Family Law Prof Blog

Engle: "Access, Welfare, and Lawsuits: Restoring Reproductive and Economic Autonomy Post-Dobbs"

Jill Callahan Engle (Penn State Law-University Park) recently posted her Article, "Access, Welfare, and Lawsuits: Restoring Reproductive and Economic Autonomy Post-Dobbs" on SSRN (forthcoming Richmond Law Review). Here is the Abstract:

Access to abortion and increased poverty for women and children are inversely correlated: as access to abortion decreases, feminine and child poverty increase. Women who try to access abortions are more likely to already be mothers, and more likely to be living below the poverty line. In post-Dobbs America, abortion is illegal in approximately a third of the states. In states where abortion access is most restricted, women and children experience poverty at the highest rates in the nation. The Supreme Court majority that decided Dobbs chose to ignore the connection between abortion and poverty. In doing so, they also ignored their own legal precedent. Specifically, in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court premised its decision in large part on the connection between abortion access and women’s economic agency. The Casey Court recognized that reproductive autonomy is critical to women’s overall life planning, most importantly their financial stability. The Dobbs dissenters pointed out this cognitive dissonance demonstrated by the Dobbs majority, despite overwhelming empirical data on reproductive rights and economic stability for women.

This article is the first to document the law and policy strategies that collectively increase abortion access and reduce feminine and child poverty. Innovative approaches like the 2023 Texas lawsuit by women who almost died because they were denied abortions are yielding results that directly support women’s economic autonomy. State legislatures and governors are legally enshrining women’s rights to access abortion and doctors and nurses’ rights to provide abortions. And voters are going to the polls in droves to protect abortion access, with victories in seven states in one year’s time. This article chronicles those abortion access strategies and more, including the increasing importance of medication abortion, which is also under attack in the federal courts.

Grappling with the reality that Dobbs removed the constitutional right to abortion recognized by Roe and Casey, this article traces the history of the abortion rights battle from the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roe in 1973 through Casey in 1992 to Dobbs in 2022. In this recounting, the article contextualizes reproductive autonomy within women’s economic rights, which developed significantly during that same time. This article concludes with optimism. Women’s and children’s financial health may be compromised generally by Dobbs, but negative outcomes are not inevitable. Strategies abound to protect and even increase abortion access, and the article describes those in detail. It also highlights social welfare policies that mitigate feminine and child poverty. The law and policy landscape post-Dobbs for women and children economically is changing for the better as we speak, and the momentum must continue. Focusing on these solutions is the way forward to protect the financial futures of women and children.

Kleinfeld & Sachs: "Give Parents the Vote"

Joshua Kleinfeld (Northwestern University - Pritzker School of Law) and Stephen E. Sachs (Harvard Law School) recently posted their Article, "Give Parents the Vote" (forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review) on SSRN. Here is the Abstract:

Many of America’s most significant policy problems, from failing schools to the aftershocks of COVID shutdowns to national debt to climate change, share a common factor: the weak political power of children. Children are 23% of all citizens; they have distinct interests; and they already count for electoral districting. But because they lack the maturity to vote for themselves, their interests don’t count proportionally at the polls. The result is policy that observably disserves children’s interests and violates a deep principle of democratic fairness: that citizens, through voting, can make political power respond to their interests.

Yet there’s a fix. We should entrust children’s interests in the voting booth to the same people we entrust with those interests everywhere else: their parents. Voting parents should be able to cast proxy ballots on behalf of their minor children. So should the court-appointed guardians of those who can’t vote due to mental incapacity. This proposal would be pragmatically feasible, constitutionally permissible, and breathtakingly significant: perhaps no single intervention would, at a stroke, more profoundly alter the incentives of American parties and politicians. And, crucially, it would be entirely a matter of state law. Giving parents the vote is a reform that any state can adopt, both for its own elections and for its representation in Congress and the Electoral College.

Dwyer: "The Real Wrongs of ICWA"

Jim Dwyer (William & Mary Law School) recently published his Article, "The Real Wrongs of ICWA" in Villanova Law Review. Here is the Abstract:

Haaland v. Brackeen rejected federalism-based challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) but signaled receptivity to future challenges based on individual rights. The adult-focused rights claims presented in Haaland, however, miss the mark of what is truly problem- atic about ICWA. This Article presents an in-depth, children’s-rights based critique of the Act, explaining how it violates a fundamental right against state exertion of power over central aspects of persons’ private lives to their detriment for illicit purposes. In fact, the Act’s defenders are complicit in the same sort of government violence that motivated ICWA’s enactment—erasing aspects of children’s heritage and expe- rience incompatible with a state-preferred identity and destroying children’s relationships and worlds in order to transform them in service to ideological and political aims, under the guise of child saving.

