General legal information furnished as a service of Fort Lauderdale / West Palm Beach family law attorney Janet Langjahr
She did everything right …
The court awarded her residential custody of her children. When she decided that she wanted to move to the US with her kids, she obtained permission from the Australian court last year, ahead of time.
The Australian court ordered her to send the kids back to Australia to visit with their father twice a year. So she did.
She did everything right.
And on what was likely the second such visit, the father abducted their younger child.
She made an application for return of the twelve year old boy to the US under the Hague Convention. But the boy can’t be returned if he can’t be found.
She and her daughter had to move back to Australia, leaving their new lives in the US behind, to be closer to the search.
But after three months, her son still hasn’t been found. They believe that the father is on the run with him in a mobile home.
Neither mother, his sister or any of his friends in the US or Australia has heard from him by e-mail or phone.
She did everything right …
Read more in this Border Mail article: Mother’s frantic plea after boy fails to fly home - ‘Please help find my son’.
As noted in a recent post, For High Conflict Exchanges of Kids, Consider a Supervised Visitation Center, supervised visitation centers are a blessing not only in cases where supervised visitation is court-ordered, but also in many other cases where only exchanges of children are fraught with conflict.
But the blessing comes with a price tag.
How large a price tag (and who must pay it) varies from state to state, sponsor to sponsor, program to program, and facility to facility.
But there is always a price tag, for someone.
A New York Times article took up this very issue over the weekend.
According to that article, supervised visitation in New York City costs $100 per hour - a price tag that is beyond the reach of many families.
And the wait for free services under the auspices of a nonprofit organization can take six months, an eternity to a parent who already hasn’t seen his or her child for some time prior to entry of the court order.
And the number of families in need of supervised visitations services keeps climbing steadily.
Private supervisors impose less of a wait, but they are even more expensive.
Of course, in some cases, less formal supervision may be suitable. But not every family has a friend or relative who is willing, able and mutually trusted to supervise - especially after they have been stuck in the middle for a while.
Read more in this New York times article: In Custody Fights, a Hurdle for the Poor.
When a high conflict divorce comes to an end, if there are children, the conflict usually doesn’t dissipate.
Too often, it flares regularly, during exchanges of minor children for visitation.
One common solution is to conduct exchanges at police stations. But that’s less than ideal.
A better approach, where available, is to conduct exchanges at a supervised visitation center - even if visitation by either parent is not required to be supervised.
Supervised visitation centers are equipped with the personnel and facilities to orchestrate exchanges that avoid contact between parents.
Read more in this Ironton [OH] Tribune article: Center to help troubled families.
At a time when states are more likely to be whittling away grandparent visitation rights in the event of the separation / divorce of the grandchildren’s parents or the death of their own child, Nevada’s legislature is entertaining a grandparent visitation bill - for the situation where the grandchildren’s parents are both still alive and together.
Nevada already has a grandparent visitation statute available for the situation where the grandchildren’s parents separate. Despite that statute, it is reportedly quite difficult for grandparents to win visitation rights in the event of the separation of the grandchildren’s parents.
Supporters of the bill believe that parents don’t always make decisions that serve their children’s best interests, such as when they have substance abuse problems.
Opponents insist that parents have the constitutional right to raise their children free from state or other interference.
Nonetheless, where children are neglected or abused, because their parents have substance abuse problems or otherwise, there are alternative mechanisms for grandparents and other relatives to obtain access to grandchildren - and even to seek to have their grandchildren temporarily placed with them.
Read more in this Las Vegas Sun article: Nevada lawmakers hear testimony on grandparent visitation.
The troubles of unfortunate Minnesota twin babies who were born conjoined, but separated shortly afterward, didn’t end with their separation in November.
One of the twins was later determined to have approximately 24 separate bone fractures in his legs and ribs.
The twins’ parents have been criminally charged with assaulting them and a civil suit is pending to terminate their parental rights.
The mother still has supervised visitation with the kids, but the father’s visitation was terminated as a result of his incarceration on unrelated charges.
Both parents are fighting the criminal charges and civil allegations against them.
In the meantime, the twins and their older sister remain in foster care.
Read more in this Mankato [MN] Free Press article: Judge OKs visits for twins’ mother - Ends visitation by jailed father.
Bucking legal trends in the US Supreme Court and across the nation, one branch of the Arkansas legislature just passed a bill that would allow visitation to step-grandparents.
This comes at a time when true grandparents’ rights to visitation are generally being whittled away as encroaching into parents’ constitutional rights to raise their children as they see fit.
Opponents raise an additional argument: this is a slippery slope with no end in sight. For example, should a fifth cousin three times removed have visitation rights?
