Family Law Prof Blog

For Women In Papua New Guinea, Income From Selling Betel Nut Can Come At Heavy Price

From NPR:

The women are mostly in their early 20s. They have children at home. Selling betel nut — an addictive, natural chew — to passersby in mountain towns of Papua New Guinea is a good way to earn a living.

But the extra income sometimes comes at a heavy price: violent beatings by their spouses. Two out of three women in Papua New Guinea experience abuse at the hands of an intimate partner at least once in their lifetime, according to the World Health Organization and aid groups.

Betel nut sellers in Goroka, the main city in the Eastern Highlands, say physical violence is particularly common in their marriages.

Read more here.

The Dangers of Divorce Law

From NBC News:

New York divorce lawyer extraordinaire Raoul Felder, who handled the celebrity splits of everybody from Rudy Giuliani to Christie Brinkley, kept a pistol in the desk drawer of his Manhattan office for many years.

His reasoning was simple: “Everybody hates divorce lawyers, sometimes even their own clients,” he said.

That animosity was on display earlier this week when police said an Arizona man — upset over his divorce nearly a decade earlier — went on a killing spree that left seven people dead, including himself.

Read more here.

Fear of Deportation Keeping Immigrants From Reporting Domestic Violence

From The New York Times:

For years, she slept with a gun under her pillow, living in fear of a boyfriend who beat her, controlled her life and threatened to kill her and her children. Domenica, who came to this country illegally from Mexico in 1995 and became part of the booming immigrant community in Houston, said her partner was a United States citizen, and often reminded her that she could be deported if she went to the police.

“He told me nobody would help me, because I don’t have papers,” said Domenica, 38, who has a son and daughter with her boyfriend, and asked that her last name not be used in order to protect them. “I was with him like that for a pretty long time. I felt like there was no help for me.”

In August of last year, fearing for the safety of her children, Domenica decided to flee. She never called the police. She said she would rather go into hiding than appear in court and risk being separated from her children, or sent home to Mexico.

Read more here.

Women in Turkey Endure Culture of Violence

From The New York Times:

Video taken moments after Handan Askin was shot is shaky, but the scene is clear: Ms. Askin is sprawled out on her back on the cobblestone street, her legs splayed. Her arms are bent upward at her elbows, and she moves her hands while her neighbor asks, “What happened?”

Nine months later in her hospital room, she recalled what happened before her husband shot her: “Emre threatened me when I told him that I wanted to separate, and he used our children to try and prevent me from submitting the documents for divorce.”

She is now paralyzed from the waist down. But to some, Ms. Askin is considered lucky — she is still alive.

Read more here.

Apps Used to Stalk Endanger Domestic Violence Victims

From ABA Journal:

There are hundreds of cell phone apps that can be used for stalking a current or former romantic partner—and they may be hard to access by attorneys who work with victims.

The New York Times reported Saturday on research that showed more than 200 apps available through Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store for monitoring someone’s location and activities. Many are ostensibly for finding a lost phone or keeping tabs on a child, the Times says—but are marketed for catching a cheating partner.

The research the Times reported on, from NYU, Cornell, Hunter College and Technion, also found apps that are overtly marketed for spying on a partner. Researchers called nine companies and asked about using their apps to track a husband; only one—TeenSafe—turned them down.

Read more here.

Former Playmate Kills Self, Son, in Custody Battle

From The New York Post:

A former Playboy Playmate killed herself and her 7-year-old son in a murder-suicide leap from a Midtown hotel penthouse Friday amid a bitter custody battle with her estranged husband, sources told The Post.

The bodies of Stephanie Adams and her son, Vincent, were found on a second-floor balcony area by a guest at the Gotham Hotel, police said.

Adams, 47, had been battling with her husband, Manhattan chiropractor Charles Nicolai, in court, and the dispute had heated up Tuesday when he filed a motion for sole custody of the boy, said his lawyer, William Beslow.

Read more here.