NeJaime & Joslin: "Multiparenthood"

Douglas NeJaime (Yale Law School) and Courtney G. Joslin (UC Davis School of Law) recently posted their Article, "Multiparenthood" on SSRN. Here is the Abstract:

Family law conventionally treats parenthood as binary: A child has two, and only two, parents. These two parents possess all parental rights and responsibilities, which cannot be shared with others. Their status as parents remains fixed throughout the child’s life. Today, legislatures are explicitly challenging this view. Ten jurisdictions now have multiparent statutes, i.e., laws that authorize courts to recognize more than two legal parents. Commentators tend to view this development as a radical change in the law intended to accommodate radical new family forms produced by assisted reproduction, LGBTQ family formation, and polyamory. But the accuracy of these assumptions—about the ways in which these statutes represent a break from the past and the types of families they capture—has remained unexamined.

This Article is the first to do so through an empirical study. Analyzing all publicly available judicial decisions issued pursuant to multiparent statutes, we show that the families they accommodate are not novel and rare family arrangements involving planned and well-resourced LGBTQ parents, but instead more familiar and common ones, emerging out of re-partnering and caregiving by extended family members and often resulting from challenges related to poverty. We also show that extending parental rights to more than two people is a longstanding practice in family law. Drawing on a second dataset consisting of all publicly available judicial decisions applying a functional parent doctrine over four decades, we find that courts long have accommodated multiparent families. For decades, courts have authorized the sharing of parental rights and responsibilities across more than two individuals, often recognizing people who come into children’s lives long after their birth. 

Our empirical study of multiparent recognition challenges conventional assumptions about the life and law of parenthood itself. Families commonly construct parent-child relationships in ways that are nonbinary—sharing parental rights with more than one other person and altering a child’s parental unit over time. For their part, courts too have resisted a view of parenthood as binary. They have recognized that many children have more than two parents; that parental rights and responsibilities can be unbundled and shared; and that a child’s parents may change over time. Our empirical account also suggests that many of the concerns raised about multiparent recognition are inapposite or overstated. Imagining a planned multiparent family with three involved parents, commentators worry that laws allowing multiparent recognition will produce bitter custody litigation, complicated tri-custody orders, and ongoing conflict with three parents sharing legal rights and responsibilities. Yet, across both datasets, the children rarely have three parents assuming parental responsibilities. Legal recognition of more than two parents typically promotes security and stability for children, not by protecting relationships with multiple involved parents, but instead—and counterintuitively—by protecting children’s primary parental relationship. Accordingly, our study leads us to be less concerned with too much multiparent recognition and instead to be more concerned with too little multiparent recognition.

China proposes law to make it easier to register marriages, harder to divorce

From Reuters:

China has put together a revised draft law that will make it simpler for couples to register their marriage, while filing for divorce will become tougher, a move that drew scorn from netizens and became a top trending online topic on Thursday.

 

The draft, aimed at building a "family friendly society", was released by China's Ministry of Civil Affairs this week for public feedback. People are able to submit comments to the ministry until Sept 11, it said.

 

It comes as policymakers struggle to encourage young couples to get married and have children after the country's population fell for years.

 

The proposed law removes regional restrictions for marriage seen in the previous law where marriages had to be handled at the household registration location of the couple.

 

Divorces will be subject to a 30-day cooling off period during which, if either party is unwilling to divorce, they may withdraw the application, terminating the divorce registration process, the draft said.

Read more here.