It remains to be seen whether the bill will pass the other branch of the legislature and then survive the constitutional attack that will surely follow.
At the same time as this bill wound its way through one house of the Arkansas legislature, another, just as controversial, wound its way through the other house.
The second bill to pass allows judges to appoint attorneys to cross-examine allegedly abused children on behalf of the accused abuser in criminal cases. The accused would be present in the courtroom, but would not directly question the child.
The latter bill is an effort to strike a balance between the constitutional right to confront an accuser and the policy of protecting children.
If passed by the other house, this bill will surely face constitutional attack as well, because criminal defendants assert that they have the right to represent themselves in court - whatever their motive.
All in an Arkansas legislator’s day’s work.
Parental kidnapping cases just may involve the department of homeland security soon.
New, stricter laws were recently enacted which require Americans traveling anywhere outside the US to have passports.
These regulations have been attributed by the media solely to concerns about homeland security.
But there’s another reason for them too.
Increasingly common parental abductions of minor children across national borders.
The new measures will make it tougher for an abducting parent to “slip under the radar” by means of routing travel plans through places such as Mexico, Canada and the Carribean, which have not previously required passports of US tourists.
Read more in this New Jersey Observer-Tribune article: Abductions are focus of new federal laws.
One aspect of of 9/11 that may be glossed over by the general public are the grieving parents of victims, who have since been denied contact with their late children’s children. For them, a double tragedy.
Some bitter fights over visitation have wound their way through New York’s family courts over the last five and a half years, with little, if any, success. (See my previous post Grandparents’ Rights: Another Comeback?)
Other efforts have been made and battles fought outside the courts - sometimes only in the silence of the grandparents’ own hearts and minds.
Sometimes disputes were over disposition of the bodies, monies to be recovered, attempts to blot out a tragic past with a fresh start on a new future, differing house rules, pre-existing hostilities, allegations of abuse, and on and on.
Whatever the reasons, despite the nation’s boundless collective sympathies for the children and the spouses of the victims of 9/11, these grandparents’ double tragedies may have been largely ignored or forgotten.
Read more in this New York Times article: Parents of 9/11 Victims Torn From Grandchildren.
The governors of Maine and, now, Iowa have established April 25th as Parental Alienation Awareness Day.
These declarations purport to legitimize Parental Alienation as a psychological disorder associated with high-conflict child custody disputes.
But while these two governors may recognize it as a psychological disorder, neither the American Psychological Association or any other qualified organization recognizes it as such.
Father’s groups tout it and have used it as a kind of political pressure tactic to win greater access to their children - regardless of whether that serves the children’s best interests.
Which is why mother’s groups oppose its recognition, crediting it with handing child custody over to abusers.
While there are cases of one parent deliberately trying to turn children against the other parent for no valid reason, there do not appear to be any studies measuring how frequently - or infrequently - that actually occurs.
The true numbers may not bear any relation to the “buzz” over parental alienation.
And anecdotal evidence casts doubt over whether children benefit from recognition and application of this theory in custody disputes - or whether they are hurt by its misuse.
Read more in this Town Hall article: Parental alienation gets a day and this e-Release article: Iowa Governor Thomas J. Vilsack Proclaims April 25th as Parental Alienation Awareness Day.
A California trial court denied a woman’s motion for access in their divorce case to her police officer-husband’s non-financial personnel records.
The woman had alleged that she was a victim of domestic violence and needed the records at least in part for their bearing on custody and visitation determinations in their case.
The family trial court, in effect, held that the husband’s privacy rights outweighed the mother’s and children’s rights to be protected.
The California Court of Appeal reversed, however, finding that the mother demonstrated good cause for her records request, in that the personnel records could provide additional evidence of the husband’s history of domestic and other violence and that that was relevant to custody and visitation determinations in the case.
A former winner of Gold medals for Canada at the Olympics is in hot water.
She stands accused of abducting her daughter to the US in alleged violation of a custody agreement with the girl’s father. The child’s father reportedly feared that this was just the first step toward removing the girl to Iran, the athlete’s current husband’s homeland.
The mother denies any wrongdoing and insists that she is being politically persecuted. She is requesting to be released from her incarceration in Maryland so that she can return to Canada on her own.
Their daughter has already gone back to Canada with her father, who hadn’t seen her in a couple of months.
The Canadian government hasn’t yet officially requested extradition. It is allowed 60 days to do so …
The athlete’s Iranian husband allegedly also faces unrelated criminal charges in Canada. The athlete contends that those charges are also politically motivated.
