General legal information furnished as a service of Fort Lauderdale / West Palm Beach family law attorney Janet Langjahr
Mom and Dad divorce.
Mom is awarded custody.
And Dad is denied visitation.
Then Child Protective Services takes children away from Mom due to Mom’s alleged drug use.
Children are placed with Dad.
According to reports, no one from Child Protective Services read the divorce court case file.
Dads are not denied all visitation lightly.
It’s actually real tough to have visitation completely withheld.
It is alleged that no one from Child Protective Services did a criminal background check on Dad either.
It is also alleged that Child Protective Services never did any followup home visits.
Now one of the children is known to be dead. Her murder was brutal.
The other child’s body has not been found in months, but he is presumed dead.
Mom has sued the state and Child Protective Services for damages for their alleged negligence.
Who watches the ones entrusted with looking out for our children?
Read more in this Tucson Citizen article: Dead kids’ mom: CPS culpable.
Mom and Dad in child custody battle.
Mom’s sisters get access to a senator at a political fundraiser and question her about Mom’s options.
“Who would get custody if something were to happen to Dad and he couldn’t care for the little girl?
“What would happen if Mom were to ‘disappear’ with the child?”
A few days later, Dad is awarded full custody of the little girl.
A week later, Dad is shot and killed in front of the little girl, at a playground before a scheduled exchange of the child.
Senator comes forward and tells what she knows to authorities.
All eyes are on Mom, although she has not officially been named as a suspect.
Mom volunteers that Dad had physically abused her.
Oh, the child?
She was placed with her father’s parents.
Then Mom alleged that they were sexually abusing her.
So now the little girl is in foster care.
Mom is allowed supervised visitation with her twice a week.
The child also meets with a counselor once a week.
Because Mom and Dad each loved her so much and each wanted custody of her …
Read more in this New York Post article: DENTIST IN-LAW PUZZLE SUSPICIOUS QUERIES and this Newsday article: Judge decides girl will remain in foster care.
November is National Adoption Month.
In her new book, an author reminds potential adoptive parents that many children, particularly special needs children, are waiting for them … and adoption out of the foster care system into loving homes.
She would know. She is the adoptive parent of a special needs child herself.
Learn more from this PRWeb press release: Best Selling Author Speaks Up For Special Needs Adoption and the author’s own website.
HOPE Court.
A place where Washington parents who have abandoned, abused or neglected their kids get a second chance to overcome their substance abuse, learn better parenting and coping skills, and win back custody of their kids.
The program provides a support network (judges, lawyers, social workers, substance abuse treatment providers, child protective services and other government workers) to recovering parents - and accountability.
A lot of parents don’t make it all the way through the program. But some do succeed, and their families are reunited.
Read more in this [Longview, WA] Daily News article: Reunited, drug free.
One of the regional directors of Florida’s Department of Children and Families thinks the foster care system it administers doesn’t work very well.
Some depressing statistics about foster care:
Florida’s not unique in these respects. And there probably isn’t a whole lot of dispute about the quality of foster care.
But the question remains: how do we improve the foster care program?
The DCF director points out that children of divorce are traumatized by the loss of one parent from their day to day lives. Foster children lose both parents. On top of being abandoned, abused or neglected.
The director would attempt to minimize the trauma by keeping families intact. The director would greatly reduce the number of cases where children are removed from the home.
Instead the director would provide services in the home on an intensive and accelerated basis, with closer supervision afterward.
A small pilot program is underway right now. If successful, a larger pilot project will follow.
Read more in this Jacksonville Florida Times Union article: Strengthen families.
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.
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.
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 high profile psychologist who has carved out a high profile niche testifying in child custody and visitation dispute cases to mothers’ alienation of fathers from their children is now speaking out against Florida’s brand new Keeping Children Safe Act.
The legislative intent behind the Act is to protect child victims of sexual abuse from further abuse.
Dr. J. Michael Bone, anticipating numerous false allegations by alienating mothers, is critical of the lack of legal protections afforded to fathers under the Act.
Some of the provisions of the Act are actually not very different from the rest of the juvenile dependency statutes (formally, Proceedings Relating to Children).
For example, reporters of any type of child abuse, not just sexual child abuse, are protected by anonymity. The legislative intent was to encourage witnesses and those with well-founded suspicions to come forward to protect children by protecting the reporters’ anonymity.
