DOMA Donesky! What Does This Mean For "Domestic Partners" and the "Civilly United"?

I'm still digesting the SCOTUS' decisions in the Federal DOMA and California Prop. 8 cases.  The short take-away is that it is probable (though I will never say certain) that the thousand-plus references to the rights/obligations of "spouses",  in Federal laws and regulations, will now include same-sex couples who are "spouses" under the laws of the state in which they contracted a "marriage".   It is not yet clear is whether or not those folks who have a state-recognized relationship which is called something other than "marriage" will fall within that umbrella.

All of You: Time to Pester Your Elected Representatives

Those of you who've followed this blog for more than a post or two have long since tired of my, and others' yelling about the fact that trial courts, and particularly family law trial courts, have been getting a raw deal in terms of funding.  Now, it's official.

An Ad Hoc Fix of the Interstate Same-Sex Divorce Problem

has now been signed into law.

Another Child Custody and Religion Case

...in which nobody seemed to raise the Constitutional issues. This time, it's Georgia; by agreement, Mom was to have the authority to make decisions about child's religious training and upbringing. Mom wanted to give child Jewish religious training and practice, and Dad had, it appears, originally agreed. Then, it appears, Dad changed his mind, and (as is sometimes the case in these sorts of cases) also began acting like sort of, well, a jerk.

The Court warned Dad that he risked being found in contempt, and provided the following admonition as to how to "purge" the contempt, from which one might reasonably infer additional details of Dad's behavior:

(a) Mr. Greene may not indoctrinate the child in a manner which promotes the child's alienation from Judaism.

(b) Mr. Greene shall not take the child to church (whether to church services or Sunday School or church education programs); nor engage the child in prayer or Bible study if it promotes rejection rather than acceptance, of the child's . . . Jewish self-identity.

(c) Mr. Greene shall not share his religious beliefs with the child if those beliefs cause the child emotional distress or worry about the child's mother or the child herself. Thus, for example, Mr. Greene may have pictures of Jesus Christ hanging on the walls of his residence. But, Mr. Greene may not take the child to religious services where they receive the message that adults or children who do not accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior are destined to burn in hell. Further, he may not pray Christian prayers with the child, play Christian songs with the child present, read the Bible to the child or in any way attempt to indoctrinate the child into the Christian Faith.

(d) Neither party is to talk negatively or derogatory about the other party's religion in the presence of the child, and there shall be no derogatory comments that could be construed as anti-Semitic of any nature, meaning Mr. Greene shall no longer refer to Ms. Greene's parents, who are Jewish, by any numbers or anything similar to that.

Mr. Greene shall ensure that these rules are followed by persons whom he allows the child to be in the presence of or have contact with. No secondary person shall teach or read the Bible to the child, or pray any Christian prayers, or otherwise attempt to indoctrinate the child into the Christian faith.

Even assuming that Dad was doing the obnoxious stuff we can infer from the details, why didn't making any of this order trouble the judge?

Kentucky Nixes Arbitration in Family Law, As, Among Other Things, Classist?

The Kentucky Court of Appeals has held that an agreement to submit all or a portion of a family law dispute to binding arbitration, without independent review by a sitting "real" judge, is an impermissible delegation of the court's power.

Among the more notable comments the court made, however, was the following, made without any citation of further authority:

Notwithstanding that the parties agreed to pay the arbitrator fees, what is most distressing about this scenario is that arbitration is obviously not a viable alternative or available to parties with lower incomes who can not afford to pay an arbitrator the sum of $225 per hour. This effectively creates a class system within Jefferson Family Court proceedings where more affluent individuals have the opportunity to pay for a “private judge” to conduct their proceedings – while
parties of lesser means and income must have their case heard by constitutionally elected judges in perhaps a less expeditious time frame.

Regardless of how noble the intent of utilizing arbitration in divorce proceedings, such a system that permits affluent individuals the opportunity to expedite the disposition of their domestic
relations cases in family court that is otherwise unavailable or cost prohibitive to persons of lesser incomes, appears to be both unconscionable and unconstitutional on its face, in our opinion.

Now I know, from reading the rest of the opinion, that commercial arbitration is permissible in Kentucky, and I'll bet that, whether they know it or not, Kentucky bank customers, HMO patients, customers of real estate brokers, and lots of other folks have entered into arbitration agreements regarding the services of those providers, just like their California cousins.

I also know that there are a significant number of folks in Kentucky who end up going to family court without a lawyer, because they can't afford to hire a lawyer. I'll also guess that in general, they don't do as good a job in presenting their cases as attorneys would have done for them.

So, seems to me, there's a "class system" in place already. It also seems to me that if litigant couples have the resources and the mutual willingness to take their cases "out of the system" to an arbitrator, mediator, psychologist, clergyperson, or even a guy who'll adjudicate their dispute using a Ouija Board, this actually works to free up scarce judicial system resources for everyone else.

Am I missing something?

A tip of the big grey fedora to Diana L. Skaggs of Kentucky for the pointer.

Custody and Religion, Again.

A Chicago court may be about to jail (link repaired, see also here and here ) a law student/parent for taking his child to church in what seems, from the interview he gave, to be a clear and deliberate violation of a court order.

While a California court would clearly not make a similar order, the manner in which the issue arose here raises a couple of interesting questions:

To what extent can/should a court in a custody case consider, or attempt to govern, conduct of a parent which, without context, is pretty clearly within that parent's core Constitutional rights (whether it's this case, or publishing the details of the custody litigation on a blog, or saying critical things in a public forum about the other parent, or the parent who named his kid "Adolph Hitler") but is actually done in a manner which is clearly calculated to have an impact on the other parent, or at least is reasonably foreseeable to have a substantially unfavorable impact on the child?

You'll note, if you read the story, that Mr. Reyes took his three-year-old daughter to church with a television news crew in tow.

Is parental selfishness, or even plain bone-headedness or vindictiveness, entitled to additional protection if it occurs in the context of parent's exercise of a protected constitutional right?