After a hiatus, I'm accumulated enough stuff so that I feel obliged to get some posts up.
Within a week after the McCourts thought they'd worked an over-all settlement, MLB has said "Not so fast..."
...and this just in:
"Khloe Kardashian thinks 'everybody needs a prenup.' In an interview ... ... the 26-year-old defended her recently engaged sister Kim's shocking premarital agreement. 'We have a prenup,' she said, standing alongside hubby Lamar Odom. 'Do you know what kind of day and age this is? Everybody needs a prenup. I don't care if you make five dollars or five million dollars, you're protecting yourself… People are crazy, you never know.'."
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
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.
Monday, January 31, 2011
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.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
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.
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.
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