Are there some false reports of child abuse? Undoubtedly.
Should we throw the preexisting dependency statutes out because of that? No.
Can the new statute benefit from some refinement? Absolutely.
Read more in this Mens News Daily article and the Keeping Children Safe Act.
A 3 year old child, previously taken into protective custody by the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), was released to his mother - only to die two months later.
There was a court hearing on whether to release the little boy, but neither the boy’s non-lawyer advocate nor his caseworker attended. They weren’t aware of the hearing.
And DCF failed to inform the Court (either in person or through a report or other court papers) that the mother’s boyfriend hit the child and his background check was not completed correctly until after the boy went home.
DCF only made a couple of visits after the child was sent home.
The boy’s mother and boyfriend have respectively been charged with manslaughter and murder in the child’s death.
The question remains: did DCF do enough to protect the boy?
Read more in this [Southwest Florida] News Press article: DCF admits to errors in death of Zahid Jones.
Woman adopts eleven children in New York City. Woman later moves to Florida.
Woman raises children - with no education beyond fourth grade, no medical care, without adequate food, without normal social contact, without freedom.
Why?
She adopted the children to collect payments from New York City. Over a million dollars in fact.
All of the children, now aged 15 to 27, suffer from physical and mental disabilities.
The woman, now 62, faces criminal charges of abuse and neglect in Florida.
And the Florida court can now request that the New York courts unseal the normally confidential adoption records.
The records are needed to nail down the identities of the victims, nine of whom are now disabled adults in the care of the state of Florida.
The whereabouts of two others is unknown.
The state just took the woman’s grandchildren from her biological son into protective custody as well.
Read more in this ABC ActionNews.com article: Florida prosecutors can ask judge to unseal records in abuse case and this Newsday article: NY adoption records relevant in Florida abuse case, judge says.
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).
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.
Fourteen year old baby sitter allegedly throws three year old charge on bed for misbehavior. Baby later dies of head injury.
This tragic situation is very disturbing, without knowing anything more.
But there is more.
This local Palm Beach County child and her two siblings (5 years old and nearly 2 years old) were actually in foster care, placed with a fellow congregant from their mother’s church.
The children were removed from their mother’s custody two different times.
The foster mother took the children out of daycare to leave them with her little brother, who was visiting from out of state.
The foster mother reportedly initially lied about being home when the incident occurred.
The sitter is currently detained on charges of aggravated child abuse, which are expected to be upgraded.
At this time, the foster mother has not been charged herself with inadequate supervision.
Ironically, the Department of Children and Families has recently been working on establishing rules as to who (age and relationship) may watch children in protective custody.
Too late, unfortunately, for this little girl.
Under Florida law, there is no established rule on baby sitters for children not in protective custody.
Read more in these Palm Beach Post articles: Tot hurt in sitter’s care dies and Foster mom didn’t have OK for sitter.
Illinois is sponsoring an innovative housing program with a unique social mission.
The complex puts so-called kinship families (for example, grandparents raising grandchildren) as neighbors to young people aging out of foster care.
In addition to helping these two very different but often similarly economically disadvantaged groups with affordable housing, it also provides foster kids with positive role models.
It may also provide kinship families with assistance from young adults that they would not otherwise have.
Read more in this Chicago Tribune article: Different generations get place to call home.
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.
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.
Children abandoned, abused or neglected.
State steps in to protect them, typically by removing them from the home on at least a temporary basis.
If suitable relatives are willing and available, the children will usually be temporarily placed with them over strangers.
And then begins the process of assessing the weaknesses in the parents’ parenting skills and how to support the parents in building them up - if they are willing and able.
In a recent Maryland case, the children were placed with their aunt. The children did well with her.
And their parents failed to enhance their parenting skills.
One and one-half years later, a court awarded the aunt custody and guardianship of the children.
Not an unusual outcome under the circumstances.
The parents appealed. Also not unusual.
But the rest of the story is.
Because the mother is American Indian.
Therefore, the children are subject to the Indian Child Welfare Act.
That means that the Court was required to make “active efforts” to keep the family intact because the children were American Indian.
(Not that the Court doesn’t or shouldn’t make every reasonable effort to keep every family together, but the requirement is stricter for American Indian children … )
The intermediate appellate court reversed the award of custody and guardianship to the aunt, ruling that the State had, in effect, given up on the parents prematurely, after six months.
