UK Grandmother is legal guardian of her two granddaughters (Girls).

Girls’ Mother abducts the Girls to Morocco.

Unlike the UK, Morocco is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Abduction.

Now Mother won’t return Girls to the UK and Grandmother.

The matter is in legal limbo in Morocco.

Grandmother would like to fly there to expedite things, but can’t afford the flight.

UK officials are negotating through the Moroccan Ambassador to the UK.

The Moroccan Ministry for Foreign Affairs has requested a document explaining the circumstances in both Engllish and Arabic.

That will be the basis of the decision by a Moroccan judge.

Mother is charged with child abduction.

Read more in this Blackpool [UK] Gazette article: Help us fly out to get our girls.

Father stresses out about meeting his child support obligation of $1,000 per month.

It’s not clear why. He has a job.

Father is determined to pay his child support.

So, to ensure that he has the funds …

Father allegedly steals merchandise from his employer and sells it to others for cash.

Father is arrested for theft.

Perhaps Father should have instead sought a downward modification of child support …

Read more in this [Waco, TX] KXXV News 25 article: Suspect paid child support by selling stolen goods.

Permanent alimony in Florida – and elsewhere – is getting old.

So think a lot of people and so say a growing number of legislators.

The recession, with so many layoffs, is just the straw that broke the paying spouse’s back.

Many simply can’t afford to pay anymore.

They are seeking relief from the courts in increasing numbers.

And many others simply don’t want to pay anymore … and just don’t think they should have to, forever.

Massachusetts is currently tweaking a bill implicitly shortening the length of time for alimony.

And legislators in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Oklahoma are pressing to limit the length of alimony obligations and end alimony if the receiving spouse lives with another romantic interest or commits a crime.

Lobbyists in several other states, including Florida, are agitating for similar legal changes.

Read more in this Poynter Institute article: Ex-Spouses Protest Prolonged Alimony in Economic Downturn.

Adults and children attend party in a park.

Adults drink alcoholic beverages.

One mother (Driver) reportedly admits to having three or four beers.

Driver, with her four children, decides to take an evening drive, presumably home.

Driver, it later turns out, has a suspended driver’s license.

Driver agrees to take three other children, one year old twins and a two year old, home for another young mother at the party. The younger mother reportedly admits to knowing that Driver is impaired.

Driver also takes a grandfather to some of the children along on the drive and … a friend.

Bringing the head count in the Chrysler PT Cruiser to a grand total of ten people, three adults and seven children.

No child car seats are in use.

While the car is moving, one of the back seat doors allegedly pops open – and two children fall out and roll in the intersection.

As police pursue the car, a third child falls out of the car and rolls on the street.

Driver is charged with DUI, driving with a suspended license, driving at night without headlights on, having seven unrestrained children in a car, endangerment of seven children, and having an open container of an alcoholic beverage in the car.

The absent mother who asked Driver to drive her three children home is charged with child endangerment as well.

The adult friend, who is taken into custody with an open beer in his possession, is also charged with child endangerment.

Two of the injured children, the baby twins, are initially in critical condition, but later improve.

All seven children have been placed into child protective custody.

Read more in this Las Vegas Review Journal article: MOTHERS CHARGED: Man saw kids, alerted police – Three children fell from car and this Las Vegas Fox 5 TV News article: Police: Mother Left Kids With Drunk Driver – Officer Saw Child Fall From Car.

Husband and Wife separate after an alleged incident of domestic violence to keep the peace between them. Neither wants anything to threaten Wife obtaining legal residency status in the US.

While Husband and Wife are separated, Wife and 5 year old Son live in Mexico, where both Wife and Husband are from. Unlike Wife though, Husband and Son are US citizens.

After two years of this separation, Husband allegedly abducts Son back to the US. Husband insists that he just wants Son to have access to better medical care for his tonsillitis.

Communications with Husband and Son having tapered off, Wife makes an application for return of Son to Mexico under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

Because Son has lived in Mexico for two years prior to his abduction, a US court rules that Son must return to Mexico for the custody case there.

This case stands out in that most cases concerning Mexico and the US involve an abduction from the US to Mexico, rather than the reverse as here.

It is not clear that Husband will pursue his custody case in Mexico, since it reportedly tends to favor mothers.

Read more in this Orange County [CA] Register article: 5-year-old boy returned to mother in Mexico.

Children are taken into protective custody by the state.

In time, biological parents’ (Parents) parental rights are terminated, freeing Children to potentially be adopted.

So, after their parental rights are terminated, are Parents responsible for child support for Children?