Read more in this CanadaEast Interactive article: Bedard’s lawyer says she’s lucid amid bizarre trip and custody battle and this CTV.ca article: Myriam Bedard’s lawyers try to reach deal with Quebec in abduction case.
After divorce, holidays are never the same for the parents or the children.
One million children this year are experiencing their first holiday season after their parents’ divorce.
For the children, it’s an enormous adjustment not to have the entire family together with them.
For one of the parents, it’s an enormous adjustment to be alone for the holidays or a significant portion of them.
Besides the new emotional challenges, the family may also face new financial hardships that impact holiday gift-giving.
The first holiday season after divorce is the toughest.
Experts recommend maintaining as much continuity for the kids as possible but, at the same time, starting new traditions to replace those that cannot be continued.
Ideally, parents should plan and work together to ensure that the holidays go smoothly for the kids.
Parents should also take care to reassure their kids that they are doing OK, especially if the kids will be leaving them over the holidays.
Last year, a 12 year old boy committed suicide in the middle of his parents’ bitter divorce. The boy used one of the nine guns that were freely accessible at the home of his father, an ex-Marine.
The father reportedly left the boy and his two younger brothers home alone, unsupervised.
Before the tragedy, it appears that the judge presiding over the divorce had ordered the father to secure his guns.
The father is said to be on probation now, under a plea of guilty to child endangerment, for which he served no time in jail. And he has been denied any contact with his two other sons since their brother’s death.
The father has reportedly admitted to suffering from depression and thoughts of suicide since his son’s suicide.
The father has taken a court-ordered anger management course.
But during his recent divorce, the father allegedly physically assaulted and injured four to five bailiffs. It took twelve bailiffs to subdue and restrain him.
According to the children’s mother, the father has threatened to kill her.
Now, the father wants to resume visitation with his two surviving sons.
The court indicated that it would reinstate visitation on a gradual basis - after the father served his criminal sentences. The children just may be legal adults before that happens.
Read more in this Las Vegas Review-Journal article: Divorce trial results in melee.
The Kansas Supreme Court is about to decide that question in the following case.
A woman was artificially inseminated by an old platonic friend. She became pregnant with twins.
During the months leading up to the birth of her twins, she more or less “dropped” the old friend who had donated his sperm to her. He only found out that she had given birth because of a mutual friend.
Now the twins are 18 months old. They’ve never met their mother’s old friend who had made their birth possible.
But he alleges that the mother and he had verbally agreed that he would co-parent the twins as their father. The mother denies that.
Now, a Kansas statute states that a sperm donor has no parental rights unless the mother and the sperm donor agree otherwise in writing.
No one contends that there was an actual written contract here.
Case closed? Not so fast.
The sperm donor argues that the statute is unconstitutional and not in the best interests of the children conceived.
Meanwhile, the mother filed a petition to terminate the sperm donor’s parental rights - the rights she simultaneously denies the sperm donor had - for unfitness as a parent.
The sperm donor contends that the mother’s petition to terminate parental rights constitutes a sufficient writing under the statute - the statute he argues is unconstitutional.
The sperm donor further muddies the waters by suggesting that the mother, who happens to be an attorney, incorrectly advised him as his counsel that no written agreement was necessary to protect his rights.
At the same time, the sperm donor filed a paternity action to establish the legal father of the children.
The trial court dismissed the sperm donor’s paternity case and the mother’s petition to terminate parental rights, in both cases, because the sperm donor had no parental rights.
The sperm donor appealed.
This is yet another complex, even convoluted real life case that would make a great law school exam.
Except for the fact that only one outcome seems even remotelypracticable: a sperm donor is nothing more than … a sperm donor.
Read more in these Topeka Capital Journal articles: Dispute between friends leads to review of sperm donor rights and Court weighs parental rights.
A widowed Ireland woman remarried and moved to the US with her children.
Her aging parents visited them in the US and took her youngest boy out to lunch.
When she returned after lunch to pick her boy up, they were nowhere to be found.
In an unusual move, her elderly parents allegedly abducted her boy to Ireland. That was two years ago.
Now they are wanted in Illinois for aggravated kidnapping, a charge carrying a penalty of up to 30 years in prison.
The boy’s mother reportedly doesn’t want her parents extradited and jailed.
The grandparents, relying on an old Irish order awarding them custody, previously started an application in the US for return of the child to Ireland under the Hague Convention. But the application was denied.
Communications between the two branches of the boy’s family have resumed.
Nonetheless, extradition proceedings in Ireland are expected to continue in this puzzling case.
Read more in this Irish Examiner article: Grandparents face 30 years in US jail.
