A British court removed two boys, ages 11 and 14 from their 41 year old mother’s custody and placed them in the custody of their 43 year old father. Judge Laura Harris ruled that the mother had "significantly failed" the boys by her permissive parenting. She would sleep, use her Ipad or phone for hours at a time while her children would care for themselves. This caused issues for the children who were frequently late or would miss school. Additionally, mother was found to be systematically "poisoning" the children against their father.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10643643/Mother-loses-custody-battle-over-permissive-parenting-style.html
In California, similar to Judge Laura Harris in this case, courts will be reluctant to tell parents how to parent their children and will be tolerant of various parenting styles. If, however, the parenting is not in the best interest of the children or is causing the children harm, then courts will intervene. Also, "poisoning" or alienating the children against the other parent is also not in the best interest of the children and courts will tend to favor the parent they believe will foster the relationship between the children and the other parent.
Showing posts with label parents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parents. Show all posts
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Legal Parents
In June 2008, in Carson City, Nevada, partners Sha’Kayla St. Mary and Veronica Lynn Damon had a child. Damon’s egg was used with donor sperm. St. Mary carried the child. St. Mary was listed on the child’s birth certificate on the mother and a year later, she signed an affidavit naming Damon as the biological mother.
The mothers had a co-parenting agreement and broke up when the child was about a year. St. Mary petitioned for custodial rights. A lower court judge ruled that St. Mary had no biological or custody rights since she was only the surrogate and they refused to consider a joint parenting agreement both mothers signed before the child was born. The Nevada Supreme Court disagreed. The Court ruled that the joint parenting agreement was more than a surrogacy agreement and St. Mary assets that she is the legal mother of the child in addition to Damon, not instead of Damon. Nevada’s Parentage Act does not prevent a child from having two legal mothers.
http://www.ajc.com/news/ap/nevada/surrogate-mom-can-seek-child-custody/nbFSj/
In California, Jerry Brown just recently signed a bill that allows a child to have more than two legal parents. This bill is in response to the changing family structure and the increasing number of same sex couples having children. The bill is to allow a courts to recognize the roles of all parents and to not separate a child from a figure that he/she knows as a parent.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-brown-bills-parents-20131005,0,7226241.story
The mothers had a co-parenting agreement and broke up when the child was about a year. St. Mary petitioned for custodial rights. A lower court judge ruled that St. Mary had no biological or custody rights since she was only the surrogate and they refused to consider a joint parenting agreement both mothers signed before the child was born. The Nevada Supreme Court disagreed. The Court ruled that the joint parenting agreement was more than a surrogacy agreement and St. Mary assets that she is the legal mother of the child in addition to Damon, not instead of Damon. Nevada’s Parentage Act does not prevent a child from having two legal mothers.
http://www.ajc.com/news/ap/nevada/surrogate-mom-can-seek-child-custody/nbFSj/
In California, Jerry Brown just recently signed a bill that allows a child to have more than two legal parents. This bill is in response to the changing family structure and the increasing number of same sex couples having children. The bill is to allow a courts to recognize the roles of all parents and to not separate a child from a figure that he/she knows as a parent.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-brown-bills-parents-20131005,0,7226241.story
Friday, March 4, 2011
California Child Custody: What's Going On? Is It Broken? How?
"Believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear. "*
Last week, a Northern California newspaper published an extended piece, asserting, yet again, that the family law system is (quoting the cover headline) "helping pedophiles, batterers get child
custody".
While buried in the body of the piece was an acknowledgment that " it is impossible to say how common such cases are", that isn't exactly the same impression conveyed by the headline.
The same week, the Los Angeles Times ran a story regarding a psychiatrist/child custody evaluator in Los Angeles**. While that story was less obviously agenda-driven than the Northern California piece, it seemed short on well-verified facts, and long on "it is alleged, in documents filed with the court". Again, those authors implied that the problems that they referenced were systemic and pervasive. They offered no evidence for that implication.
There's little to offer.
The "studies" and "research" on the issues of the adequacy of the child custody/family court system in protecting children and victims of domestic violence, including those cited by outlets as reputable as Newsweek, are, if cited in support of any generalization about the system, are thin soup, perilously close to scientific junk.***
It may be that these problems are grossly under-reported, and systemic; my thirty-two years of practice makes me think otherwise, and leads me to conclude that the California system is actually quite child-centered, and victim-protective. I'm certainly unconvinced by the "studies", and by the information in the two articles. While I've railed about the lack of real objective information for nearly a decade, since the last such "scandal' erupted, the quality of the information has not yet noticeably improved.
