General legal information furnished as a service of Fort Lauderdale / West Palm Beach family law attorney Janet Langjahr
Fifty-five children of American / Indian unions have gone missing in India.
That is why the US is asking India to join the many other countries tht have joined the Hauge Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
If India did sign on, it would expedite case resolutions and tend to “assign” cases to the proper jurisdiction. It would also make India a less attractive haven for kidnappers.
Read more in this The Times of India article: US wants India to sign treaty on child abduction.
One occupational hazard attorneys face is not-quite-ranting calls from (or appointments with) people who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they - or, worse, their kids - have been unfairly “beaten up” by the legal system, when they were represented by another attorney - or no attorney.
Those folks often have a lot in common with this Tennessee mother.
A Tennesee judge awarded custody of her child to the child’s father. After Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Service had allegedly already made a finding of abuse by the father.
But the story doesn’t end there.
The mother appealed the custody award.
And won. An appellate court reversed the trial judge’s ruling, and remanded to the trial court.
Only, reportedly, the trial judge obstinately refused to alter its custody award in accordance with the appellate court’s ruling. Just plain refused.
Forcing the mother to spend gazillion more dollars to compel the implementation of the appellate court’s ruling.
This Tennessee judge was ultimately publicly reprimanded, according to the article below.
But it wouldn’t be surprising if this mother had to do some almost-ranting before she got her child back, safe.
Still, things did get straightened out in the end.
At least for this Tennessee mother and her child. Who, somehow or other, could apparently afford the appeals.
Read more in this Macon County [TN] Times article: Judge Byrd reprimanded in Wilson County case.
Service of papers is not typically a colorful topic. But there are exceptions to every generalization.
In Ohio, a mother was served with a child custody order requiring her to turn her 9 and 21 month old babies over to their father. She was served at the school where she teaches.
The sheriff arrived with a juvenile detective. And a SWAT team.
According to one account, the SWAT team was armed with automatic machine guns, a battering ram and surrounded the school as soon as they arrived. According to the sheriff, only two members of the SWAT team got out of their vehicle.
The school was in an Amish community. And the mother is the daughter of the bishop of the community.
The sheriff defended his actions with reports of threatened violence by the Amish if the authorities persisted in investigations of alleged sex crimes within the Amish community.
The served mother promptly left the school and headed to her farm, with the sheriff and the SWAT team in pursuit.
The children were handed over to authorities by a relative.
Read more in this Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register article: Hearing Set In Amish Raid and this WTOV9 TV news article: Amish Couple Appears In Court For Child Custody Dispute.
Sadly, child snatching is a fact of modern life. Even in Tupelo, Mississippi.
A local birth mother recovered her baby from adoptive parents-to-be. Custody disputes between parents. Fights between a parent and extended family members.
Then there are the abductions to another country.
With 200 cases of parental child abduction per year, the problem is epidemic.
And all of the above happens despite child custody jurisdictional acts enacted throughout the US and intended to, among other things, deter abductions.
The left-behind parent often feels frustration, however, because, in many instances of reported “kidnapping”, law enforcement is powerless to do anything - because it isn’t kidnapping in the eyes of the law, just in the eyes of the left-behind parent.
Read more in this Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal article: Kidnapping - Why do people steal their own children?.
A bitter New Hampshire divorce has an unusual sequel.
For reasons known only to her, the wife allegedly testified under oath at a divorce hearing that she was seven months pregnant with triplets.
Only she wasn’t. Didn’t even appear to be.
Her lie was reportedly compounded by a supporting sonogram she introduced.
During the divorce case, she also allegedly falsely asserted that she had had breast cancer, that her husband was a terrorist, that her husband was going to derail one of his employer’s trains, and that her husband had abused and neglected their children.
All of these allegations were reportedly false too.
More than anything else, the allegations set off alarm bells regarding the mother’s psychological state.
But, in the end, after the family case ended, the mother was tried and convicted of perjury.
