South Carolina Mother served with summons for child support. Past due child support.

Twelve years, to be precise. Children are long since grown.

But that doesn’t void the legal duty to pay.

The entire arrearage.

All 63 cents of it.

Or else.

According to a new computer system utilized by the South Carolina courts.

But the Mother says she discharged her entire obligation twelve years ago, and received a notification to prove it.

Hope she saved it. It can be difficult to prove to those computers that they’re wrong.

Read more in this USA Today article: S.C. court issues summons for old 63-cent child-support bill and this WLTX article: Sumter Court Said Woman Owed $0.63 in Child Support.

Wisconsin ex-husband, Father, is deployed in military. Father “assigns” his visitation time to his new wife, Stepmother.

Ex-Wife and Mother refuses to allow Stepmother to have Father’s full extended summer visitation period. But Stepmother is willing to allow Stepmother some visitation in Father’s absence.

Wisconsin actually has a statute allowing a court to grant “reasonable” visitation rights to a stepparent under the right circumstances.

Under that statute, the trial court awarded the Stepmother Father’s full extended summer visitation.

On appeal, the ruling was reversed because a fit custodial parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning his or her child, and custodial visitation rights are not transferrable. There was no showing of special circumstances entitling Stepmother to visitation rights under the statute.

This ruling is consistent with the line of grandparent visitation cases in various states since a landmark US Supreme Court case in 2000.

Put another way, timesharing is for the parent, not the stepparent (or grandparent). Nonetheless, disputes over children being left with stepparents during visitation are incredibly common.

Read more in this Wisconsin Law Journal case digest.

A Florida family court awards Wife $5,000 as a lump sum payment from Husband.

Husband is angry.

Husband knows he must comply with letter of order. But decides to play fast and loose with the spirit of the order, for maximum effect.

So Husband pays, in full – with wheel barrels full of pennies. 500,000 of them. Delivered to Wife’s attorney’s office.

It is legal tender. But …

Now Former Wife asks Court to hold Former Husband in contempt.

And the Court does, ruling that the Former Husband intended to harass Former Wife.

Read more in this Orlando Sentinel article: Frank rolls out the alimony barrel.

New couple move into (guest) house on Husband’s parent’s property. Couple adopt two pet dogs.

Four years later, Wife moves out and gets an apartment. Wife leaves pets with Husband, but visits them often.

Couple files for divorce. The family court orders Husband not to dispose of any marital property or the couple’s pets.

Somewhere along the way after that, the Husband asks his parents to take care of the dogs.

Then the Husband dies of a drug overdose. The Wife then requests that Husband’s parents turn the dogs over to Wife.

Husband’s parents refuse. Who should get the dogs?

A trial court inexplicably rules that Husband’s parents are entitled to keep the dogs. Wife appeals.

The appellate court reverses and orders Husband’s parents to relinquish the pets to Wife, finding that the prior court order prohibited Husband from giving the dogs to his parents.

But Husband’s parents still refuse to give up the dogs. They describe the appellate court’s ruling as irrelevant or moot.

Apparently the Wife and her in-laws have been parties to multiple litigations. One was recently settled and the settlement agreement reportedly contained some language that arguably put to rest all disputes between them before the appellate court issued its ruling.

Depending on the precise wording of the release clause of the settlement agreement, the Husband’s parents’ reasoning may be questionable.

But it’s probably not questionable that they will all be back in court again soon.

Read more in this Cleveland Plain Dealer article: Widow’s custody battle in divorce court goes to the dogs.

A Canadian couple just lost their sixth child to Child Protective Services.

They haven’t abandoned, abused or neglected any of their children.

They haven’t had the chance. Each child has been taken into protective custody shortly after birth.

It hasn’t been because the parents are in jail. Or drug addicts. Or alcoholics. Or abusers.

Or any of the other usual reasons.

It’s because they aren’t intelligent enough to raise children – maybe.

The Mother is borderline mentally retarded. They both had poor upbringings that left them facing serious challenges.

But it really isn’t clear that they are incapable of rearing the family they desperately want.

While one parenting evaluator gave them both a thumbs down, another thought that they could do it together, especially with in-home support services.

Services extended to many other parents who have an actual history of abandonment, abuse and/or neglect.

Yet this couple hasn’t been given a chance to parent – and barely a chance to have contact with the children taken from them.

Even though they’ve taken parenting classes, offered to share parenting with a third party that doesn’t share their challenges and have generally successfully challenged various allegations by the government.

