Family Law And Religion, Again

The first defendant has entered a Federal guilty plea in the "extort a divorce"  ("get a get"?) case in New York. David Hellman, a New York personal trainer, succumbed to a Federal sting operation, and traveled across a state line (or more specifically, across the GW bridge) to meet with some co-conspirators, and an FBI undercover agent, posing as the brother of a soon-to-be-ex-wife who needed her soon-to-be-ex-husband "convinced" to grant her a get, a religious divorce. 

A tip o' the kippah to Howard Friedman at Religion Clause.

Child Custody and Religion, Pre-Holiday Edition

Can you be held in contempt for baptizing your child, when you've previously agreed with your divorced spouse that you won't make "major religious decisions" for your children without agreement?   Maybe.  

Thanks and a tip of the pre-Good Friday/Passover hat to Religion Clause.

Family Law and Religion: Religious Divorce

It's not every day that someone's divorce results in protests to the staff of the House Ways and Means Committee. Maryland, unlike New York, apparently does not have a legal mechanism by which recalcitrant divorcing husbands can be directly coerced into granting their observant ex-wives religious divorces, so it appears the judge may have fashioned his own remedy. While I have some serious doubts regarding the Federal constitutionality of the New York get statute, I also understand the civil law effects, internationally, of the absence of a get.

Child Custody and Religion: The Hits Keep Coming, Folks!

An interesting case about medical decisions in child custody cases, with a religious issue overlaid on top of it. A judge, presented with giving either Dad, (who wanted child vaccinated) or Mom (who wanted the child NOT vaccinated, for ostensibly religious reasons) the decision-making authority to over-ride the other parent's preference, chooses Dad's view.

Query whether the outcome would have been the same had Mom's articulation of the religious basis for her objection been clearer, or if it had originated in a more "organized religion".

Hat tips to Doc Volokh and Howard Friedman for the pointer.

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?

Custody and Religion Part 4: Something in the Water in Chicago?

I won't really get incensed (pun intended) until I read a clearer and more definitive description of the facts and order in the underlying case, but a recent report suggests that Chicago judges are willing to make intrusive orders not only against divorced parents, but against new step-parents, in regard to issues of religious upbringing, seemingly pretty much ignoring that stuff about "establishment of religion" it mentions in my pocket Constitution.

. . .and another hat tip (diamond-crown two-tone straw) to Howard Friedman at Religion Clause for the pointer.

Custody and Religion, Part 3

An Illinois trial judge has modified the earlier order noted below and decided that, although Dad in the case appears to have engaged in fairly self-centered and obnoxious behavior in regard to parenting issues, (see pages 7 and 8 of the decision) Dad's taking his daughter to church during his custodial time is within his Constitutional rights, in the absence of some showing of true detriment to his child.

A tip of the brown teardrop-crown (Meyer the Hatter, New Orleans) to Religion Clause 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?