Now she faces up to seven years in jail.
And, if she was designated primary residential parent in the divorce case, that will likely change soon …
Underscoring the extreme danger of lying in family court and why one should never, ever do it.
Read more in this New Hampshire Union Leader article: Final chapter in divorce case: perjury conviction.
The South Dakotan American Indian community used to find much fault with the way that state has dealt with them in regard to matters of child welfare.
For example, American Indian children have been placed long-term in foster care with non-Indian families, merely on their say-so that they were members of an American Indian tribe - when they weren’t.
The liaisons in the tribe blamed violations of the Indian Child Welfare Act on poor communications between the state and the tribe.
Over the last few years, however, things have gotten much better in South Dakota.
Communications have improved, thanks to a governor’s task force and the Collaborative Circle.
The Circle has representatives from the state, various social services experts and all the regional tribes. The Circle meets quarterly and its executive council meets monthly.
Today, American Indians have been certified to serve as foster parents and families. This has helped to keep American Indian foster children within their tribes.
Today, American Indian children’s cases are more smoothly moved to tribal courts when there are custody disputes and related issues.
Now, the tribes have set their sights on educating judges and expert witnesses, as they have educated social services workers.
South Dakota has become a model for other states that have not made comparable progress in state-tribal relations - despite similar measures.
Read more in this Indian Country Today article: Collaborative Circle aids in Indian Child Welfare Act compliance.
A Kentucky appellate court has reversed the termination of a teen parent’s parental rights because the ruling was based on the parent’s age and immaturity, rather than her parenting skills and capabilities.
In this case, the teen mother voluntarily placed herself and her child into foster care in 2003. She never abused or neglected her child.
At the time of the termination hearing, the mother had finished 11th grade, had a job, and had completed various parenting classes.
There was every indication that she was becoming ready to parent her child.
Termination of parental rights was premature at best.
The mother’s visitation should be reinstated with a view toward reunification.
Read more in this Lexington [KY] Herald Leader article: Court: Teen parenthood terminated too quickly.
A Pakistani court has ordered Pakistani police to locate a 7 year old French-Pakistani boy and produce him in court.
The little boy’s mother, a French national, brought a habeas corpus action in Pakistan to regain physical custody of the child.
The boy’s parents divorced in France and entered a written custody agreement there which was adopted in a French divorce decree.
The mother alleged that the father, without her permission, removed the boy from France to his native country, Pakistan, in violation of their agreement.
Pakistan is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and, therefore, was not required to produce and return the boy to his mother in France under international law.
However, the Pakistani court’s order indicates that it was at least considering enforcing the agreement adopted in the French divorce decree.
Read more in this [Pakistan] Daily Times article: Police told to find French-Pakistani boy in 7 days.
Sadly, we have grown accustomed to hearing of one parent’s abduction of children from the other parent.
But recently there was a different kind of parental abduction in Ohio.
A woman allegedly abducted her own four children - together with her husband, the children’s father.
How is that abduction?
A local court reportedly awarded temporary custody rights of the children to the local children’s services agency.
The biological parents were apparently trying to block the agency from asserting its rights.
The father was reportedly recently released from prison for domestic violence.
Now both parents face charges for felony interference with custody.
Read more in this Logan [OH] Daily News article: Woman, ex-husband arrested after fleeing.
A Washington state woman was denied unsupervised visitation with her daughter after absconding with her daughter to Los Angeles during visitation last year.
Undeterred, the woman more recently allegedly absconded with her daughter again, during a visitation supervised by her parents. This time they reportedly went to Las Vegas, where they remained for a month.
This time around the mother suffered more severe consequences for her actions.
On the criminal side, the was charged with felony custodial interference, but pleaded guilty to misdemeanor custodial interference. She will be “sentenced” to psychological treatment and probation, but no incarceration. Her daughter will be spared having to testify against her.
The mother didn’t fare as well in family court though. She is barred from any contact with her daughter (except for a written apology for her actions) without prior court approval.