Read more in this Baltimore Sun article: Md. court makes unique custody ruling.
In California (and a few other states), the child of an incarcerated, nonviolent, mother need not be forced into foster care. Instead, the child may be able to head to jail with his or her mother.
Except that, recently, concerns have arisen about the quality of medical care delivered in these “mom’s prisons”. There have reportedly been one questionable death, and several injuries and illnesses not caught and treated as early as they probably should have been.
Most of the moms in these facilities are drug offenders. And they represent the fastest growing segment of the population of inmates in California.
Approximately seventy-five percent of these moms have custody of their children at the time they are sentenced.
The larger question is: should inmate mothers have their young children with them in confinement? Or should the children be temporarily placed with relatives or, if necessary, into foster care?
Read more in this provocative New York Times article: California Investigates a Mother-and-Child Prison Center.
Social workers and other “evaluating” professionals play a huge role in child welfare law and the juvenile court infrastructure that protects children. Judges rely enormously on their reports and testimony. And their judgment calls largely determine whether or not a juvenile case ever gets filed.
Like every other member of the human race though, they sometimes make mistakes. Should they be liable for them?
A federal appellate court in California recently ruled “No”. Although a juvenile court later returned a boy to his own family’s custody despite the sworn petition of two social workers in California, the federal appellate court held that the social workers acted in the course of carrying out their responsibilities under the law and were therefore entitled to absolute immunity.
For purposes of the issue before it, the appellate court saw no difference between a dependency petition and a custody petition, or between testifying in court or swearing out a paper petition initiating the case.
One judge dissented as to the supervising social worker on the somewhat technical basis that she should not have personally sworn to medical conclusions, but rather should have cited to sworn medical conclusions furnished by medical practitioners.
It is worth noting that it was apparently not alleged that the social workers acted with malice against the parents and that, therefore, the court did not address the issue of malicious allegations which may conceivably be lodged by social workers in a dependency case.
It is difficult to imagine who would take on this tremendously difficult and, if not thankless, “under-thanked” job without absolute immunity.
Read more in this Metropolitan News-Enterprise article: Ninth Circuit Upholds Social Workers’ Claim of Absolute Immunity.
You may think the scientific subject of adolescent brain development may be out of place here.
Not so if you are a parent going through a family court case - or a parent of a child going through a juvenile (dependency or delinquency) court case. Or may be in the future.
According to studies, adolescent brains are not fully developed and are, therefore, less capable of reasoning and judgment and impulse control than adult brains - even during the late teens and early twenties.
This knowledge has important implications for parents and children who must interact with the legal system, whether by choice or otherwise.
Whether your child is acting out mildly during your divorce - or has started having run-ins with the law since starting high school, even though your family is intact.
While some of these behaviors may be responses to environmental stimuli, they may also be caused or exacerbated by biological factors.
Either way, every parent may benefit from learning about the biology of the adolescent brain.
Read more in this Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel article - Inside their heads: Rebellious teen behavior could stem from biology.
A Michigan appeals judge is crying out that the state’s budget cuts are causing the state’s child welfare and protection sytem to fail Michigan’s children.
On average, ten Michigan children per year die in foster care.
Adoptions get bogged down, because the prerequisite termination of parental rights can’t be timely finished, because an appeal is still pending.
In recent years, appeals have been moving substantially faster, because of the services of outside contract attorneys.
But no longer. Due to budget cuts.
Before long, the judge fears, appeals will remain open longer.
And more children will die. Due to budget cuts.
Read more in this Lansing State Journal editorial: William Whitbeck: Vulnerable children victimized by crisis in Mich.’s finances.
The young wife of a man who allegedly burned their two month old baby in a microwave oven wants custody of her baby - and to keep her husband.
After the father’s arrest for felony injury to a child, the baby was placed into foster care.
The mother was reportedly not present when the father allegedly microwaved the baby.
The mother is now allowed supervised visitation with the baby, provided she complete parenting classes and undergo testing for drug and alcohol use.
The father aspires to become a minister …
Read more in this KHOU-TV 11 News article: Microwaved baby’s mom wants her back.
Believe it or not.
In Michigan, judges are advocating for changes to the state’s child protection laws. The reason is that the state is creating too many legal orphans, by terminating parental rights in a record number of cases.