The problems with the family law system are not, as far as I can tell, mostly the result of some system-wide bias or agenda; they're mostly from (a) the lack of adequate financial resources for the system to address these issues, and (b) the gross mis-allocation of resources within the judicial system. As I've said before, nobody ever successfully ran for statewide office in California on the platform: "I promise to spend more of your tax money on divorce court!"
* Ben Franklin, or E.A. Poe, or Marvin Gaye.
** Note that I have not provided links to the pieces above; they're here: "Helping" "Evaluator"
*** "That's not 'thin soup'. It's rat pee." Prof. Michael Shapiro.
"The plural of 'anecdotes' isn't 'data.' " Frank Kotsonis.
Last week, a Northern California newspaper published an extended piece, asserting, yet again, that the family law system is (quoting the cover headline) "helping pedophiles, batterers get child
custody".
While buried in the body of the piece was an acknowledgment that " it is impossible to say how common such cases are", that isn't exactly the same impression conveyed by the headline.
The same week, the Los Angeles Times ran a story regarding a psychiatrist/child custody evaluator in Los Angeles**. While that story was less obviously agenda-driven than the Northern California piece, it seemed short on well-verified facts, and long on "it is alleged, in documents filed with the court". Again, those authors implied that the problems that they referenced were systemic and pervasive. They offered no evidence for that implication.
There's little to offer.
The "studies" and "research" on the issues of the adequacy of the child custody/family court system in protecting children and victims of domestic violence, including those cited by outlets as reputable as Newsweek, are, if cited in support of any generalization about the system, are thin soup, perilously close to scientific junk.***
It may be that these problems are grossly under-reported, and systemic; my thirty-two years of practice makes me think otherwise, and leads me to conclude that the California system is actually quite child-centered, and victim-protective. I'm certainly unconvinced by the "studies", and by the information in the two articles. While I've railed about the lack of real objective information for nearly a decade, since the last such "scandal' erupted, the quality of the information has not yet noticeably improved.
The problems with the family law system are not, as far as I can tell, mostly the result of some system-wide bias or agenda; they're mostly from (a) the lack of adequate financial resources for the system to address these issues, and (b) the gross mis-allocation of resources within the judicial system. As I've said before, nobody ever successfully ran for statewide office in California on the platform: "I promise to spend more of your tax money on divorce court!"
* Ben Franklin, or E.A. Poe, or Marvin Gaye.
** Note that I have not provided links to the pieces above; they're here: "Helping" "Evaluator"
*** "That's not 'thin soup'. It's rat pee." Prof. Michael Shapiro.
"The plural of 'anecdotes' isn't 'data.' " Frank Kotsonis.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Teenagers, the State and Religion: do hard cases make bad law?
Rifqa Bary, who's seventeen, ran away from her parents in Columbus, Ohio, and turned up in Orlando, Florida, under the "care"of a pastor whom she met over the internet. The pastor held a press conference in which Rifqa announced, under the pastor's eye (or more exactly, under his arm) that she had run away because she had converted to Christianity, and that she was afraid that her Muslim parents would either kill her, or "send her back" to Sri Lanka, from where the family had come in the last decade, and that she would be killed there by Dad's family as an "honor killing".
Working only from the newspaper accounts, a number of things immediately struck me as troubling: first, how do you "send" a seventeen-year-old on a series of overseas flights against her will, if you are evidently unable to keep her from walking out of the house, hitchhiking to a bus station, and taking a Greyhound bus to Florida? Rifqa doesn't seem to have been kept in purdah; she apparently attended public school, where she participated in cheer-leading and tumbling, and had a Myspace page. Although she'd apparently converted a while ago, she hadn't reported her fears to anyone she dealt with in Ohio.
Even if she really was legitimately afraid of Dad, why the run across several states? Last time I looked, the city of Columbus, Ohio (where I went to school, and where my son goes to school now) was not an Islamic republic under Sharia law; it's the state Capitol. Thenotable religious fanatics in Columbus are the ones who worship at the altar of Brutus Buckeye..
What dog does Florida have in this fight, and does Florida have enough extra resources in their "social safety net" that they, rather than Ohio, should be dealing with this? (Florida has placed her in foster care in Florida pending more investigation.)
The bigger question, however, is, absent a real plausible showing of danger, what's the state's job in intervening between teenagers and their parents when a minor child, even a 17 year old, says "I've decided X" and one or both parents say "You're a minor, and I'm still supporting you. I say 'Not X, Y!', and as long as you're a minor, you're under my legal control."
Except in unusual cases, the state doesn't intervene in these disputes in intact families. Where the PARENTS disagree, and are going through a divorce, or a custody dispute, the State is much more willing to say that one parent's (or both parents') choices are not in the child's best interest, and is more willing to intervene.