Simone: "When Parents Decide That All the World’s a Stage: Expanding Publicity Rights to Protect Children Involved in Monetized Social Media Content"

Celine Simone (JD candidate, Columbia Law School) recently posted her Note, "When Parents Decide That All the World’s a Stage: Expanding Publicity Rights to Protect Children Involved in Monetized Social Media Content" (published in the Columbia Law Journal of Law and Social Problems) on SSRN. Here is the Abstract:

Family content creation has become a billion-dollar industry. Though most parents at some point share content of their children online, for many “influencer” parents and their children, putting in the hours to curate the perfect online image may lead to an immense amount of money from advertising and sponsorship. The children of these families, though integral to this content’s success, have neither legal protection to assure they are compensated for their labor nor any control over the type of material in which they appear. Participation in this type of content can have detrimental effects on children’s safety and well-being, and, particularly because of the internet’s permanence, these negative effects may continue well into adulthood. Several states have either passed or proposed laws that would ensure some level of financial compensation for children involved in monetized content. A far less discussed –– but perhaps equally important –– potential form of protection is the “Right to Deletion,” whereupon turning 18 these children could command that their parents remove monetized media that includes their likeness. In the United States, parents enjoy a high degree of autonomy in making decisions for their children, meaning it is exceedingly difficult to explicitly dictate or manage the type of content parents can create involving their minor children. Accordingly, this Note advocates for a national expansion of publicity rights, which would give children included in monetized content a “Right to Deletion” upon reaching adulthood, thus respecting parental autonomy while curbing the long-term negative effects on the involved children. Furthermore, establishing these deletion rights may have the added ability to persuade parents to consider more carefully the potentially harmful effects of the content they produce without encroaching on their parental rights.
Part I of this Note outlines the current industry of family content creation, its unique characteristics as compared to traditional forms of media, and the harms that can befall children in its production. Part II evaluates the United States’ legal understanding of parental autonomy and how this view of autonomy leaves these children at an especially high risk of exploitation. Part III addresses the state of publicity laws and where children involved in monetized content fit into this existing legal framework. Finally, Part IV advocates for the expansion of publicity rights to give these children the “Right to Deletion” upon entering adulthood.

Abrams & Potts: "The Rhetoric of Abortion in Amicus Briefs"

Jamie Abrams (American University Washington College of Law) and Amanda Potts (Cardiff University) recently posted their Article, "The Rhetoric of Abortion in Amicus Briefs" on SSRN. Here is the Abstract:

The amicus briefs filed in landmark abortion cases before the U.S. Supreme Court serve as a barometer revealing how various constituencies talk about abortion, women, fetuses, physicians, rights, and harms over time. This article conducts an interdisciplinary legal-linguistic study of the amicus briefs that were filed in the milestone abortion cases of Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health. As the first large-scale study of all amicus briefs submitted in these key cases, this article identifies the roles of amicus briefs, analyzes their rhetorical strategies, and describes how their authors engage with the Court. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, the study reveals how the discursive construction of the pregnant person, fetus, physician, and abortion as a right have evolved over fifty years and shows why these shifts matter. In so doing, this study offers historical perspectives into evolving arguments in abortion litigation, contemporaneous insights into the status of polarized abortion politics, and future implications for amicus activity and abortion advocacy.

Meyers: Teaching Division of Marital Assets

Professor Ariana Meyers (University of North Dakota School of Law) recently presented at the 2024 Family Law Scholars & Teachers Conference about how she teaches the principles of marital asset division to her students.  Read more below: 

Learning the principles of marital asset division is a fundamental task for domestic relations lawyers. Many students come into family law class with the misconception that assets are divided in half. Most commonly, students pull one asset from the marital pot and assume half of the value or half of the debt, is divided equitably between the parties regardless of who the asset is awarded to. My pedagogical concern was the inability of the student to understand the concept of property distribution and to apply the concept to a complicated set of facts to arrive at a conclusion. Prior to employing visual learning techniques in family law, final examination submissions missed the mark of the actual practice of property division.

Each semester, students are assigned an imaginary party to represent in a divorce negotiation. Confidential facts explaining their clients’ respective desired outcomes are circulated in advance of the negotiation. A spreadsheet listing the assets and debts belonging to the parties along with an assigned undisputed value of and debt against each property item. Through negotiations, the students determine how the marital property will be distributed. Following negotiations, the students present to the class summarizing the challenges encountered, the methods used to overcome those challenges and their overall result. The purpose of the assignment is to teach students how property division works, effective client advocacy and negotiations. Interestingly, no two student pairings reach identical settlement agreements. The assignment illustrates that there are numerous possible ways to divide marital assets and debts. Hearing from their colleagues the varying negotiated agreement terms, emphasizes the important lesson that proceeding to trial on a case is a gamble as outcome predictability is oftentimes impossible.