The Fatherhood Coalition, successor to the Coalition for the Preservation of Fatherhood, both lends moral support and furnishes legal information to Boston area fathers going through divorce.
The association highlights the importance of fathers in their children’s lives, not just “every other weekend”, but all the time.
The nonprofit organization’s mission is carried out by volunteers, in part through a newsletter and an internet forum.
Unfortunately, like many otherwise worthwhile father-oriented groups, this nonprofit may undercut itself with “anti-establishment” positions taken against child support and against protection from domestic violence.
Read more in this Leominster [MA] Champion article: Fathers unite under local coalition.
Virtual visitation, also known as internet visitation, continues to grow in popularity, where parents are separated from children for one reason or another.
It is leaps and bounds beyond phone calls, especially with younger children who are not as engaged by phone conversations.
In addition to garden variety divorces, virtual visitation opens up new possibilities for supervised visitation where professional supervivor resources are already strained. And for visitation with parents who are incarcerated.
Read more in this Keloland [SD] TV piece: Virtual Visitation.
Parental alienation syndrome.
There is a surprisingly, even alarmingly, wide and sharp divergence of opinion about the validity of this so-called syndrome, one which is not presently recognized by any reputable national association of psychiatrists or psychologists.
Yet it has become an almost-trendy catchphrase, increasingly bandied about in child custody cases.
Sometimes, virtually determining the outcome of such cases.
Too often, brandished all too successfully by none other than … abusers of children.
Sometimes, all but stripping the non-abusive, protective parent of any contact with the children - or restricting the the non-abusive, protective parent to supervised contact.
In other words, sentencing the children to almost continuous control and abuse by the falsely accusing parent. And punishing the non-abusive parent for trying to protect the children.
Usually based on uncorroborated allegations.
Read more about this disturbing development in Junk science or truth? ‘Parental alienation syndrome’ increasingly cited in child custody fights.
An Alabama man, who was reportedly denied court-ordered visitation with his kids by his wife, is still waiting to have his visitation.
First, his wife’s stepfather allegedly shot at the man and his mother - while the children were being carried in their arms.
Two shots found their targets, one being the man’s head. The man didn’t want his children to see his injuries.
Next, the man’s wife’s mother allegedly made a terrorist threat against the judge who had held the children’s mother in contempt of court and sentenced her to 25 days in jail for denial of visitation.
At this point, social services is struggling to come up with a safe and secure way for the man to have his visitation with his children.
And now the kids’ father is no longer seeking visitation only.
He’s seeking sole custody.
This may not be one of the presiding judge’s more difficult decisions.
Read more in this Huntsville [AL] Times article: Man shot in custody dispute seeks visitation.
Granted, you may not see much of them in family court these days, as indicated in my recent post, Grandparents’ Rights: Another Comeback?
But family court proceedings don’t tell the whole story.
More than 297,000 children in New York state live with their grandparents.
Many of those children end up placed with grandparents via social services action in juvenile dependency court cases arising out of abandonment, abuse or neglect.
Other kids end up with their grandparents through formal agreements with their parents, informal dropoffs and informal stepping up to the plate.
Others through guardianship proceedings.
A few even get there through family court proceedings, agreed orders, placement or custody agreements, even the occasional trial.
If the vast majority of those kids aren’t placed with their grandparents through family court, that’s still a lot of grandparents actually exercising grandparent (if not parental) rights (and responsibilities).
Just likely not in family court.
Read more in Remember grandparents who are parents, too.
It’s tough being a grandparent today. No one can really predict where you stand, what rights you do or don’t have to have contact with your grandchildren.
I previously posted in Grandparents Have Rights. Or Do They? about how grandparents used to have greater visitation rights in Florida, but how they’re gradually being whittled away.
That’s largely a result of federal law cases elevating parental rights to a fundamental constitutional right and trumping state statutes on grandparent visitation rights.
But it may not be all over for grandparents. (Not that it was ever really all over; it just required special, unusual circumstances.)
Recently, grandparents’ rights seem to be making a comeback, as state courts purposefully test the boundaries of federal parental rights law.
It should be noted that in all of these cases, the child had lost a parent, creating a special circumstance.
On the other hand, for a while after the latest US Supreme Court case, such tragic circumstances were disregarded by courts in rejecting grandparent rights’ claims.
The pendulum just may be slowly swinging back in favor of grandparents seeking visitation with their grandchildren.
Read more in this USA Today article: Recent legal rulings favor grandparents.
A Philadelphia Weekly article, Family Feud, offers an in-depth, close-up look at a group of dads who are taking on moms and the legal system in the hopes of getting greater access to their kids.