Back in the 1970's, a group of Wisconsin Amish parents objected to the mandatory school attendance laws in effect at the time, and asserted that it interfered with their, and their children's, rights of free exercise of religion. The Supreme Court, in Yoder, agreed. Justice Douglas, always a trouble-maker, raised a thorny question: what's the State to do when a seventeen-year-old, who's clearly a "minor child' for some purposes, but a "person" under the Bill of Rights, says "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise!" to one or both parents?
Can I say to my child "You'll go to the church [mosque, temple, Kingdom Hall] I say you go to, or you don't get [a driver's license/an I-phone/to go out Friday night/me to pay for college]"? Short of a threat of physical harm, when is it, and when isn't it, the State's business?
Working only from the newspaper accounts, a number of things immediately struck me as troubling: first, how do you "send" a seventeen-year-old on a series of overseas flights against her will, if you are evidently unable to keep her from walking out of the house, hitchhiking to a bus station, and taking a Greyhound bus to Florida? Rifqa doesn't seem to have been kept in purdah; she apparently attended public school, where she participated in cheer-leading and tumbling, and had a Myspace page. Although she'd apparently converted a while ago, she hadn't reported her fears to anyone she dealt with in Ohio.
Even if she really was legitimately afraid of Dad, why the run across several states? Last time I looked, the city of Columbus, Ohio (where I went to school, and where my son goes to school now) was not an Islamic republic under Sharia law; it's the state Capitol. Thenotable religious fanatics in Columbus are the ones who worship at the altar of Brutus Buckeye..
What dog does Florida have in this fight, and does Florida have enough extra resources in their "social safety net" that they, rather than Ohio, should be dealing with this? (Florida has placed her in foster care in Florida pending more investigation.)
The bigger question, however, is, absent a real plausible showing of danger, what's the state's job in intervening between teenagers and their parents when a minor child, even a 17 year old, says "I've decided X" and one or both parents say "You're a minor, and I'm still supporting you. I say 'Not X, Y!', and as long as you're a minor, you're under my legal control."
Except in unusual cases, the state doesn't intervene in these disputes in intact families. Where the PARENTS disagree, and are going through a divorce, or a custody dispute, the State is much more willing to say that one parent's (or both parents') choices are not in the child's best interest, and is more willing to intervene.
Back in the 1970's, a group of Wisconsin Amish parents objected to the mandatory school attendance laws in effect at the time, and asserted that it interfered with their, and their children's, rights of free exercise of religion. The Supreme Court, in Yoder, agreed. Justice Douglas, always a trouble-maker, raised a thorny question: what's the State to do when a seventeen-year-old, who's clearly a "minor child' for some purposes, but a "person" under the Bill of Rights, says "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise!" to one or both parents?
Can I say to my child "You'll go to the church [mosque, temple, Kingdom Hall] I say you go to, or you don't get [a driver's license/an I-phone/to go out Friday night/me to pay for college]"? Short of a threat of physical harm, when is it, and when isn't it, the State's business?
Friday, March 13, 2009
Naming Your Children: Just Because You Have The Right to Do Something , Doesn't Always Make It a Good Idea...
It appears that at least for the moment, the New Jersey court will not be restoring full custody of little Adolf Hitler Campbell, and his siblings, Joyce Lynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell (there's some reason to think that ol' Honszlynn's middle name was supposed to be "Himmler") to their parents.
These would be the parents who put their children into the public eye by getting into, and then publicizing, a dispute with a local grocery store arising from the store bakery's refusal of their patronage for the making of a swastika-bedecked cake, reading "Happy Birthday, Adolph Hitler!" for little A.H.'s third birthday.
These would be the parents who put their children into the public eye by getting into, and then publicizing, a dispute with a local grocery store arising from the store bakery's refusal of their patronage for the making of a swastika-bedecked cake, reading "Happy Birthday, Adolph Hitler!" for little A.H.'s third birthday.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Child Support in California: Never "Locked In"
A California appeals court has now come a step closer to saying that parents simply can't ever make a binding agreement to "lock in" an amount of child support, regardless of changes in parents' fortunes. As long as everyone agrees that an amount of support is correct, there's no problem, but as soon as someone has a change of heart an agreement that child support can never be modified downward is of no more effect than an agreement to cap its modification upward.
This wasn't as comforting to the paying Dad requesting the modification as it might have been, since the same court also affirmed the trial court's considering a continuous stream of cash "gift" or "loan" payments from his mother, (some of which Dad then paid back to his mother as rent) in setting the new amount of support Dad was to pay.
This decision bookends neatly with a series of California decisions which seem to suggest that once there's been a court order for the payment of child support, that money remains due and payable, and the parties likewise can't make a binding agreement waiving any payment, or accepting a reduced amount, for any payment due.