Seventh Circuit Holds ERISA Does Not Preempt Slayer Statute

From JD Supra, Holland & Knight:

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended (ERISA), pre-empts most state laws. However, there are certain types of state laws that are not pre-empted. Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Laborers' Pension Fund v. Miscevic, 880 F.3d 927 (7th Cir. 2018), held that the Illinois slayer statute is one of those state statutes that is not pre-empted by ERISA. A slayer statute is a law that prevents an heir from receiving assets or other property from a decedent if that heir is responsible for the decedent's death.

In this case, a woman killed her husband. The husband was a participant in a union pension plan that provided survivor benefits to a surviving spouse or, if there were no surviving spouse, to a minor child. There was no dispute as to the facts. In a state criminal proceeding, the woman was found to be not guilty of killing her husband by reason of insanity. Her husband's pension fund, The Laborers' Pension Fund (the Fund), brought an interpleader action to determine the proper beneficiary of the husband's pension benefits because the couple had a minor child.

Read more here.

Utah Step Closer to Changing Definition of Domestic Violence

From The Salt Lake Tribune:

After another record year of domestic violence in Utah, two bills aiming to shield victims from their abusers moved a step closer to being signed into law.

Eight members of the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee on Friday listened to — and unanimously approved — Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, and Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, as they pitched SB27 and HB165, respectively.

The bills were inspired by the death of Memorez Rackley and her six-year-old son Jase. The two were killed June 6 in Sandy when a man Rackley had dated shot them in the middle of the street. The man, Jeremy Patterson, killed himself shortly after.

Read more here.

 

Language Barriers in Domestic Abuse Cases

From The New York Times:

Arlet Macareno still gets choked up when telling the story about when the police arrived at her home in Staten Island nearly five years ago, responding to a 911 call from her niece, who found her lying at the bottom of the stairs.

Ms. Macareno, in an interview and a federal lawsuit, said she tried to tell the police that her husband had pushed her down, but instead of taking him to jail, the responding officers arrested her and carried her barefoot and badly bruised to the 120th Precinct station house.

She was charged with obstruction of governmental administration, according to the legal complaint, after pleading with the officers for an interpreter. The arresting officer said she had prevented him from writing his report, her lawyer said.

With little understanding of English or her rights, and in a hurry to return to her 7-year-old son, she pleaded guilty in criminal court to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct and was released.

“I knew I needed an interpreter and had a right to an interpreter,” she said. “I was denied the right to speak. I was denied to the right to express myself. I felt destroyed,” she said in Spanish during an interview.

Read more here.

Warnings issued as firearms permit bill signed into law

From Chicago Tribune:

A controversial new law that allows domestic violence victims to carry a gun without a permit will create greater risk for police and provide a false sense of security for victims, detractors say.

House Bill 1071 passed the Senate 38-12, after the House voted 74-26 in favor of it. Gov. Eric Holcomb signed the bill into law last week.

The bill would enable domestic violence victims to carry a handgun, if they have an active protective order against their alleged abuser, without a permit for 60 days.

Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-Indianapolis, who sponsored the bill, said this legislation will lend victims an extra measure of protection.

Read more here.

Opening doors for women and children when domestic violence hits home

From The Guardian:

Homeless women need somewhere to live. Landlords need someone to manage their properties. Put the two together and the result is a solution to a significant social issue.

Melbourne’s Property Initiatives Real Estate manages apartments for investors and developers, and directs all profitstowards developing long-term housing for women and children in need.

Jeanette Large is the chief executive of the agency, which operates as a fixed trust under Women’s Property Initiatives (WIP), a not-for-profit company which develops and owns the properties. Large says most of the women housed have escaped family violence.

Indeed, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says one-third of the 520,000 people who sought help from Australian homelessness services between 2011 and 2014 did so because of domestic violence.

Launched in April 2015, Large says the real estate agency was created to overcome the funding limitations of philanthropy. WIP has always depended on donations and government grants and needed to find a way to become more self-sustaining while continuing to grow.

Read more here.

Evansville groups giving domestic violence survivors a voice

From The Indiana Lawyer:

A shirt hanging on the wall of the Evansville YWCA reminds visitors: "Your safety, love and happiness matter." Another cautions: "Build your home with love, don't break your home with hate."