A powerful piece for non-custodial parents who want greater timesharing. Well worth reading, even though Pennsylvania law is different from Florida’s.
Pennsylvania has a non-profit association called Safe Child Custody Support Group.
The organization was reportedly founded in response to what it characterized as “dangerous and often bizarre rulings” in Monroe County, PA Family Courts.
The Group has scheduled a protest for September 2nd, which will be joined by a children’s civil rights organization, Heads Held High.
The founder of the child custody support association had this to say:
“This is a court, where psychologist recommendations are ignored. Where child molesters are allowed overnight visits and judges throw common sense out the window along with children’s welfare.”
Read more in this eMediaWire article: Group Protesting Court Rulings that Endanger Children.
In most states, pets are viewed legally as property, to be equitably distributed in a divorce.
In practice, pets typically follow the children in a divorce.
But what about when the pets are the children, the only children?
Childless couples can be as attached to their “pet children” as couples with human children are to their children.
The law’s very different current view of pets can be powerful incentive to settle pet “custody” by mutual agreement, rather than incur the displeasure of a judge.
But change may be in the wind.
More and more divorcing couples do see what happens to the family pets as a custody / visitation issue.
And the Animal Legal Defense Fund is lending support to their cause.
In an 18 page friend of the court legal brief, the Fund makes it clear that pets do have preferences as to caretakers and the best interests of the pet deserve consideration.
And animal law, including animal rights law, is gaining recognition as a distinct branch of the law.
It’s likely only a matter of time before custody law catches up to pet owners’ (or pet parents’) perceptions.
Read more in this Hartford Courant article: It Can Be A Regular Dog Fight.
After the divorce, sooner or later, one or more stepparents will probably arrive on the scene. The introduction of a stepparent into either of the post-divorce households can add a great deal of tension into the entire blended family universe.
Both parents know that. Divorce lawyers hear about that from divorced clients all the time.
But what about the person who re-marries a non-custodial parent whose children visit - or move in full-time?
The San Luis Obispo Tribune offers some good advice to stepparents in the article Stop feeling like a wicked step-parent.
For father’s day, it’s sobering to see one divorced father’s musings on divorce and it’s aftermath in this New York Times piece called Keeping Divorced Dads at a Distance.
Sadly, this father seems to feel on the outs from his own kids.
He apparently attributes that feeling to perceived flaws in the legal system and a pact (nearly conspiracy) between his kids that he views as a consequence of those flaws in the legal system.
Right or wrong, it may be enlightening to know how many divorced parents share the author’s view of the non-custodial parent’s life after divorce?
A seventeen year old boy is fighting for custody of the three year old baby he reportedly fathered when he was thirteen.
Right now the baby is with her mother, a 30ish former teacher’s aide, who met the boy through her former job at a religious school.
The mother is reportedly a convicted registered sex offender who may have only supervised contact with children, including her own. In effect, the mother’s rearing of the child is supervised.
The mother’s conviction arose out of the unusual circumstances of the conception of her child.
The boy has another child with his current girlfriend. He plans to work nights to support his children while attending college in the fall.
Read more in this KPRC Local 2 news article.
With Father’s Day right around the corner, recognition is properly given in this Miami Herald piece, that Divorced dads juggle kids and job.
The article reviews recent changes in custody and visitation awards that are more likely to allow more fathers more substantial timesharing with their children. According to the article, more than 1 million fathers fall into that category.
Fathers with substantial timesharing face the same challenges of single parenthood that divorced mothers have faced all along.
Only divorced fathers may suffer the ill effects of different, gender-biased expectations, affording less tolerance in the workplace of the demands of parenting on single fathers.
Today’s divorced fathers pursuing substantial timesharing are pioneers.
An Ohio father has reportedly been arrested for interference with child custody for failing to return his son from weekend visitation at the agreed time.
The father plausibly justified his actions, however, with the motive of protecting the child from his mother’s boyfriend, who allegedly served time for a felony conviction for abusing a 5 month old baby girl - and who was to have no contact with the boy according to the divorce papers.
If true, one may wonder: should the father be placed in jail for his actions - or given primary residential custody of his son?
Read more in this Salem [OH] News article.
The US Supreme Court has passed on reviewing a Washington state supreme court ruling permitting a lesbian to seek parental rights to the child she raised for five years together with her former partner.
The theory advanced by the gay woman is that she was a de facto parent (that is, in actual fact, acting as a parent).
The high Court’s non-action leaves gay parental rights up to the individual states - and up in the air - at least for now.
Political / activist groups on both sides of the issue were disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision to stay “hands-off” this question rather than provide legal guidance - especially since the issue is cropping up in more and more cases.
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