General legal information furnished as a service of Fort Lauderdale / West Palm Beach family law attorney Janet Langjahr
The Florida Department of Children and Families receives about 1,000 reports of abuse per month in Lee County that must be investigated.
Investigations must begin within twenty-four hours, three if a child is believed to be in imminent danger.
An investigation takes at least 4 hours of interviews with the child, the person reporting the abuse, family members, neighbors, teachers, etc.
Investigators typically investigate two reports per day.
Background checks of every adult in the home are par for the course.
Investigators are college-educated and receive ten weeks of training plus substantial oversight and mentoring.
And still children die of abuse or neglect.
One six year old child recently died - after three separate reports of abuse, including one from his school.
DCF investigated but concluded that the child was not at risk and, later, at low risk.
That child was later killed by his stepfather, who now faces criminal charges.
Too little, too late.
Read more in this News-Press guest editorial: DCF needs community’s help protecting children and this WXTX Fox 4 News Team Coverage piece: Jenkins Case File.
Once upon a time, non-parents might have visitation or even custody rights, most commonly grandparents.
Then the US Supreme Court ruled that such third party rights trampled the rights of parents, which should be superior - provided the parents are fit parents.
Since then, some states have tried fashioning constitutional statutes granting third parties visitation or custody rights.
The most popular third parties are still grandparents. But there are other beneficiaries as well.
Stepparents. And the gay parent who is not the biological parent.
Utah is one such unlikely state to pass a new law allowing a non-parent to seek visitation or custody rights.
Arguably, in defiance of local court rulings.
Read more in this Salt Lake Tribune article: Measure would boost rights of stepparents.
When children are taken into foster care due to alleged abandonment, abuse or neglect, it sets in motion a series of events, including various hearings in juvenile dependency court.
Juvenile dependency court is unlike any other court.
Many of the families of removed children are indigent. Parents attorneys’ and children’s attorneys are typically court-appointed. They handle hundreds of cases per year.
They barely know their clients, let alone the parents and the family’s circumstances.
Yet these overburdened court-appointed attorneys are the just about the only thing standing between children - and removal from their parents and families.
The courts don’t allow much time for parents to defend return of children to their families. In California, sometimes just five minutes or less.
That’s all the time a judge has to get the facts and determine the best outcome. Informed only by attorneys and case workers who have inadequate time and too large caseloads to sort out the truth and come up with solutions.
And so children are removed from their homes … whether or not they should be …
Read horror story after horror story in this troubling Mercury News article: How rushed justice fails our kids - BROKEN FAMILIES, BROKEN COURTS: A MERCURY NEWS INVESTIGATION.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Some legislators in South Dakota are working to revamp much of the state’s child custody laws that reportedly are not serving the divorced parents of the state, or their children, well. Their stated goal is to focus on the best interests of kids.
Under current South Dakota law, temporary custody of children is apparently awarded to the parent who has been the primary caregiver for the thirty days prior to filing. Unfortunately, a snapshot of such a short slice of life may not accurately reflect which parent has been the primary caregiver over the longer haul.
The new proposed legislation increases the thirty day period to twelve months. That is a much more realistic indicator.
Under current South Dakota law, violation of visitation or custody orders may be punished by fines or imprisonment. Judges have allegedly withheld those sanctions as too harsh.
The new proposed legislation allows more flexible remedies / sanctions, such as ordering attendance of parenting classes, awarding makeup visitation time and awarding legal fees.
Interestingly, the new proposed legislation contemplates “joint legal custody” (what Florida calls “shared parenting responsibility”) but not that both parents “equally participate” in major decisions concerning their children.
Many South Dakotan legal commentators, however, anticipate increased litigation over less than perfect implementations of joint legal custody.
Beware state-specific definitions.
Read more in this South Coast Massachusetts Standard Times article: Child custody, visitation issues considered.
Baby is taken into protective custody by Missouri.
Baby is placed with Biological Cousin and his wife.
They provide a loving home and seek to adopt Baby.
State removes Baby from Biological Cousin and places Baby with unrelated couple.
Generally, children’s welfare agencies prefer to place children with suitable relatives rather than strangers.
Why would the state remove Baby from biologically-related foster parents to strangers?
Well, Biological Cousin alleges that it was because he was obese.
The Court said that he didn’t properly follow state procedures for bringing a child into the state.
It took six months, but Biological Cousin got Baby back - after having gastric bypass surgery …
Read more in this Kansas City KMBC TV 9 article: Judge Rules In Baby Max Custody Case and this Kansas City KMBC TV 9 article: Baby Max Stuck In Middle Of Custody Battle.
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