General legal information furnished as a service of Fort Lauderdale / West Palm Beach family law attorney Janet Langjahr
A father has not seen his son for more than a year.
The boy’s mother took the boy on a vacation to India.
And never returned.
India is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. And India does not view child abduction as a crime.
As a result, India law enforcement reportedly will not act in cases such as this father’s.
As his last resort, the father has sought the aid of India’s apex child’s rights council because, he argues, his son has been denied contact with his father. He has also contacted the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
The boy in this case is a US citizen, and lived in the US for years prior to his abduction. Even under Indian law, his case should be heard in the US.
But …
Read more in this Telegraph - Calcutta article: NRI dads fight for ‘abducted’ children.
About half of American marriages end in divorce.
But they tend to last a bit longer today (8 years) than in the past (7 years).
Teen marriages, the most susceptible to failure, have declined.
Most couples are tending to marry a bit later in life.
About two-thirds of all American breakups are initiated by the wife.
Couples who are very demonstratively affectionate in public settings are most likely headed for trouble.
Modern divorces can be nasty and expensive.
One state stands out in American history as “divorce capital of the nation” around the turn of the 20th century: South Dakota.
At one point, the state’s residency requirement was just three months and several different grounds for divorce were available. In an era when residency was typically one year and the only ground was adultery.
Examples of grounds for which divorce was granted in the South Dakota of that era include:
For reasons like the above, South Dakota attracted unhappy wealthy couples from around the nation, who were in search of a quick, private divorce.
More than six thousand divorces were entered over a twenty year span. Two-thirds of them for people from out of state.
The divorce industry spurred the local real estate market, because couples needed a local home to establish residency. And contributed to relatively high local income.
To commemorate South Dakota’s historic distinction, the Minnehaha County Historical Society would like to erect a marker in Sioux Falls.
Read more in this KXMC TV Minot [SD] News article: Marker would recognize “divorce capital” and this Rapid City [SD] Journal article: Sioux Falls: Divorce capital of the world.
Last month I posted Canada to Enforce Premarital Agreements Crossing into Religious Issues.
In that case, the Canadian Supreme Court ordered a man to pay his ex-wife nearly $50,ooo for making her wait 15 years for a religious divorce - in violation of their prenuptial agreement.
The Canadian high Court based its ruling both on the contract and a Canadian statute that penalizes spouses who hold up religious divorces.
Now the ex-husband is seeking an appeal to challenge the statute as interfering with freedom of religion and as being discriminatory, because he argues that it targets Jews.
It is anticipated that the Canadian Supreme Court will decline to hear the appeal, possibly because the ruling was supported on contract grounds independent of the challenged statute.
Read more in this Montreal Gazette article: Man challenges divorce law.
Hawaii, which has a poor track record of collecting delinquent child support, has decided to crack down on deadbeat noncustodial parents.
The state has hired a paralegal and an investigator and is currently building and prosecuting misdemeanor and felony cases for chronic nonpayment of child support with insufficient justification.
The crackdown targets those significantly in arrears and who are well able to meet their legal obligation.
The new measures are the talk of Hawaii and are in fact motivating noncustodial parents to make payments toward their support obligation.
Prior to the crackdown, only a handful of cases were prosecuted in the last quarter of a century, even though the law permitted such prosecutions.
This new initiative is funded by a federal grant of funds.
Read more in this Honolulu Advertiser article: Indictments rattle deadbeat parents.
The family court’s mission is to make child custody determinations based on the best interests of the child. But some aspects of child rearing are not black and white and, arguably, not purely parenting decisions.
Take religion. An informal case survey suggests that custody battles are on the rise and that religion is increasingly the issue sparking the custody dispute.
How should the Family Court take these differences into account in custody awards? Which factors should tip the balance which way?
Free exercise of religion is constitutionally protected. This may cause judges to shy away from preferring either parent based on that parent’s exercise of religion.
But both choice of religion and degree of devotion impact on lifestyle of the child. And a child’s lifestyle is very much a parenting matter which is a legitimate concern of the Family Court.
Sampling of tough issues addressed in some recent cases:
According to the survey, judges are as likely to favor the religious parent as the secular parent.
Read more in this New York Times article: Religion Joins Custody Cases, to Judges’ Unease.
Here in South Florida, we have a lot of unmarried senior couples, in “second-time around” relationships, cohabiting with each other. The reasons for not remarrying vary.
Although Florida is not a common law marriage state, bare cohabiting can leave some important things up in the air - or up to a judge. A cohabitation agreement may avoid either outcome and facilitate clarity and control.
The agreement can set out household financial arrangements and expectations in the event of death or breakup.
The agreement, with companion documents, can give a cohabitant medical decision-making authority they would not otherwise have.
The agreement, with companion documents, can give the right to manage business / financial affairs of the cohabitant in the event the cohabitant is unable to do so.
The agreement, with companion documents, can provide for disposition of part or all of an estate to a cohabitant.
Little is automatic for an unmarried couple and extra effort may be required to “take care of” the surviving cohabitant - if that is the intention.
A cohabitation agreement is a starting point toward that goal, but not the ending point.
Although it is not specfic to Florida, more can be read in this ElderLawAnswers’ article - Cohabiting Seniors: Protect Your Rights.
Florida Husband (former attorney) ordered to pay alimony.
Ex-Wife diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Ex-Husband reportedly stops paying alimony.