Domestic violence affects more than 10 million people a year in the U.S., but almost half of those incidents go unreported. Organizations such as the Evansville YWCA and Albion Fellows Bacon Center are hosting programs throughout October — domestic violence awareness month — to encourage reporting domestic abuse.

The clothes hanging in the YWCA lobby are part of the annual Clothesline Project, which spotlights domestic violence with a gallery of shirts designed by survivors to represent their personal experience. Many carry messages of hope for the next person who leaves an abuser.

"People just create the most beautiful piece of art to express their journey," said Erika Taylor, CEO of YWCA Evansville.

Some shirts' messages are simple, with phrases like "love should not hurt" painted inside hearts. Others carry a reminder to the person who painted them: "I have a voice, I am worthy ... I deserve love."

More than one in three women and one in four men in the U.S. say they were physically abused by an intimate partner at some point in their life, according to a national survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The survey results, published in 2010, also showed almost one in 10 women in the U.S. have been raped by an intimate partner.

While domestic violence is common, victims do not always report it. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates only 56.1 percent of domestic violence incidents in 2014 were reported to police. That rate improves, though not by much, when it's restricted to intimate partner violence, committed by current or ex-spouses, girlfriends or boyfriends.

Read more here.

Women’s Shelter Family Rescue Sees Miracles Daily

From The Huffington Post:

It came down to a matter of matching blinds.

Women, removed from shelters, lived in their cars, awaiting the opening of Family Rescue‘s Ridgeland Transitional Housing because the state objected to the fact that some window blinds did not match. After six long years of jumping through the state’s hoops and convincing private investors that Ridgeland and domestic violence was worth their money, Family Rescue found the only thing standing between 22 families in need of a home and the December elements was matching window blinds. So, housing center officials opened anyway, ready to face whatever fines the state would throw at them.

Read more here.

Women’s Shelter Family Rescue Sees Miracles Daily

From The Huffington Post:

It came down to a matter of matching blinds.

Women, removed from shelters, lived in their cars, awaiting the opening of Family Rescue‘s Ridgeland Transitional Housing because the state objected to the fact that some window blinds did not match. After six long years of jumping through the state’s hoops and convincing private investors that Ridgeland and domestic violence was worth their money, Family Rescue found the only thing standing between 22 families in need of a home and the December elements was matching window blinds. So, housing center officials opened anyway, ready to face whatever fines the state would throw at them.

Read more here.

China wants to stop domestic violence. But the legal system treats it as a lesser crime.

From The Washington Post:

LUYI COUNTY, CHINA — In a courtroom in the Chinese heartland, a defense attorney made his final pitch.

That his client, Zhang Yazhou, killed his wife was not in question. At 5:25 in the evening on Feb. 21,  Zhang walked into his wife’s hospital room. They argued. He strangled her, digging his fingers deep into the flesh of her neck.

By the time nurses entered the room, Zhang was gone and Li Hongxia, just 24, was dead.

Since Zhang confessed on television and in court, the issue at hand was the sentence. Li’s family and their lawyer asked for the death penalty, which is common in China, describing a year of escalating abuse that culminated in a brutal murder.

Read more here.

Child Maltreatment History Should Be a Bar to Being a Foster Parent

 From Youth Today:

It’s just common sense: An adult's past criminal history or history of child maltreatment is not to be balanced against the safety of a child. This is not to say a person with any criminal record should be barred as a foster parent, but certainly an applicant with a substantiated history of child maltreatment, no matter how far in the distant past, should be permanently barred.

Foster care agencies have a legitimate reason to inquire about a prospective foster parent’s criminal and child maltreatment history, be it an inquiry, arrest, charge or conviction. Why? Quite simply, the agency seeks to maximize child safety.

In addition, a good background check helps identify a superior applicant while simultaneously reducing the agency’s potential liability. In many states, the agency responsible for approving foster parent licenses is permitted to waive or not even take into account an applicant's child maltreatment or criminal history if the offense happened many years ago or if the agency's internal risk analysis indicates no cause for concern.

Read more here.

Domestic abuse: Violence amid a life of luxury

Dodging Domestic Abuse in the Suburbs:

From BBC News:

When Lisa McAdams began her decade-long relationship with the man who abused her, she had a successful career and enough savings for a home deposit. She walked away a single parent, carrying debts that took a decade to reconcile.

