A while back, I posted on Paternity Challenged After Child’s Death But Before Wrongful Death Suit.

A Florida court, relying upon an old judgment of paternity, has upheld the legal paternity of the man who acted like a dead boy’s father, despite the recent DNA test that disproved his biological paternity.

Now, the man who raised the boy can press a high-ticket wrongful death lawsuit.

Read more in this Sun Sentinel article: Man responsible for PBC teen could benefit from wrongful death suit, judge rules.

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.

I’ve posted previously on sealed cases and secret dockets in South Florida and elsewhere in Florida in South Florida Super-Sealing: Secret Dockets Filled with Hidden, Secret Cases and More Sealed South Florida Cases Found Omitted From Public Docket.

Now rules are being proposed, at the request of the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, to prevent this from happening again in the future.

These proposed rules go to the opposite extreme, requiring a public notice of a public hearing before any motion to seal may be granted.

Under the proposed rules, judges would also have to specify in writing precisely what case records are being sealed.

The rules will not go into effect unless and until approved by the Florida Supreme Court.

Do the proposed rules go too far in requiring a public, publicly-noticed hearing on presumably sensitive information?

Read more in this Bradenton Herald article: Study group urges ban on hidden court cases.

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 twelve year old girl has left her mother’s home in Scotland and is now living in her father’s home in Pakistan, in violation of a previous UK court order awarding custody of the child to her mother.

Simultaneously, the name that the child goes by has changed from Molly Campbell to Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana.

A couple of weeks ago, the media reported that the girl had been abducted by her father, possibly to be forced into an arranged marriage with an adult stranger.

But now, a Pakistani court has ignored the UK custody order and awarded the father temporary custody of the girl at a hearing in Pakistan that the girl’s mother did not attend.

Now the official word is that “[s]he said her mother’s home had become a ‘living hell’ and her father’s Islamic culture in Pakistan suited her more.”

The girl is reportedly under 24 hour surveillance to protect her from being snatched back to the UK.

Pakistan is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, but there reportedly is a similar pact between Pakistan and the UK.

The child’s Pakistani attorney reported that his strategy will be to ” challenge the judicial protocol because it allows British wives of Pakistani men to keep children after dissolution of a marriage”.

Six of the attorney’s previous cases honoring the pact between Pakistan and the UK reportedly resulted in children being returned to the UK for custody decisions to be entered there. Prompting the change in strategy.

Read more in the articles below:

• Telegraph article: Interpol alert for snatched girl, 12
• The Scotsman article: Pakistan court gives Molly’s father temporary custody
• Pakistan Link article: Basit to challenge child custody protocol in SC

WomansDivorce.com shares the expertise of financial planners and analysts in an article titled Divorce and Your Finances – The 7 Most Costly Mistakes.

The article serves as a good reminder of some of the more subtle pitfalls to watch out for in negotiating settlements, such as:

• Mistake #1: Not Knowing the Liquidity of Assets
• Mistake #2: Failure to Consider the Impact of Taxes
1. Capital gains
2. Income taxes
• Mistake #3: Not Understanding the Rules of Retirement Accounts
• Mistake #4: Overlooking Debt and Credit Rating Issues
• Mistake #5: Not Maintaining Control Over Insurance Policies
• Mistake #6: Failure to Budget
• Mistake #7: Failure to Identify Hidden Assets

1. Tax returns
2. Business owner tactics
3. Checking account statements
4. Savings accounts statements
5. Brokerage statements
6. Expense accounts
7. Children’s bank accounts

In Utah, authorities reportedly left a malnourished child in the “care” of the mother’s boyfriend – while her mother was stationed out of state in the armed forces.

The five year old girl reportedly weighed only 12 or 13 pounds.

The girl was later removed from the mother’s boyfriend’s home, but only after her grandfather sought a protective order. Then the boyfriend was arrested.

Authorities did not act due to fear of civil liability.

Recent Utah legislation reportedly makes it riskier to remove a child from a parent or legal guardian.

Unfortunately, the legislation appears to have had the unintended effect of paralyzing child protective services from protecting children.

Read more in this Utah Deseret News article: Child welfare can be full of land mines.

A Malta Court has rejected a Hague Convention application by an English resident for return of a 12 year old boy to the mother who had been awarded custody of him by an English court several years earlier.

The Court ruled that the boy would be placed at grave risk of physical and psychological harm if he returned, because his older brother had been in some scrapes with the law while living with his mother in England. The boy also reported that he had observed drug use in his mother’s home.

The boy’s father had reportedly suffered a nervous breakdown when he lived in the UK, and afterward abandoned his family to return to Malta.

Nonetheless, the two older children allegedly moved back with their father in Malta when they turned 15, under circumstances which were not reported.

The boy allegedly decided to stay in Malta while on vacation with his father and siblings, because “it’s not safe … I don’t want to end up in crime like my brother”. It was not reported whether the Malta Court considered whether the boy had been manipulated or coached.

This case demonstrates how differently the Hague Convention is interpreted and applied by different countries. Many countries would have returned the boy to the custody review and supervision of the country whose courts had already validly exercised jurisdiction over him.

Read more in this Times of Malta article: Boy, 12, finds Gozo a refuge from crime.

A New York judge has reportedly ordered that a Florida man be thrown in jail for six months for non-payment of $32,000 in child support arrearages.

The man allegedly has a history of skipping hearings at will, bouncing support checks, and using his current wife and a corporation to hide his earnings and assets. And he was reportedly previously convicted of securities fraud.

The NY judgment relies on reverse piercing the corporate veil: “[R]everse piercing … makes the corporation liable for the personal debt of the shareholders” where the shareholders have “formed or used the corporation to secrete assets and thereby avoid pre-existing personal liability”.

Now that the judgment is entered in NY, the ultimate question is: will Florida law enforcement authorities arrest and extradite the man so that the NY judgment can be executed and enforced?

Read more in this Law.com article: Man Ordered to Jail Over Failure to Make Child Support Payments.

Ten years ago …

A Mother had custody sole custody of her daughter.

The Mother and child moved to Illinois.

The Father followed.

Then, the Father got sole custody of the child.

Then the Mother founded an organization to lobby for reform of Illinois’ family courts, which she perceived as biased.

Then, the Mother’s visitation was terminated. Absolutely. Completely.

Five years of absolutely-no-contact later …

The Illinois Court issued a gag order prohibiting the parties and other participants from discussing the case – or even the child’s name – with the media.

The Illinois Court reportedly went on to threaten the Mother with jail for contempt – after the Mother suggested that she wished to consult an attorney regarding her constitutional right to free speech.

A First Amendment attorney practicing in Illinois reportedly questioned the validity of the gag order and the sealing of the case.

Meanwhile, eleven years of child custody litigation go on. And a child is quietly denied any access to her mother.

For reasons, if any, not reported. That might violate the gag order.

Read more in this Lake County News-Sun article: ‘SHUT UP!’ She can’t discuss custody case with any third person, including this newspaper.