Over the last three years, instead of using a spreadsheet, I have introduced PartUs in the classroom. This is a cloud-based program created by Krista Andrews, a North Dakota based domestic relations attorney in partnership Tim Brookins, a software developer.[1] PartUs is used worldwide by practitioners due to its simplicity and ease of function. Rather than sending an Excel spreadsheet back and forth with revisions, students can simultaneously work on a PartUs distribution worksheet. The PartUs interface is simplistically designed and easy for users of varying technological aptitudes to use.

[1] About Us, https://www.partus.com/.

How International Adoption Is Failing Children

From Nonprofit Quarterly:

Over nine months into the violence that has been ransacking the lives of Palestinians, efforts to help are coming from all corners of the globe. As news outlets and social media feeds are flooded with endless images of violence against children, some in the Global North have expressed a desire to adopt Palestinian children to give them a chance at a better life.

This isn’t the first time that citizens in the Global North have wanted to adopt children from a specific crisis zone. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, international adoption from countries experiencing various kinds of hardship—especially China, Russia, Guatemala, South Korea, and Ethiopia—became popular in the United States, a wave led mainly by religious organizations.

Unlike in Palestine, where local authorities have made it clear that it is in the best interests of Palestinian children for their care to remain in Palestine, most of these countries had no oversight to check the nature or ethics of these adoptions, much less stop them entirely.

However, after peaking at over 20,000 adoptions in 2004, various issues highlighted within the adoption process and changes to adoption protocols have since led to a decrease in US-based families adopting children from other countries—by 2016, the number had dropped by 77 percent. By 2023, US families adopted 1,275 children from other countries, the lowest number of international adoptions on record.

Despite this decrease, the complications that come with international adoption remain. Even with global frameworks like the Hague Convention—which includes a series of declarations on international adoptions and the protection of children—adoption systems continue to fail children across the world.

Read more here.

A growing share of U.S. husbands and wives are roughly the same age

From Pew Research Center:

The typical age gap between husbands and wives in the United States has narrowed over the past 20 years, continuing a 20th-century trend. On average, husbands and wives were 2.2 years apart in age in 2022, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. This is down from 2.4 years in 2000 and 4.9 years in 1880.

Since 1880, the share of marriages in which the husband is several years older than the wife has fallen significantly. And since 2000, marriages where the wife is significantly older than the husband have also become more rare. (This analysis is limited to opposite-sex marriages in which the spouses live together.)

Overall, in 2022:

• • 51% of opposite-sex marriages had spouses who were two years apart in age or less. This is up from 46% in 2000.
  • 40% of marriages had a husband who was three or more years older than his wife. This is down from 43% in 2000.
  • 10% of marriages had a wife who was three or more years older than her husband. This share had been on the rise during the 20th century but is now down marginally from a peak of 11% in 2000

Read more here.

Iraq: Parliament Poised to Legalize Child Marriage

From Human Rights Watch:

Iraq’s parliament is moving forward an amendment to the country’s Personal Status Law that would allow Iraqi religious authorities, rather than state law, to govern marriage and inheritance matters at the expense of fundamental rights, Human Rights Watch said today. The Iraqi parliament, which completed its first reading of the bill on August 4, 2023, will have two more readings of the bill and a debate before deciding whether to vote it into law.

If passed, the amendment would have disastrous effects on women’s and girls’ rights guaranteed under international law by allowing marriage for girls as young as 9, undermining the principle of equality under Iraqi law, and removing protections for women regarding divorce and inheritance. Child marriage puts girls at increased risk of sexual and physical violence, adverse physical and mental health consequences, and being denied access to education and employment.

“The Iraqi parliament’s passage of this bill would be a devastating step backward for Iraqi women and girls and the rights they have fought hard to enshrine in law,” said Sarah Sanbar, Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Formally legalizing child marriage would rob countless girls of their futures and well-being. Girls belong in school and on the playground, not in a wedding dress.”

The draft amendment would legalize, rather than try to reverse, Iraq’s significant and growing child marriage problem, Human Rights Watch said. 

Read more here.

Historic Legislation Introduced to Prevent Child Marriage in the United States

From the Tahirih Justice Center:

August 2, 2024:

Today marks a historic milestone in the fight against child marriage in the United States with the introduction of the Child Marriage Prevention Act of 2024. This groundbreaking federal legislation represents the first concerted effort by the United States Congress to condemn and prevent child marriage domestically.