Marriage of Alter 2/26/09
This wasn't as comforting to the paying Dad requesting the modification as it might have been, since the same court also affirmed the trial court's considering a continuous stream of cash "gift" or "loan" payments from his mother, (some of which Dad then paid back to his mother as rent) in setting the new amount of support Dad was to pay.
This decision bookends neatly with a series of California decisions which seem to suggest that once there's been a court order for the payment of child support, that money remains due and payable, and the parties likewise can't make a binding agreement waiving any payment, or accepting a reduced amount, for any payment due.
Marriage of Alter 2/26/09
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
The Parenting Debate, times eight (or fourteen)
OK, although I've got an opinion about the woman with the IVF octuplets, plus six other kids (as does everyone else, apparently) I'm keeping it to myself. I'm not only not going to call any government agencies to "report Mom to the authorities", I won't debate about what "Octo-Mom" * should or shouldn't have done. I will talk, or at least raise annoying questions, about why this set of events is prompting public debate, how that debate's being conducted, and what else should be being debated.
How is the public busy-bodying and involvement of celebrity lawyers and therapists, and the work of Mom's (now former) public relations firm/agent in brokering offers for exclusive interview rights, morally different from the offer to pay Mom money to star in a porn movie? Would Mom's being in the porn movie in some ways be less morally objectionable than, say, putting the kids in a "reality show", or a series of commercials, once they're out of the NICU? Is it, after all, one thing to sell yourself, and something different to essentially sell (or lease) your kids?
If I culled through all the cases on calendar at our support enforcement court departments, in any given week, I could probably turn up at least one guy who has fathered fourteen children, all still minors, although probably it would turn out to have been with four (or five or six) different women. I've watched support enforcement attorneys, and the judge, wrestle with the complex math of recursively recalculating support for some guys like that. Why isn't my not-so-hypothetical Mr. Fertile Deadbeat Defendant on TV?
For that matter, where's and who's Octo-daddy? The information I've seen to date is that Octo-daddy was not an anonymous donor, and Octo-Mom was not married to anyone else at the time. Octo-daddy may be on the hook for one heck of a large medical bill, and a really interesting amount of child support going forward maybe he should be looking for that TV deal?
We're at a point in our country's economic downturn where the availability of basic child health care is a serious concern for a growing number of parents. Should there be some restriction on access to "assisted reproductive techology" and fertility treatments, to those who meet some sort of means test, so that we're not spending health-care dollars to assure the need to spend more health-care dollars? If we do that, and the "means" go away after the fact (let's say someone was a banker, broker or a motor company exec) what happens to the kids? Should there be across-the-board limitation of the expenditure of financial medical resources to enable someone to have her or his seventh or eighth child, or as long as someone piles up the dollars on the counter, should we facilitate someone's, anyone's having as many children as they want?
RFG-S
* Wasn't that a Spiderman bad guy?
How is the public busy-bodying and involvement of celebrity lawyers and therapists, and the work of Mom's (now former) public relations firm/agent in brokering offers for exclusive interview rights, morally different from the offer to pay Mom money to star in a porn movie? Would Mom's being in the porn movie in some ways be less morally objectionable than, say, putting the kids in a "reality show", or a series of commercials, once they're out of the NICU? Is it, after all, one thing to sell yourself, and something different to essentially sell (or lease) your kids?
If I culled through all the cases on calendar at our support enforcement court departments, in any given week, I could probably turn up at least one guy who has fathered fourteen children, all still minors, although probably it would turn out to have been with four (or five or six) different women. I've watched support enforcement attorneys, and the judge, wrestle with the complex math of recursively recalculating support for some guys like that. Why isn't my not-so-hypothetical Mr. Fertile Deadbeat Defendant on TV?
For that matter, where's and who's Octo-daddy? The information I've seen to date is that Octo-daddy was not an anonymous donor, and Octo-Mom was not married to anyone else at the time. Octo-daddy may be on the hook for one heck of a large medical bill, and a really interesting amount of child support going forward maybe he should be looking for that TV deal?
We're at a point in our country's economic downturn where the availability of basic child health care is a serious concern for a growing number of parents. Should there be some restriction on access to "assisted reproductive techology" and fertility treatments, to those who meet some sort of means test, so that we're not spending health-care dollars to assure the need to spend more health-care dollars? If we do that, and the "means" go away after the fact (let's say someone was a banker, broker or a motor company exec) what happens to the kids? Should there be across-the-board limitation of the expenditure of financial medical resources to enable someone to have her or his seventh or eighth child, or as long as someone piles up the dollars on the counter, should we facilitate someone's, anyone's having as many children as they want?
RFG-S
* Wasn't that a Spiderman bad guy?
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