"I was lucky he hit me", Ms McAdams confesses bluntly.

There's a bitter irony behind this statement. The physical assaults provided clear evidence of the abuse she was suffering. The mental and economic attacks were savage, but covert and subtle.

"The poverty pushes you into leaving, and then it is singularly the hardest bit to climb out of," she says.

Surviving on welfare was a far cry from the seemingly charmed life she had led, waving to celebrity neighbours as she spun the wheel of a luxury car through the gates of a lavish compound.

But amid the trappings of security, she was anything but safe.

Read more here.

Colorado Domestic Violence Survivors and Teen Parents Have Less Hurdles for Childcare Assistance

From the Denver Post:

Under Colorado House Bill 1227, teenagers and victims of domestic violence will have one less barrier to applying for assistance for day care. The current law requires anyone requesting for assistance to pay for childcare to apply for child support within 30 days of the application. The new law exempts teenagers and victims of domestic violence from child support enforcement requirements.

Read more here.

Experts Say Domestic Violence More Complex Than People Think

From Ventura County Star:

Domestic violence was thrust into the forefront of the Jane Laut trial, which concluded last week when jurors found the Oxnard woman guilty of first-degree murder for killing her husband, Dave, at their Oxnard home in 2009.

During the trial, the 58-year old woman claimed she was raped, beaten and emotionally abused by her husband during their 29-year marriage. She said she acted in self-defense and shot him after he threatened her, their dogs and son, Michael.

Dave Laut's family said her claims of abuse were complete lies and an excuse for murder.

Jurors who talked to The Star said even if she was battered by her husband, the abuse did not justify her killing him.

One juror said Jane Laut's family "would have supported her" and "murder wasn't the way out."

LEAVING THE ABUSER

Experts in domestic abuse and battered woman syndrome, however, said the psychological distress victims undergo is complicated by various factors that keep a woman from leaving an abusive partner.

"You have to understand that there is an addictive quality to these relationships," said Mindy Puopolo, associate professor of psychology at California Lutheran University. "These relationships provide an emotional equilibrium where the violence becomes the norm."

Puopolo, who runs Cal Lutheran's Intimate Partner Violence Program, said victims were often raised in abusive environments and "can't tolerate a loving relationship without violence."

 

Read more here.

South Carolina State Court: Domestic Violence Law Unfair to Gay Couples

From ABC News:

A law that perhaps unintentionally failed to protect domestic violence victims in same-sex relationships appears to be unconstitutional, and now South Carolina's high court is trying to decide what to do.

The court was asked on Wednesday to weigh in after a woman tried to get a protective order against her former fiancée, also a woman, and was denied. The state's domestic violence law defines "household members" as a spouse, former spouse, people with a child in common, or specifically men and women who are or have lived together — but not unmarried same-sex couples.

The issue has come up in at least one other state since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last summer legalizing gay marriage nationwide. Earlier this month, the Ohio Supreme Court adopted the use of gender-neutral references in family court cases, a ruling that covers divorce, child support and domestic violence. Other states, such as California and Massachusetts, proactively changed the language in their laws, according to Beth Littrell, a senior attorney with Lambda Legal.

South Carolina Chief Justice Costa Pleicones said the handling of domestic violence situations isn't as clear as the gay marriage ruling from the higher court case.

"The only people who are not protected under this statute right now are same-sex cohabiters or former cohabiters, is that it?" Pleicones said in court Wednesday, according to a video of arguments archived on the court's website. "This statute is pretty clearly unconstitutional in its discriminatory impact upon same-sex couples. So tell me, what's the remedy?"

Bakari Sellers, an attorney for the woman who brought the case, argued the domestic violence provision can be changed to include all couples.

"The state has a legal interest in protection of all its citizens from domestic abuse," he said.

More than two decades ago, Sellers noted, state lawmakers intentionally made the law restrictive to male-female couples. This change, Associate Justice Don Beatty said, makes clear that lawmakers were specifically keeping same-sex, unmarried couples from being included under South Carolina's criminal domestic statute.

Read more here.