“Girls everywhere are only as safe as the weakest law allows, and this bill acknowledges the many ways current U.S. law fails to protect girls here and abroad from this human rights abuse,” said Casey Carter Swegman, Director of Public Policy at the Tahirih Justice Center. “For years, the U.S. has focused on ending child marriage in other countries but has overlooked the issue here at home. We are grateful to Senator Dick Durbin for his steadfast support and dedication to introducing the Child Marriage Prevention Act, which tackles the issue by encouraging states to take action and updating immigration law to close loopholes that allow for the exploitation of children under the guise of marriage.”

“While the United States has long worked to address the scourge of child marriage internationally, our federal government has failed to take meaningful steps to address this issue in our own backyard. Child marriage is a significant problem domestically, and it overwhelmingly affects underage girls who are married to adult men, often with dire consequences for their life outcomes. This loss of dignity and independence is unacceptable,” said Senator Durbin. “My bill builds on the work of countless survivors and advocates across the country to end child marriage in the United States. It is a powerful statement of our priorities as a nation and something that will change the futures of hundreds of thousands of young girls if enacted.”

Child marriage remains legal in well over half of all U.S. states, with over 300,000 minors married between 2000 and 2018. Between 2007 and 2017, more than 8,500 marriage-based visa petitions involving at least one minor were approved by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), with the majority involving U.S. adults seeking to bring children from abroad to the U.S. as fiancées or spouses.

The Child Marriage Prevention Act proposes bold actions to address this form of child abuse including:

• • National Commission to Combat Child Marriage: Establishing a commission to study the impact of child marriage in the U.S. and provide recommendations on its elimination.
  • State Task Force Grants: Creating grants for state task forces to examine child marriage and develop policy recommendations to protect individuals from child marriage and related abuses.
  • Model State Statute: Instructing the Attorney General to develop a model statute prohibiting child marriage.
  • Incentives for States: Authorizing increased funding for states that ban child marriage through STOP and SASP formula grants.
  • Federal Government Land Ban: Prohibiting child marriage on federal government land and in federal buildings.
  • Visa Regulations: Setting minimum age requirements for U.S. petitioners and foreign beneficiaries of spouse and fiancée visas to prevent children from being married solely for immigration purposes.
  • Federal Impact Study: Charges the Comptroller of the United States with studying and reporting on the prevalence of child marriage within the marriage-based visa program.

Read more here.

China's first university degree in marriage offers courses like matchmaking and pre-divorce counseling

From NBC News: 

China is issuing its first university degree program in all things matrimony, and its curriculum includes wedding planning, matchmaking services and marriage counseling.

The Beijing-based Vocational University of Civil Affairs is offering a four-year program in marriage services and management, which aims to teach students how to engage with "the entire cycle of marriage and family," said the dean of the university's School of Wedding Culture and Media Arts, Yu Xiaohui.

"It starts from before [a couple] starts a family — from marriage matchmaking, to premarital counseling, marriage registration, wedding services, and then extending down to counseling before divorce," Yu told local media according to a Baidu translation, adding that there is currently a talent demand gap for highly trained professionals in the marriage services market.

Modules in the course include sociology, wedding venue design, family ethics, the economics of the marriage industry and family policies. Students will also have the chance to intern at agencies that specialize in weddings, matchmaking, marriage registration and counseling.

The program, which begins enrolling students this September, will recruit 70 undergraduates across 12 provinces in 2024, vice president of the university Zhao Honggang told local media. 

Read more here.

Building the Constitutional Canon for Children's Rights

From Family Law JOTWELL:

When I teach canonical parentage and child custody cases such as Michael H. v. Gerald D. or Troxel v. Granville, I ask the class what they know about Victoria or Isabelle and Natalie Troxel. Students are often a little startled to hear the names of the children at the core of these cases, and we then discuss how rarely the children’s actual interests are addressed. The cases are framed as battles between adults over their rights to the child; even though Victoria asserted her own liberty and equal protection claims, the Michael H Court was highly dismissive of them.