Well, Alabama’s Supreme Court has just ruled that they are.

The Court’s rationale is that parents who abandon, abuse or neglect their biological children should not be rewarded by being relieved of their obligation to support their biological children.

Still, the state’s highest court’s ruling seems to defy logical as well as being counterintuitive.

Taking the ruling to its logical conclusion, does the biological parents’ support obligation continue if the biological children are legally adopted by adoptive parents?

Or, for that matter, do the biological children still have the right to inherit from their biological parents (as well as from their adoptive parents)?

Read more in this Auburn [AL] Plainsman editorial: Our View: Ruling on Child Support Creates Questions, Worry.

When baby boomers or seniors divorce, the odds are much greater that the wife has mainly been a largely stay-at-home mother and homemaker who never seriously pursued a self-supporting career.

In younger divorcing couples, the odds are greater that the wife has had a career of her own and has earned roughly as much as her husband.

So senior and boomer spouses who are parting are more likely to focus on property division and alimony issues. Retirement savings, pensions, social security benefits, debts, other assets and so on.

But younger divorcing couples are more likely to focus on parenting and child support issues. Timesharing, decision-making, child support and so on.

Also, younger and older couples are likely to have different personal styles in handling the divorce. For example, older couples are more likely to be more deliberate.

Read more in this Mason City [IA] Globe Gazette article: Considerations for boomer divorce different from younger counterparts.

Seventeen year old Florida Girlfriend has infant (Baby).

Despite a difficult childhood, Girlfriend reportedly tries hard to be a good mother.

Girlfriend has boyfriend (Boyfriend), who moves in with Baby and her.

Girlfriend becomes afraid of Boyfriend.

Twenty-one year old Boyfriend has considerable domestic violence arrest history.

Girlfriend seeks order of protection, but doesn’t properly follow through.

Girlfriends takes some measures to try to protect Baby.

Baby’s body is found on an Interstate.

Authorities believe Boyfriend threw Baby out of a car on the highway.

Boyfriend is on trial for first degree murder in Baby’s death.

While in court, Boyfriend allegedly waves to Girlfriend and tells her “I love you”.

Girlfriend complains.

Judge orders Boyfriend not to communicate with Girlfriend.

Boyfriend’s defense will apparently be based, at least in part, on the fact that Girlfriend spent some of her childhood in foster care and received child welfare services, and was committed for three days’ of mental health observation when she was nine years old.

Read more in this Tampa Bay [FL] Fox 13 TV news article: Judge orders McTear to avoid baby’s mom and this St. Petersburg [FL] Times article: Mother of slain baby Emanuel Murray: ‘I can’t believe he’s gone’.

Spanish-speaking men (and women) in Smith County, Texas take their money orders down to the probation department’s Spanish-speaking child support collections Worker.

The Worker instructs them to leave certain fields blank, such as who the money order is made out to.

The immigrant fathers have made their child support payments.

But the mothers of their children claim not to receive child support.

Worker is suspended on an unrelated allegation of harassment.

Worker’s replacement can’t reconcile Worker’s support collections records.

Investigation leads to the money orders being traced back to Worker.

Worker reportedly alters the money orders so that they read as made out to her personally.

Worker allegedly spends the money herself.

And Worker is arrested on felony theft by a public servant of thousands of dollars, among other charges.

Worker pleads guilty and is sentenced to eight years’ incarceration.

With all due respect to the honest vast majority of child support workers, one has to wonder whether child support enforcement hires have to pass criminal background checks … or any background screening.

Read more in this Tyler [TX] Morning Telegraph article: State Employee Stole Thousands In Child Support.

I previously posted on a case where a North Carolina court ordered children out of homeschooling and back into public school at least in part to compensate for the mother’s religious views.

In a similar recent case, a girl was ordered out of homeschooling and into public school because of her “rigidity on faith”.

In an even more recent high profile case, a teenager fled her family in Ohio after converting to Christianity, for fear that her Muslim parents would execute a so-called honor killing on her. A Florida court ordered the teen returned to Ohio, but into foster care.

There are plenty of other cases lately where aspects of a parent’s religious beliefs or practices – or lack of same – appear to play a significant role in a parenting dispute’s outcome.

Unfortunately, the outcomes don’t always seem consistent – or logical – across the country.

Are family courts indirectly imposing their own religious values on minor children and their parents? And what of a parent’s constitutionally protected right of religious freedom?

These are the questions some are asking – and hoping the US Supreme Court will address in the near future.

Read more in this ChristianityToday article: Splitting Babies – Religious differences are making custody disputes even messier.