Custody Concerns

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 is a topic for another day).

The New York Times reports that mother Trisha Conlon was thwarted in her efforts to obtain a custody order keeping her 13 and 14-year-old boys out of the home of her ex-husband and his current wife Kristine.  Why did Ms. Conlon request this order?  Because the current wife, Kristine Cushing, killed the two daughters she had with the father (and Trisha’s ex-husband), John Cushing Jr.  The killings occurred in 1991.  Mrs. Cushing was found not guilty by reason of insanity allegedly caused by an adverse reaction to Prozac.  She was hospitalized in a mental facility for four years, and was monitored for almost ten years after that.  In 2005, the state of California gave her an unconditional release.

Ms. Conlon learned that her boys were in the same household with Mrs. Cushing in 2007, but her ex said not to worry, he and Mrs. Cushing were splitting up.  They didn’t.  She recently discovered (with the help of a lawyer and a private investigator) that the boys have been in the home with Mrs. Cushing since 2008 – hence her request for a new custody order.

The Court Commissioner deciding the case declined to alter the existing order, which places one boy with each parent during the school year, and keeps them together in one or the other household for holidays and vacations.  The Commissioner’s reasoning was that, since the boys had been spending time with Mrs. Cushing since 2007 (even though their mother did not know of it), there is not now any significant change in circumstances that would warrant a change in physical placement.  Mrs. Conlon is appealing the decision.

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

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 system responded to the concerns quite differently. On the Native American side, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 gave preference to Native Americans in custody contests over Native American children and undercut state-court jurisdiction over such proceedings in favor of tribal courts. But, on the African American side, the Howard M. Metzenbaum Multiethnic Placement Act has established a “color-blind” standard for adoptions. David observes, “Race is not supposed to be a consideration when whites seek to adopt African American children, and it has become increasingly common for whites to ‘adopt across race.’” (9)

What explains the different legal treatment of the two types of transracial adoption? David suggests two answers. The “formal” answer “involves the unique status of Native Americans under the law of the United States,” which regards tribes as sovereign nations of sorts. But a “more fundamental explanation” may have something to do with the unique force of racist attitudes towards African Americans and related negative beliefs regarding their parenting abilities.

David’s paper is entitled “Transracial Adoption: The Adoption of Native American and African American Children by Whites.”

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

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 of civil contempt in these cases is predicated on nonpayment when the defendant is financially capable of paying, and a defendant can always avoid jail time by either paying the amount owed, or by showing that he is incapable of paying.  Turner had been ordered to pay $51.73 per week for the support of his child and had been sentenced to jail time on several previous occasions for failure to pay.  He was not represented by counsel at the hearing where he received a 12-month sentence, which he served in its entirety.  At the hearing in question, the judge sentenced Turner without making an express finding that Turner was financially capable of paying the support owed.  On appeal, Turner argued that the US Constitution entitled him to counsel at his hearing because, although the contempt proceeding is civil in nature, the potential for incarceration triggered a Due Process Clause-based right to be represented.  Although Supreme Court cases have consistently found that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel in criminal cases does not apply to civil cases (not even civil contempt cases), there was a split in the circuits over whether a defendant has a right to counsel under the Due Process clause in civil contempt proceedings enforcing child support orders.

Here, the Court held that “where as here the custodial parent (entitled to receive the support) is unrepresented by counsel, the State need not provide counsel to the noncustodial parent (required to provide the support).”  However, the Court added the caveat that “the State must nonetheless have in place alternative procedures that assure a fundamentally fair determination of the critical incarceration-related question, whether the supporting parent is able to comply with the support order.”  Since Turner did not receive clear notice that his ability to pay – or not – was crucial in deciding whether he would be jailed, and since the court did not make an express finding that Turner was able to pay, his incarceration was found to have violated the Due Process Clause, and his case was remanded.  The dissent agreed that there should be no right to counsel in civil contempt cases for nonpayment of child support, but would not have vacated the state court judgment on the grounds that there were not sufficient procedural safeguards to protect Turner.

My colleagues who specialize in constitutional law, criminal law and sentencing will doubtless have other insights about this case.  Here, I would like to offer just a few observations from a family law perspective.

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