Catherine Smith has been working to change that situation. Along with Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Associate Dean Robin Walker Sterling and George State College of Law Professor Tanya Washington, Smith has received a grant of over $2 million to fund a new project, The Advancement for Children’s Constitutional Rights Consortium. One goal is to develop a new casebook, Children and the Constitution, which will focus on children’s rights in the constitutional law canon. Professor Smith’s article, “Children’s Equality Law” in the Age of Parents’ Rights, provides insight into some core aspects of what this revisioning of the constitutional canon might involve. The article notes that, while one conception of children’s rights could include both liberty and equal protection rights, an even “broader conceptualization could invoke a panoply of young people’s social and civil rights.”

“Children’s Equality Law” focuses on one aspect of the new conceptualization that Smith envisions, the possibilities of using the Equal Protection Clause to protect young people when discriminatory treatment results in “group-based hierarchies.” The article notes that constitutional law relies on an assumption that parents have the political power and authority to ensure their children’s well-being. That assumption is not always accurate, Smith points out, and children need their own discrete rights because their parents may be unable to provide the protection they need.

Read more here.

Montana Supreme Court rules minors don’t need parental permission for abortion

From AP News:

Montana’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that minors don’t need their parents’ permission to get an abortion in the state – agreeing with a lower court ruling that found the parental consent law violates the privacy clause in the state constitution.

“We conclude that minors, like adults, have a fundamental right to privacy, which includes procreative autonomy and making medical decisions affecting his or her bodily integrity and health in partnership with a chosen health care provider free from governmental interest,” Justice Laurie McKinnon wrote in the unanimous opinion.

The ruling comes as an initiative to ask voters if they want to protect the right to a pre-viability abortion in the state constitution is expected to be on the Montana ballot in November. County officials have verified enough signatures to qualify the issue for the ballot, supporters have said. The Secretary of State’s Office has to certify the general election ballots by Aug. 22.

Read more here.

Challenges of Regulating the Sometimes-Nasty Business of Child Influencers

From the University of Virginia:

In Illinois, a new law is coming to protect children on social media. 

Beginning July 1, any adult who makes money sharing information online about children under 16 will have to place a certain percentage of the profits into a blocked trust for that child, based on the amount of time that child is on screen.

The amendment to the state’s Child Labor Law also allows minors to sue their parents or other adults who profited from such content and did not adequately safeguard the earnings.

“It looks like what happened is truly grassroots,” said Naomi Cahn, co-director of the University of Virginia’s Family Law Center and a professor in the School of Law. Teenager Shreya Nallamothu was so upset by what she was seeing happen to kid influencers that she wrote to her state senator asking for protection for them.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the new measure last August after both houses of the state’s legislature passed it, including a full sweep in the Senate.

“It’s currently the first such law,” Cahn said. “Other states have considered such legislation, including California and Washington state.”

Read more here.

Happy Child Support Awareness Month!

August is Child Support Awareness Month!

From the Administration for Children & Families: 

As commissioner for the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Child Support Services, I get to travel across the country to visit state, tribal, county, and local child support offices. I meet with child support professionals who are the backbone of our program and find innovative and effective ways to help children and families each day. We're able to celebrate the hardworking staff and promote this critical program during Child Support Awareness Month each August.

In FY23, state programs (PDF) nationwide collected $29.6 billion and served 12.7 million children—that’s 1 in 5 children in the United States. Tribal programs (PDF) collected $50 million in FY23, $10 million of which was collected for other tribes, states, or countries. This support helps kids thrive.

Our program not only helps children, we’re committed to serving the whole family. In fact, last year we changed our name to Office of Child Support Services because it reflects our program’s family-centered approach. Many local programs help parents through services like employment programs, fatherhood initiatives, reentry partnerships and more. 

Supporting local programs

We’ve been doing a lot of regulatory work at the federal level to support tribes and states in their mission to help children and families. This year, we got two final rules across the finish line:

• • Fully fund tribal programs: This rule supports the growth of the tribal child support program by eliminating burdensome costs. With this new rule, the federal government will fully fund new and existing tribal child support programs starting this October 1. 
  • Help states weather pandemics and emergencies: ACF published a rule that allows OCSS to modify performance measure requirements and waive penalties for failure to meet these requirements when an emergency impacts a state’s ability to achieve the standards for paternity establishment, order establishment, and current collections.

Regulatory work takes dedication and patience. I’m so grateful for the child support professionals and partners who submitted comments and feedback over the years to help us implement these important changes. OCSS will continue to engage partners as we look for opportunities for improvement and ways to build on our program’s strong performance.