Even a couple of judges seem to think they might be able to pull it off.

But the law, which applies to some one and one-half million Canadians, apparently doesn’t permit those judges to follow their instincts.

There’d probably be a lot fewer parents raising families if every parent who wanted to have a family had to undergo a parental capacity assessment.

There’d probably even be some very surprising assessment results.

One has to wonder about the disparate treatment that raises a de facto presumption that children should be taken from the mildly mentally handicapped at birth, but only removed from other parents after they have already actually abandoned, abused and/or neglected their children.

Read more in this Vancouver Sun article: Deemed not smart enough to be a parent.

Army colonel did not want to pay court-ordered child support beyond his small voluntary payments. How badly did he not want to pay additional child support?

Badly enough to allegedly engage in fraud in the paternity testing process, specifically, having someone else take the paternity test for him. For which he was recently convicted of “attempted theft by deception, solicitation to tampering with public records, solicitation to fabrication of evidence and being an accessory to obstruction of the administration of law”.

Apparently undeterred, the military man now seeks a reduction in his increased court-ordered support payments, because his income has been halved since he retired from active duty as a result of his convictions.

The applicable child support enforcement agency has indicated its intention to oppose any reduction in the officer’s child support.

A Colonel. In the US armed forces.

Read more in this Midstate [PA] News article: Convicted colonel tries to cut child support payments and this Central PA news article: Ex-colonel seeks cut in child support.

A Broward County judge entered a temporary injunction for protection against domestic violence against a South Florida Husband who allegedly entered his Wife’s home and searched the house she shared with their three sons, machete in hand, for a phantom boyfriend. The injunction was to protect both Wife and the children.

The injunction required the Husband to surrender any guns in his possession.

Still, a few days later, the Husband reportedly walked the parking lot in the apartment complex where he was staying with a relative, shooting a gun off at cars parked there.

Police shot and killed the Husband – before the date of the hearing to make the injunction permanent.

Read more in this Sun Sentinel article: Wife sought protection against man shot dead by Pembroke Pines police.

Young UK Mother has two babies, ages one and two years old, one from a previous relationship and one with her fiance, an Indian national.

Mother and kids move to remote area of India with now-husband. They are pursuing an “alternative lifestyle”.

Mother dies suddenly, apparently due to complications related to her asthma and, possibly, poor medical care. Foul play is not suspected.

Husband’s visa has expired. Husband and both children are stranded in India. Grandmother wishes Mother’s body to be returned to UK for burial.

Grandmother, who is legal guardian to elder baby, is advised not to go to India.

Grandmother fears children are not well either.

Husband is now quoted as saying “I want to stay in the UK but I won’t let my kids go on a plane on their own. I won’t let them leave without me.”

Unusual potential three-way international child custody dispute brewing over two babies now in India?

Hopefully not. India is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

Read more in this UK Mail article: British bride who sought new life in India dies ‘of sore throat’ ten days after her wedding.

Delinquency in child support is a huge problem in this country. And in the UK too.

In the UK in 2005, there were 330,000 cases in arrears, to the extent of 3 billion UK pounds.

So the Brits came up with a hoped-for solution to stem the tide.

A new class in elementary school that will teach children to assume responsibility for supporting their own children. As well as the consequences of failing to do so – right down to the lengths of jail sentences they can expect for their delinquency.

At the same time, the UK’s support enforcement agency is lobbying for greater enforcement powers, such as the ability to confiscate passports and revoke driver’s licenses administratively, without judicial process.

This new class may do more than sex education to reduce unwanted teen pregnancies. Perhaps the US should follow suit …

Read more in this UK Times article: Boys will learn to be good dads at 11.

Minnesota Mother goes to Wisconsin and reports Father to police for having their five kids with him wrongfully.

Mother produces a 2005 court order awarding her custody of the children.

Police go to the Father’s home to investigate at about 11pm.

The children, all present, all appear to be fine. Some of them are asleep in bed.

The Father produces a custody order too, but his is from 1999.

The Mother is very agitated.

The police turn the children over to their Mother, who returns to Minnesota with them.

The next day, the police learn that the Mother’s more recent custody order is fraudulent.

The Mother is taken into police custody in short order and the children are temporarily taken into protective custody by Minnesota.

Most of the children are later returned to the Father’s custody.

The Mother will be extradited to Wisconsin to face charges of interference with custody.

Read more in this Appleton [WI] PostCrescent article: Woman jailed in custody dispute