Both she and her daughter would have been better off had she learned her lesson after the first custodial violation.
Read more in this Tri-City [WA] Herald article: Finley pleads guilty to taking her child to Las Vegas.
What happens when the custodial parent moves to another school district (not another state or even city) after separation?
Well, in one Michigan case, the mother, the custodial parent, is driving her children 60 miles to keep her kids in the same school district as before the parents’ separation. The father insists that school district is superior to the one where the mother and children now reside.
So the parents will have to go back to court so that the judge can … choose the school the kids should attend.
And what about that commute for the youngsters?
Next, the court will revisit its custody determination, depending upon the court’s ruling on which school district the children should attend school in.
Taking this approach to its logical conclusion,
Clearly a recipe for clogging Michigan’s family courts to the point of grinding to a halt. Not to mention turning Michigan’s kids lives upside down all over again … and again … and again.
Read more in this Detroit News article: Divorce judge to pick kids’ school.
An emerging question for a growing number of splitting couples may be the still novel question that recently faced a divorcing Texas couple:
Who gets their frozen embryos?
In that case, the Texas trial court awarded them to the Wife.
But the Husband appealed to an intermediate court and won.
Then the Texas Supreme Court ducked the case, so the Husband remains the “victor”.
But note: this couple had actually signed a form consenting to the embryos being “discarded” in the event of the couple’s divorce.
It’s impossible to say how much of a bearing that consent form played in the appellate court’s ruling, but it seems reasonable to infer it may have been significant, if not compelling.
Read more in this KLTV 7 [Texas] article: Texas Supreme Court refuses to hear custody battle.
An Illinois mother was recently arrested for custodial interference in Wisconsin.
The woman allegedly secretly fled with her child in direct violation of an Illinois court order barring her from any contact with her child during the divorce of the parents.
The father suspected where they had gone and notified authorities, who reportedly found the child at the home of a friend of her mother’s.
Sadly, this incident likely illustrates what not to do if the goal is winning unsupervised visitation and parental access to the child.
Read more in this Wisconsin Journal Times article: Illinois woman arrested after fleeing here with child.
Ireland has the dubious distinction of emerging as a popular destination for parental child abductors all over.
The number of parental child abduction cases there has risen dramatically in recent years.
Despite entering the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which requires return of children to their place of “habitual residence“, Ireland often doesn’t.
For example, last year, the Irish high court ordered return in only about half of the cases before it.
While 2,000 kids were involved in Hague Convention cases in the last 15 years, last year alone the figure was 160.
Statistics show that twice as many children are abducted into Ireland as out of Ireland.
Read more in this Irish Independent article: Ireland a haven for love-tug abductors.
A guardian ad litem appointed to advocate on behalf of a 14 month old baby has recommended to the court that his mother stop breast-feeding him.
The guardian was concerned about the child ingesting medications prescribed for his mother.
The mother maintains that she researched this issue carefully and that her baby nurse and one of her son’s doctors all encouraged her to breast-feed with full knowledge of her medication regimen. The mother also sought out the input of the author of a book on medications in mother’s milk and he too approved her choice to breast-feed.
Nonetheless, the dispute over whether the mother should breast-feed will be put before a family court judge and could influence whether he will leave the mother as the baby’s primary residential custodian.
Just in case, the mother is stocking up on formula for her son.
The unusual case raises troubling issues regarding the propriety of this intrusion into the mother’s parental rights and rights to privacy.
Read more in this Atlanta Journal Constitution article: Breast-feeding debate impacts custody battle.
New York City is contemplating banning smoking in a car in which there are minor children.
If it passes, New York won’t be the first place with such a ban. Similar bans already exist in Arkansas, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, Bangor, Me., and Rockland County, N.Y.
Transgressions would subject the violator to potentially hefty fines.
But that may not be the worst penalty.
