What are the odds?

According to a local news report, a Miami family court judge ran a stop sign.

And crashed into another car.

The car of a former Miami mayor.

Whose divorce case is being presided over by the judge.

If true, certainly bad luck for the judge.

Probably bad luck for the mayor/family court litigant.

But it could have been worse …

The family court litigant could have run the stop sign and crashed into “his” judge’s car.

Read more about the nightmare alleged in this CBS TV Channel 4 article: Former Miami Mayor Has A Run In With Divorce Judge.

And drive carefully if you have a family court case pending.

You just never know who’s in the other car…

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.

Divorcing couples always have at least basic questions about the impact of divorce on their taxes and their tax status.

Tax status:
Everything depends on whether your divorce was final on December 31st of the tax year in question. If it was, you can file as single. If it wasn’t, you can file jointly or as married, filing separately.

Although married couples filing joint returns receive more favorable tax treatment, each joint filer will generally be responsible for the couple’s entire tax liability.

Child Dependency Exemption:
This generally goes to the custodial parent, although it can be negotiated away to the non-custodial permanently or in alternating years. A special IRS form must be signed by the custodial parent if the exemption is being bargained away.

Dependent Child Care Tax Credit and Earned Income Credit:
These go to the custodial parent and that is not negotiable.

Education Tax Credits:
These go to the parent who has the dependency tax exemption.

Read more in this [Lancaster, PA] Intelligencer Journal article: Tax issues in divorce and separation – Taxing matters.

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,

• why should the court be limited to the marital school district and the custodial parent’s new school district?
• what if both parents have moved?
• what if neither parent has ever lived in the best school districts in the state?
• and on and on go the possibilities.

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.

An ex-cop is publicizing her anticipated forthcoming release of software she dubs Custody Calculations.

It is hyped as a cure for virtually everything that ails separating families and family courts nationwide.

In that respect, it sounds naive and simplistic but, of course, everyone will have to reserve judgment until the software actually materializes. Its debut appears to be running late.

More realistic is the software’s core promise of helping the courts to calculate and collect fines for contempt of family court orders and generate standardized orders on demand.

Custody Calculations contemplates tacking onto each contempt order an extra fine which would be paid to the court system for the court system, possibly to the magnitude of $50 million per state per year.

Sounds good, but that would have to be properly authorized …

Read more in this PRWeb press release: Anyone Interested In 50 Million? Custody Calculations Helping Local and State Governments Obtain New Revenue For Their Family Law Court System.

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.

Under current law, parents who believe that their special needs student’s public school is not adequately meeting their special needs bear the burden of proving at an administrative hearing that that is the case.

That can be a time-consuming and expensive proposition.

In New York state, the governor just approved a bill that will shift to the school the burden of proving that it is meeting the special needs student’s needs.

This is an enormous victory for New York’s special needs kids and their parents.

Will other states follow suit?

Read more in this Syracuse Post-Standard article: Spitzer OKs special ed bill.

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.