Feb

1

The Many Faces of Adoption

Posted by: | February 1, 2012 | Leave a Comment

Recent news reports describe a new twist in adoption practice. According to the reports John Goodman, a wealthy Florida man, has adopted his 42 year old girlfriend, apparently in an attempt to protect some of his assets against possible losses in a wrongful death action filed against him. Goodman is alleged to have been drunk at the [...]

Print Friendly

Sep

6

Your Children’s Ultimate Weapon: Suing You for Emotional Distress?

Posted by: | September 6, 2011 | Leave a Comment

In what surely must be one of those “truth is stranger than fiction” stories comes the news that two siblings, one 20 and one 23, sued their mother for intentional infliction of emotional distress from “bad mothering.” In 2009, Steven Miner II and his sister Kathryn Miner sued their mother, Kimberly Garrity, for emotional distress due [...]

Print Friendly

Aug

29

Divorce Is for the Masses

Posted by: | August 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Americans continue to divorce at a high rate, but divorce rates have gotten smaller in recent years.  This is especially true for the professional/managerial class.  According to a study by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, only 11% of college-educated Americans are now divorcing within the first 10 years of marriage, compared [...]

Print Friendly

Aug

25

Does Marijuana Possession Equal Child Neglect?

Posted by: | August 25, 2011 | 2 Comments

According to a recent NewYork Times article, many New York parents who have been caught with marijuana or who have admitted using it have found themselves charged with child neglect and have even, in some cases, lost custody of their children.  In many of these cases, the amounts of marijuana in question have been too [...]

Print Friendly

Aug

10

When the Witness Woofs

Posted by: | August 10, 2011 | Leave a Comment

When a New York teenager had to testify against her father, claiming he raped and impregnated her, she shared the witness box with a helper.  According to The New York Times, that helper was Rosie, a specially trained golden retriever who comforts and encourages traumatized or stressed individuals.  Rosie has a highly developed sense of [...]

Print Friendly

Aug

5

Custody Concerns

Posted by: | August 5, 2011 | 1 Comment

A custody dispute that has recently been in the national news illustrates the convoluted nature of custody law which has led in this particular case to a very troubling outcome.  (I submit that this case is also Exhibit A as to why the public has such a bad impression of law and lawyers, but that [...]

Print Friendly

Aug

2

Adoption Across Race: Disparate Treatment of Native Americans and African Americans

Posted by: | August 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment

David Papke has a new paper on SSRN that contrasts the laws governing the adoption of Native American and African American children by whites. Once rare in this country, “transracial” adoptions became common over the latter decades of the twentieth-century. Such adoptions sparked concerns within both Native American and African American communities, but the legal [...]

Print Friendly

Jun

22

Child Support, Contempt of Court, and (Maybe) Lawyers

Posted by: | June 22, 2011 | 2 Comments

This week, the US Supreme Court handed down a decision in Turner v. Rogers, a case involving a non-custodial parent who was jailed for nonpayment of child support.  Failure to pay child support is a violation of a court order to pay, and is thus handled as a civil contempt of court case.  A finding [...]

Print Friendly

May

24

The Sins of the Children Visited – This Time – on Their Parents

Posted by: | May 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment

What to do about children who fail in school, or who simply fail to attend school at all? Efforts in recent years have focused on the schools themselves and on the teachers, and there have been initiatives to test children for performance in key areas and punish schools or teachers in underperforming schools. A recent [...]

Print Friendly

Apr

10

Law Gone Wrong: Wisconsin’s Spousal Maintenance Statute

Posted by: | April 10, 2011 | 2 Comments

This is the fourth post in an occasional series entitled “Law Gone Wrong.”  The editors of the Faculty Blog invited Law School faculty to share their thoughts on misguided statutes, disastrous judicial decisions, and other examples where the law has gone wrong (and needs to be nudged back on course).  Today’s contribution is from Professor Judith [...]

Print Friendly

Apr

6

Say It Ain’t So

Posted by: | April 6, 2011 | 1 Comment

We like to think that child abusers and child killers are monsters who are easily identifiable and, even more importantly, different from the rest of us “normal” people.  A recent news story in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reminds us that the reality is more complicated.  The alleged crime is sadly familiar: a young man was arrested [...]

Print Friendly

Mar

25

Law Gone Wrong: Adoption in the Context of Same-Sex Relationships

Posted by: | March 25, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Today’s post is the first in an occasional series entitled “Law Gone Wrong.”  The editors of the Faculty Blog invited Law School faculty to share their thoughts on misguided statutes, disastrous judicial decisions, and other examples where the law has gone wrong (and needs to be nudged back on course).  First up is Professor David [...]

Print Friendly

keep looking »