But academics at the University of Michigan are arguing that the current laws are just fine. The problem, from their perspective, is the judges and the attorneys, untrained and underpaid, respectively.
Interesting statistic though.
Ninety-seven percent of termination of parental rights cases taken on appeal in Michigan are upheld.
That fact tends to support the proposition that Michigan judges know the law and generally apply it correctly.
So why does Michigan have so many orphans resulting from legal judgments? And what is to be done?
Perhaps there is a flaw in the Michigan laws, that can be seen better from the trenches of the bench than the ivory tower…
Read more in this Detroit Free Press letter to the editor from judges: Judges well-trained in child law.
How do you punish a young child who misbehaves or is aggressive with family members?
This is a question that many families face at one time or another.
And there are many possible answers, lying across the spectrum from appropriate, to inappropriate - and worse.
For one Iowa mother, the ultimate solution to a child who was biting her was: to bite him back.
Local authorities didn’t second her sentiments though.
While examining her boy for an unrelated injury, hospital workers discovered and reported to police an apparently human bite mark on the child’s arm.
Although no charges have been filed at this time, the boy was taken into protective custody by the local child welfare agency.
Read more in this Daily Nonpareil [Council Bluffs, IA] article: Child in protective custody after parent bites.
Does prosecuting juvenile offenders in adult courts deter and reduce crime?
According to studies cited in an editorial, the answer is a clear no.
It is reported that juveniles who serve “adult time” typically go on to commit more violent crimes later on than juveniles processed through the juvenile justice system.
So where do kids face justice? And where should they face justice?
Another study concludes that some 200,000 children run through the adult court system for nonviolent offenses could be better dealt with through the juvenile system.
Apparently, several states routinely escalate kids into the adult justice system for fairly minor infractions.
According to the article, several states are now acting to make it easier to keep juvenile offenders in the juvenile justice system, in the hope of better outcomes for youthful offenders - and society as a whole.
Read more in this New York Times editorial: Juvenile Injustice.
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month.
One child in four is reportedly abused by the time of their eighteenth birthday.
Abusers are getting younger.
Abuse is becoming more severe.
Read more in this Chattanooga [TN] WDEF News 12 article: April Is Child Abuse Prevention Month.
A Michigan judge presiding over family law cases thinks the law should change to make it tougher to terminate parental rights.
The reasons are twofold. First, the number of children who enter and remain in foster care, without families, throughout their entire childhoods, has skyrocketed in Michigan.
Second, most of these children want to be back with their biological parents.
An alternative option to termination of parental rights would be for the courts to appoint guardians for these children - unless and until they are able to be reunified with their biological parents.
This alternative would leave all options open, except possibly adoption. But the adoption option seems more of a pipedream than anything else for an enormous percentage of these children.
Read more in this Detroit News editorial: Reform state law that creates more orphans.
The Nevada legislature will be considering passing an unusual law soon.
Under the proposed law, having previously stripped parents of their parental rights, a court could later reinstate them under three conditions:
A judge who is a proponent of passing the statute explains that many children who come before him would like to return to their parents but, under current law, they cannot - even if the parents have improved their circumstances.
The judge also pointed out that there are far fewer adoptions than terminations of parental rights.
If the situation contemplated by this proposed bill arises very often, one has to wonder whether Nevada terminates parental rights too quickly or easily in the first place, if the terminated parents are able to rehabilitate themselves independently, without the benefit of social services.
Or whether Nevada’s true motivation is to save the state money spent on foster care.
Read more in this Las Vegas Sun article: Nevada law would let courts restore parental rights.
The two children of a Cuban mother living in Miami were placed in foster care by the State of Florida as a result of the mother’s alleged medical and psychological difficulties.
The mother and her children have been living here in the US since 2004.
The boy’s father consented to the boy remaining in the US.
But the little girl’s father wants her returned to him in Cuba.
Soon, a Miami juvenile dependency judge will have to decide the little girl’s fate.
Florida’s Department of Children and Families argues that the girl’s father is not a fit parent.
If the girl is returned to Cuba, she will have to leave behind her brother and the only home she really remembers, to return to a father and country with whom she has reportedly had little contact.
Read more in this Miami Herald article: Cuban mom tried to give girl away.
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