Upon requests for payment, ex-Husband allegedly asked “aren’t you dead yet?”
Ex-wife needs alimony for medicine, housing, etc.
Ex-wife reportedly tried to move the case closer due to health issues. Judge allegedly refused.
An attorney has now offered to help ex-wife without charge.
The reader is left to wonder why an income deduction wage garnishing order was not entered previously.
Sadly, enforcement remains the Achilles Heel of the legal system for far too many dependent former spouses and children. Even those who aren’t dying of cancer.
Read more in this Tampa Bays WTSP-TV 10 news article: Ex-husband stops alimony payments for terminal cancer patient.
A Tennessee husband was just granted a divorce and shared custody of his kids under unusual circumstances. His wife was not present.
She, allegedly struggling with a drinking problem, had an affair with her 17 year old student, after having another affair with a woman. Her own family described her as “troubled”.
She would reportedly lock herself in her bathroom and drink, go into rages against her husband and even her children, eventually abusing one of her kids for revealing details of her affair.
The husband is charged with killing the teenager involved in the affair.
The wife is said to have absconded with their children months ago.
The Tennessee court has appointed an attorney ad litem and a guardian ad litem to search for and make recommendations for the best interests of the couple’s boys.
Every divorce is unique. And some are more complicated than others.
And some cases put judges in the unenviable position of having to make very difficult decisions.
Read more in these Knoxville News Sentinel articles: McLean granted divorce - Judge orders attorney to search for children of slaying suspect and Judge grants McLean divorce, orders search for children.
One hundred and one Florida women died of it in the first six months of 2007.
Domestic violence.
About forty-five of the women fleeing it and sixty-five of their children in central Florida end up in a shelter for safety. One Orlando shelter is building a children’s after-care center, a school and a daycare center.
The first step to safety may be getting to a shelter. (If an abuser discovers their location and comes, he or she faces stiff legal penalties.) Registration can be anonymous.
Domestic violence knows no socioeconomic boundaries. A shelter’s CEO describes how the husband of a board president of a girl’s school, a wealthy woman, and her daughter were murdered by the woman’s husband.
Read more in this Orlando Sentinel article: Sheltering women in crisis.
French-Israeli father. Turkish mother.
Child had triple citizenship, but was born and raised in Israel.
Mother and child depart for Turkey to spend a holiday with Mother’s parents in 2004.
And stay there. Permanently.
An Israeli court promptly orders the return of the child to Israel under the Hague Convention in the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Both Turkey and Israel are parties to the Hague Convention.
The Turkish courts agreed with the Israeli courts and upheld consistent orders through two levels of appeals.
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg also agreed with the Israeli courts.
But the little girl remains in Turkey.
For months, the father had no contact with his child.
Then, he was allowed biweekly visits for a time.
But the little girl remains in Turkey.
This where both involved countries are members of the Hague Convention.
Read more in this Turkish Today’s Zaman article: [FAMILY TRAGEDY] From Tel Aviv to İstanbul: One man’s search for his daughter.
A four year old Pennsylvania girl is the subject of an order awarding joint, rotating custody of her. The child will move from one custodian to another every seven days.
Not typical, but not unheard of either.
What is unusual is who the alternating custodians are: the child’s two maternal grandmothers.
The little girl’s father murdered her mother and then himself in the middle of their own custody battle, leaving the child an orphan.
The grandmothers settled on this custody arrangement in the middle of a custody trial. They also agreed that one grandfather, a Florida resident, would have visitation rights and be permitted to participate in the little girl’s therapy sessions.
The arrangement may need to be modified when the child starts school in a year. But, at least until that time, the two grandmothers share parental responsibility.
Read more in this Lockhaven [PA] Express article: Joint custody of 4-year-old to continue.
An Oregon man is building up a criminal record. And that is putting the brakes on his divorce.
Over the last eight years since his divorce case was filed, the husband has allegedly been attempting to hide assets from his wife.
Upon learning of the supposed fraud, the wife renounced a settlement agreement.
The wife draws support for her position from fact that the husband, under oath in the divorce case, denied owning an interest in a resort owned by his half-brother - but then filed a separate lawsuit asserting a multi-million dollar interest in the resort.
Unfortunately for the husband, his brother testified under oath that the husband intentionally sought to divert income from his own business to the resort - to hide it from his wife in the divorce case.
Now the husband alleges that he purchased an ownership interest in the resort. And the brother contends that he purchased only an interest in the stream of net income.
The husband reportedly refused to enter a written agreement. After all, that could be found and used by the wife in the divorce case.
In the suit against his brother, the Court awarded the husband a substantial (but fixed) sum of money - but no ownership interest.
Part or all of the amount of the judgment may be subject to property division between the spouses - or, possibly, allocated to support.
Read more in this Salem, Oregon Statesman Journal article: Facing charges isn’t new for property owner.
Divorce doesn’t hurt children.
Post-divorce conflict between parents does.
A recent study concludes that children of amicable divorces are significantly better adjusted than children of high conflict divorces.
Insults, anger and disparagement in front of the children is all harmful to them.
Children feel under attack themselves when one of their parents attacks the other.
Children often feel responsible for their parents’ divorce, especially if their parents argue about them.
If parents must argue, they should do it privately.
Read more post divorce parenting tips in this Bradenton Herald article: Helping your child cope with divorce.
| Listen to Janet |
See if the nonprofit Association against Hidden Family Abuse, Inc. can help you or someone you care about.