a statement. “Whether through policies, programs, affinity groups, or our enrollment forms, [D.C. Public Schools] is proud to be a leader in affirming, supporting and welcoming LGBTQ students.”

Read more here.

Britain's Supreme Court ruling on Bakery's refusal to bake Gay-marriage cake

 

From The New York Times:

Britain’s Supreme Court supported on Wednesday the right of a Belfast bakery to refuse to bake a cake with a message supporting same-sex marriage, finding that its Christian owners could not be compelled to reproduce a message contrary to their beliefs.

Although the person who requested the cake was gay, a five-judge panel found that the bakery owners’ refusal was based not on his sexual orientation, but on their Protestant faith’s opposition to gay marriage.

“There was no discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation,” said the judgment, which overturned the rulings of two lower courts.

Read more here

Legal Battle Over Missouri Clinic Could Foretell Abortion Fights in Other States

From NPR:

When Angela Huntington arrived at work on a Wednesday morning in early October, she had to do something she dreaded: turn patients away.

Huntington is the manager at the Columbia Health Center in Columbia, Mo., a Planned Parenthood site that recently had to halt its abortion services in the midst of a highly publicized legal fight in the state.

Since another Missouri law requires a 72-hour waiting period between counseling about abortion and having the actual procedure, Huntington needed to call every patient on the day's schedule. She told them they could come to her clinic for the counseling but would have to go elsewhere for the abortion.

The only other place in the state that they could turn to for an abortion was in St. Louis, a two-hour-drive away.

Read more here.

India Supreme Court Decriminalizes Adultery

From NPR:

India's Supreme Court has struck down a colonial-era law that made adultery illegal, calling it arbitrary and saying it is unconstitutional because it "treats a husband as the master."

Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code makes it a crime for a man to have intercourse with another man's wife "without the consent or connivance of that man."

The law gives a husband exclusive right to prosecute his wife's lover — and does not grant a wife power to do the same. It does not penalize the woman, nor any married man who has sex with an unmarried woman.

Read more here.

Why Prince Harry and Meghan Won't Have Full Custody

From Country Living:

Juggling the complicated protocol of the royal family is always going to be difficult. As Meghan Markle has learned since she first began dating Prince Harry, there’s rules and expectations for all aspects of life. But if you thought that the leg crossing and wardrobe choices were confusing enough, just wait until you hear how things work when it comes to having children-especially now that Meghan Markle is expecting their first child next spring.

According to reports, the royal family operates with a strange custody agreement when its couples have their own children, which states that, actually, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has full legal custody over the young royals. Royal expert Marlene Koenig explained to news outlets: “The sovereign has legal custody of the minor grandchildren.”

Confused? It’s a seriously backdated regulation, as Koenig continued: “This goes back to King George I [who ruled in the early 1700s], and the law’s never been changed. He did it because he had a very poor relationship with his son, the future King George II, so they had this law passed that meant the King was the guardian of his grandchildren.”

Read more here.

 

Catholic Church Sex Abuse in Pennsylvania

From Time.com:

The U.S. Justice Department has opened an investigation of child sexual abuse inside the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania, using subpoenas to demand confidential files and testimony from church leaders, according to two people familiar with the probe.

The subpoenas, served last week, follow a scathing state grand jury report over the summer that found that 301 “predator priests” in Pennsylvania had molested more than 1,000 children over several decades and that church leaders had covered up for the offenders.

Now federal prosecutors are bringing the Justice Department’s resources to bear, according to two people who were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Read more here.

Proposed narrow definition of 'Gender' threatens Transgender people.

From The New York Times:

The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a government wide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.

A series of decisions by the Obama administration loosened the legal concept of gender in federal programs, including in education and health care, recognizing gender largely as an individual’s choice and not determined by the sex assigned at birth. The policy prompted fights over bathrooms, dormitories, single-sex programs and other arenas where gender was once seen as a simple concept. Conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, were incensed.

Now the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.

Read more here

Child Abduction

From The Guardian:

Three men and a woman have been accused of helping parents abduct their own children across Australia in contravention of family law orders.

Detectives say as part of a two-year investigation 10 missing children have been located with a parent who had abducted them.

“Five of these are believed to be linked to this group of people,” federal police assistant commissioner Debbie Platz said in a statement on Thursday.

Read more here

UK Supreme court rules on right of unmarried mother to Widow's allowance

From The Guardian:

Denying the unmarried mother of four children a widowed parent’s allowance is illegal, the supreme court has ruled, in a decision that significantly extends the rights of unmarried couples.

By a majority of four to one, the court’s justices declared the government’s refusal to pay up to £117 a week in benefits breached the family’s human rights. It will put pressure on ministers to consider making urgent changes to the law.

The judgment follows a hearing earlier this year in Belfast where the court was told that withholding the allowance from Siobhan McLaughlin amounted to discrimination against all children born out of wedlock.

Read more here

 

Canada's 'Use-It-Or-Lose-It' Parental Leave Comes Three Months Early

From iPolitics:

Soon-to-be-parents will be able to access extra weeks of leave three months earlier than expected.

This year’s federal budget announced additional weeks of “use-it-or-lose-it” leave for non-birthing parents.

The federal government initially set June 2019 as the start date — but now the Liberals say parents can become eligible for the extra weeks in mid-March.

Only parents whose children are born or adopted after March 17 will be able to take advantage of the additional weeks.

Read more here.