In some states, family court judges may and have considered “smoker status” as a factor in child custody determinations. See my previous post, Smoking Cigarettes Has Gotten Terribly Costly: You Just May Lose Custody of Your Child.
And certain states have banned smoking in homes with foster children. Presumably, infractions could result in foster parents being dropped from the fostering program and their foster children being removed from their home.
Read more in this New York Times article: A Call to Ban Smoking in Cars (With Children).
According to recent statistics just released by the New Zealand family courts, child custody determinations there are gender-neutral, meaning that either parent may win custody without regard to that parent’s gender.
The New Zealand statistics demonstrated that roughly two-thirds of the time, whichever parents seeks custody, receives it. In New Zealand, that is still the mother more than twice as often as the father.
Gender-neutrality is also the rule under Florida statute and is becoming increasingly common throughout the US.
Read more in this Stuff.Co.NZ article: Gender ‘not a factor’ in Family Court decisions.
Recently, I posted on NJ: Mother May Relocate to Japan Against Father’s Wishes.
And further back on Japan: No Visitation Rights for American Fathers of Children Abducted to Japan.
Knowing how Japan deals with child custody and visitation cannot help but influence one’s thoughts on the NJ Supreme Court’s recent ruling - although it clearly did not influence the court.
To its credit, the Japan Times just published a long, hard look in its legal mirror. Apparently, it didn’t like what it saw there. The published piece also unequivocally criticized the NJ Supreme Court’s recent ruling - on sound legal grounds.
“Professor Colin Jones of Doshisha University testifies in a recent law journal article, ‘In the Best Interests of the Court: What American Lawyers Need to Know about Child Custody and Visitation in Japan,’ … Japanese courts often act in the ‘best interests of the court’ to protect themselves from becoming irrelevant to society due to their inability to enforce their own orders. This authoritative source ensures that future judges will understand the unique meaning of the ‘best interests of the child’ in Japan and realize that even Japanese court orders are not enforceable, so neither are foreign ones.”
New Jersey, however, sees no legal distinction between relocating to, say, Virginia or Wyoming, and Japan.
But there is a such a distinction and many other states not only see it but address it squarely in their statutes and/or case law.
And more may join them in the near future as the The Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act (UCAPA) eventually gains adoption in more states across the US. Other legislation targeting this problem is also being lobbied vigorously.
Read more in this Japan Times article: U.S. takes tougher line on abductions to Japan.
Last year, North Dakota voters rejected a proposed legislation that would have mandated that a family court establish equal timesharing with minor children unless otherwise agreed by the parents.
This year, the proposal re-surfaces in considerably streamlined form. Any impact on child support is omitted from the language of the initiative.
If the current proposal is passed, if either parent seeks equal timesharing, the court must order equal timesharing.
There is only one means to protect children from equal timesharing:
if a parent “is found unfit or a danger to the children by clear and convincing evidence“
That is a pretty tough standard to meet - and it may place some children at unnecessary risk.
This initiative also highlights that the term “joint custody” has different meanings as used in different states.
Read more in this Bismarck KXMB CBS 12 TV article: Supporters of joint custody in divorces trying another petition… and this Bismarck Tribune article: Another go at joint custody initiative.
In some divorce and custody cases, one powerful tool in a party’s arsenal is the surveillance video.
Historically, the world of private investigators has been a male-dominated bastion.
But perhaps no longer.
One woman PI in Austin is seeing her business boom - much of it with divorce and child custody- generated video surveillance work - for men.
While not inexpensive, there is just no denying that “a picture is worth a thousand words“.
And the right picture can be worth primary residential custody or big bucks, depending on the jurisdiction.
Read more in this KEYE TV Austin 42 news article: Woman’s Investigation Business Booms.
Jewish mother divorces Christian father.
In 2005, a Belgian court awarded custody of their now eight year old son to the father.
For the past eighteen months, however it came about, the mother has been raising the boy in Israel, in the Jewish faith, in particular, in the strict Orthodox tradition.