Spread the word

We’ve created a Child Support Awareness Month social media toolkit to help state and tribal child support agencies and the public spread the word about this family-centered program. The toolkit has sample text and graphics that you can copy and paste or modify as needed. We hope you’ll use these materials to help people understand how child support serves the whole family and encourage them to learn more from their local office.

You can also stay up to date with the child support program by subscribing to our monthly newsletter, Child Support Report.

Read more here. 

Texas attorney tried to buy Tarrant County inmates' unborn babies, sheriff's office says

From Fox News:

The owner of a Texas adoption agency is facing charges for what law enforcement officials called "unethical adoption practices."

Jody Hall is facing two charges of the "sale or purchase of a child."

The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office accused the 68-year-old of "paying money to multiple pregnant Tarrant County inmates for the purpose of placing their unborn children up for adoption with [her] agency."

Online records indicate Hall runs an organization called Adoptions International, Inc.

Tarrant County shared a probable cause affidavit detailing the allegations involving Hall. The documents say Hall added $846 to one inmate's account and tried to arrange a connection with the inmate's boyfriend so he could sign papers that would give up his rights to the child.

Investigators obtained text messages allegedly between Hall and an inmate on their jail tablets.

"I've helped a lot of girls like yourself. We have families who cannot have children that would love to adopt your child," wrote Hall. "You can pick a family and start communicating with them now. We will put $100 weekly on your books, and you can spend part of it on the tablet or whatever you wish to buy."

"You will have $2,500 when you get out, or if you want me to put some on your books each week, I can do that," she wrote on another occasion.

In another situation earlier this spring, investigators say Hall had transferred $846 to an inmate, who then decided to keep her child.

"You're in jail and a drug addict. YOU! Did NOT keep him. You are a scammer and I will be telling the prosecutor in your case," she allegedly wrote. "I don’t need birth moms that lie to me just to get financial support. And I can’t give you anymore if he’s not willing to sign the paperwork." 

Read more here.

Researcher on Politics of Adoption Focuses on Birth Mothers

From WTTW News:

Gretchen Sisson paints a nuanced picture of the American adoption system in her new book, “Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood,” where she shares the stories of the industry’s lesser-known characters: birth mothers.

Through a decade of research and dozens of personal anecdotes, the book challenges conventional ideas around adoption in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.

Sisson started doing research for the book in 2010 while working for an organization that focuses on pregnant and parenting teens. It was then that she began thinking more about the cultural ideas and norms around parenthood, and how that differed from the lived experiences of the individuals she was working with.

“I wanted to understand how adoption was actually functioning in the lives of the people most impacted by it,” said Sisson.

Sisson is a sociologist who studies abortion and adoption at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She says there’s a common perception that pregnant women are often choosing between abortion and adoption. That’s not something she’s found in her research.

“Adoption is primarily a constrained choice,” said Sisson. “When you take away other options, when you make abortion inaccessible and when you make parenting impossible, that’s when people turn to adoption. That was no one’s first choice.”

Read more here.

Massachusetts Legislature Passes Parentage Act

From Massachusetts Legislature Press Room: 

The Massachusetts Legislature today passed An Act to ensure legal parentage equality, extending the full rights of parentage to LGBTQ+ families and families created via assisted reproduction.

The bill dismantles archaic legal barriers to basic parenting responsibilities for modern families, opening the door to legally attend and make decisions during medical appointments, manage a child’s finances, participate in educational decisions, and provide authorizations for a child’s travel.

“Ensuring that the Commonwealth’s laws reflect an evolving society, along with the implications of modern technology, is a key responsibility that we have as elected officials. By bolstering protections for children born through assisted reproduction, surrogacy, and to same-sex parents, we are doing just that,” said House Speaker Ronald J. Mariano (D-Quincy). “I want to thank Chairman Day, members of the conference committee, and our partners in the Senate for their continued commitment to ensuring that modern-day families are protected here in Massachusetts.”

“Today we are modernizing laws to match modern families across the Commonwealth,” said Senate President Karen E. Spilka (D-Ashland). “No matter what path you took to parenthood, today the Legislature has acted to make sure that in Massachusetts archaic beliefs and laws no longer stand in your way as a parent. I offer my sincere gratitude to Senator Cyr for his leadership of the committee, each conferee, and our partners in the House.”

Read more here.