Now, the boy’s father is seeking his return to Belgium under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
If the child is returned to the father, the father will raise him as a Christian.
The mother contends that she was denied a fair trial, for lack of a translator and exclusion of her son’s testimony.
The mother further argues that sending the boy back to his father, a strange country, a new religion and, in essence, a new culture, would be damaging to the child – and that the Hague Convention allows room to protect a child from such psychological harm and for a child to object to return.
Those defenses do exist under the Convention, if made out.
The father, on the other hand, contends that the mother abducted the child and did the same things – as well as blocking contact with him.
A lower Israeli court has already ruled that the child must be returned to Belgium under the Hague Convention.
The mother awaits the outcome of her appeal.
The underlying custody battle makes for a particularly difficult case. Because of the stark contrast in life circumstances, it is, arguably, not just a choice between parents, but a choice between the two parents’ respective life choices.
And the parents’ respective rights.
Possibly without adequate regard for the rights of the child - who arguably faces a schizophrenic-seeming future if ordered returned now, at the age of eight.
Read more in this Jerusalem Post article: Raised Jewish in Israel, or Christian in Belgium?
Widowed Mother sentenced to jail.
Mother gives temporary custody of her children to late minister-husband’s parents.
Mother’s sentence is almost discharged.
Husband’s parents move to terminate Mother’s parental rights and to adopt the children.
The reason Mother was incarcerated was her conviction for killing her minister-husband.
Now Mother appeals to stop her in-laws’ applications.
Appeals court refuses to hear the Mother’s appeal - at least at this early stage of the proceedings.
Accordingly, termination of parental rights of Mother may proceed, clearing the way for the husband’s parents to adopt the children.
Of course, the Mother may have a basis to bring an appeal later.
Read more in this WMC-TV Memphis Action News 5 article: Appeals court declines to intervene in Winkler custody case.
A British divorced dad has published a book that aims to prepare fathers to be full-time dads, or better non-custodial dads, as the case may be.
The book is meant to cure “Sunday Father-ism”.
Whether it’s cooking, potty training, play dates, structure or discipline, this book purports to be a complete guide to fathers who are new to fathering on their own.
According to the author, it’s the first book to tackle full-time parenting for fathers.
It may help to compensate for lack of a mentor to full-time dads.
There is no indication whether it might be a good read for new moms too.
Read more in this MarketWire press release: How To Be A Great Divorced Dad.
A teenaged Brooklyn mother was caring for her own eleven month old baby as well as her boyfriend’s two year old sister.
She was alone, bathing the babies and trying to make dinner at the same time.
The dinner was burning.
So she allegedly left the babies, unsupervised, in the tub for a few minutes to tend to dinner.
And her eleven month old went down in the water, not breathing, for a time.
The baby has been on a ventilator, in a coma, for a month now.
Her prognosis is uncertain.
And the young mother has been in confinement ever since, facing charges of endangerment of a child and reckless endangerment - or worse.
The father of the baby hopes to win custody when - and if - the baby is discharged from the hospital.
The mother and her supporters insist that she should be released from jail, that she is not a criminal, that what happened was an accident, that she was learning how to be a mother without any role models.
The article illustrates one legal process for handling such circumstances: criminal charges against the mother who allegedly neglected her child.
The other legal process, juvenile dependency, is a civil process by which children are taken into protective custody and the court supervises reunification of the child with the parents, when and where appropriate. The goal is for the parents to improve their parenting skills and then be with their kids.
The two processes are not mutually exclusive.
But when should the criminal process be resorted to? That is the question here.
And, not surprisingly, that is decided on a case by case basis.
Read more in this New York Times article: A Baby Girl’s Bath Becomes a Young Couple’s Nightmare.
There was a hotly contested child custody case.
There were allegations of sexual abuse.
A custody evaluation was ordered.
The custody evaluator’s recommendation was adopted by the court and incorporated into a custody order …
Then the custody evaluator, a psychologist, was arrested for voyeurism.
Then his license was suspended.
Then he committed suicide.
Then what?
That is the question plaguing a lot of folks in Seattle, where the above reportedly befell a noted psychologist and custody evaluator.
Those involved in the family court system anticipate a greater than typical number of challenges to custody determinations as a result of the above events.
And that could mean future upheaval in the lives of many affected children.
Only time will tell whether his recommendations withstand any challenges which may be made.
Read more in this Seattle Times article: Therapist’s suicide could trigger challenges in legal cases.
Dad is murdered. Mother is convicted of the crime and sentenced to jail.
Mother’s sister and brother in law are appointed guardians of seven year old child.
Legal custody is shared by guardians and Dad’s parents, who live in another state.
Court orders guardians not to take child to visit Mother in jail.
Guardians later move for permission to do so.
Grandparents move to block visitation with mother.
Guardians move to change child’s last name to their own name, which is not Mother’s name or Father’s name.
Grandparents move to block name change as well.
This case takes shared parental responsibility to a whole new level, making consulting with the child’s other parent seem like a piece of cake by comparison.
Read more about this exotic co-parenting scheme in this [Raleigh, North Carolina] WRAL-TV 5 article: Kontz’s Family Seeks to Reinstate Visitation Rights.
Kansas, which reportedly has a large and growing number of grandparents raising their grandchildren, passed a law intended to provide financial assistance to those grandparents.
But it turns out that the statute is only aiding a tiny fraction of these grandparents (and only a tiny bit at that). The reason: as in other states, aid is limited to grandparents with formal legal custody of their grandchildren.
Yet many of these grandparents, de facto parents, don’t - and couldn’t - get formal legal custody of their grandchildren.
Ironically, the legal trend in most states makes it harder and harder for grandparents to obtain full legal custody of their grandchildren.
Read more in this Kansas Morning Sun editorial: We must find a way to help all custodial grandparents.
A woman fled with her son from state to state and, ultimately, to Canada to escape domestic violence by the father, according to her.
For that, she has been convicted of kidnapping, and faces a sentence of up to three more years in prison.
She has already served eighteen months for refusing to disclose where the boy is safely hidden.
The boy’s father has denied any abuse. He claimed he had been denied access to his son and that the mother was merely trying to alienate the boy from him.
But the child’s school teacher, a presumably neutral third party, testified that the boy would sometimes start crying at school and ask her to call his mother to make sure she was OK.
Yet it is the mother who is incarcerated.
Read more in this [Montreal] Westmount Examiner article: Woman convicted of kidnapping in cross-border custody dispute.
In a far-reaching case, the Florida Supreme Court has held that adoption agencies must notify unmarried biological fathers that their children are going to be placed for adoption and how to register in the state’s paternity registry to protect their rights. If the father still fails to register after thirty days, his parental rights may be terminated.
A statute imposing a time limit on biological fathers to assert their rights was intended to facilitate adoptions and give adoptive parents and the baby finality.
But there have nagging questions with regard to how many biological fathers are actually aware of paternity registries, both in Florida and in other states, let alone how to register with them.
In the case before the Court, the biological father promptly filed a paternity case in court, but failed to register with Florida’s paternity registry. The father maintained that he was unaware of the registry.
The Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court for further fact-finding.
Read more in this Citrus County Chronicle article: Court rules for unmarried adoptive [sic] fathers.
A three year old New York state girl and her father are missing, following a custody ruling adverse to the father. It happened during the father’s visitation.
The father allegedly has a history of depression and suicidal thoughts. His wife reportedly fears that he is off of his medication.
Some reports indicate that the father’s car was found near an airport and that the father has taken the child out of the country.
The FBI and Interpol are apparently involved in trying to track down the missing girl and, hopefully, bring her home soon.
Read more in this America’s Most Wanted alert: Deonna Shipman Missing From Liverpool, New York and this News 10 Now article: Search goes global for kidnapped girl.
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