Service of papers is not typically a colorful topic. But there are exceptions to every generalization.

In Ohio, a mother was served with a child custody order requiring her to turn her 9 and 21 month old babies over to their father. She was served at the school where she teaches.

The sheriff arrived with a juvenile detective. And a SWAT team.

According to one account, the SWAT team was armed with automatic machine guns, a battering ram and surrounded the school as soon as they arrived. According to the sheriff, only two members of the SWAT team got out of their vehicle.

The school was in an Amish community. And the mother is the daughter of the bishop of the community.

The sheriff defended his actions with reports of threatened violence by the Amish if the authorities persisted in investigations of alleged sex crimes within the Amish community.

The served mother promptly left the school and headed to her farm, with the sheriff and the SWAT team in pursuit.

The children were handed over to authorities by a relative.

Read more in this Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register article: Hearing Set In Amish Raid and this WTOV9 TV news article: Amish Couple Appears In Court For Child Custody Dispute.

Unfortunately, most non-lawyers have little good to say about the legal system. But one research professor disagrees sharply.

It is his belief that legal proceedings can and should be therapeutic for the participants. And his paradigm is called therapeutic jurisprudence.

This mindset emphasizes how the law impacts on people’s lives and well-being, and how the quality of interactions between litigants and judges can affect litigants’ experiences of the legal system.

Under this schema, the law is a “dynamic social force”, which seems fitting and appropriate.

Some family court judges are prime examples of therapeutic jurisprudence. They extol to litigants the virtues of resolving disputes through mediation rather than litigation, not so much because it may save the parties money, but because it will benefit their children – and they will just plain be more satisfied with the outcome than if it is court-imposed.

If therapeutic jurisprudence fails to describe the current state of our legal system, it aptly describes the standard that all legal system professionals should aspire to.

Read more in this University of Arizona News article: Legal Proceedings can be Therapeutic, UA Researcher Finds.

I previously posted on one installment of a series of articles on Basic Tax Questions for Divorcing Parties Answered.

A later installment in the series focuses on division of pension plans, IRAs and the like.

As the article explains, pension plans are often divided via special court orders called QDROs that cause the plan administrator to make part of the former employee’s pension payments directly to the former spouse.

The QDRO does not alter the total pension package payable as a result of the one spouse’s participation in the plan.

QDROs must be prepared with meticulous care. Errors can lead to inability to roll a benefit into another qualified plan without a tax event occurring.

After the divorce is finalized, it is prudent to update all beneficiary designations.

Read more in this Lancaster [PA] Intelligencer Journal article: Tax issues in divorce and separation – Dividing retirement plans and IRAs.

Sadly, child snatching is a fact of modern life. Even in Tupelo, Mississippi.

A local birth mother recovered her baby from adoptive parents-to-be. Custody disputes between parents. Fights between a parent and extended family members.

Then there are the abductions to another country.

With 200 cases of parental child abduction per year, the problem is epidemic.

And all of the above happens despite child custody jurisdictional acts enacted throughout the US and intended to, among other things, deter abductions.

The left-behind parent often feels frustration, however, because, in many instances of reported “kidnapping”, law enforcement is powerless to do anything – because it isn’t kidnapping in the eyes of the law, just in the eyes of the left-behind parent.

Read more in this Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal article: Kidnapping – Why do people steal their own children?.

One of the most common questions in a divorce is whether a spouse can qualify for temporary relief and, if so, how much. In the typical Florida divorce, these are not always easy questions to answer.

But, in one Pennsylvania case, the first question was easy to answer and the answer to the second question was “a shot heard round the bar of family law attorneys”. The case is anything but typical.

A Mellon Bank heir and publishing magnate, a billionaire, is divorcing his wife of more than fifteen years. He earns several million annually.

Pennsylvania, unlike Florida, has a formula for temporary support. The dependent spouse receives forty percent of the paying spouse’s income.

This elegant simplicity led to a court ordering monthly temporary support in this case of $725,000.

It sets an all-time record for temporary support in Pennsylvania – and probably elsewhere too.

The billionaire’s attorneys are, of course, fighting the amount of the award.

Other issues in this unusual case include custody of the couple’s pet Golden Retriever, property division, income determination for purposes of calculating permanent alimony, etc.

Questions about temporary support are still generally tough to answer. But not if the paying spouse is a billionaire.

Read more in this Editor and Publisher article: Scaife’s Wife Gets Giant Settlement After Messy Divorce — Claims Newspaper is ‘Hobby’ and this Pittsburgh Post Gazette News article: Millions up for grabs in Scaife divorce fight.

A bitter New Hampshire divorce has an unusual sequel.

For reasons known only to her, the wife allegedly testified under oath at a divorce hearing that she was seven months pregnant with triplets.

Only she wasn’t. Didn’t even appear to be.

Her lie was reportedly compounded by a supporting sonogram she introduced.

During the divorce case, she also allegedly falsely asserted that she had had breast cancer, that her husband was a terrorist, that her husband was going to derail one of his employer’s trains, and that her husband had abused and neglected their children.

All of these allegations were reportedly false too.

More than anything else, the allegations set off alarm bells regarding the mother’s psychological state.

But, in the end, after the family case ended, the mother was tried and convicted of perjury.

Now she faces up to seven years in jail.

And, if she was designated primary residential parent in the divorce case, that will likely change soon …

Underscoring the extreme danger of lying in family court and why one should never, ever do it.

Read more in this New Hampshire Union Leader article: Final chapter in divorce case: perjury conviction.

The South Dakotan American Indian community used to find much fault with the way that state has dealt with them in regard to matters of child welfare.

For example, American Indian children have been placed long-term in foster care with non-Indian families, merely on their say-so that they were members of an American Indian tribe – when they weren’t.

The liaisons in the tribe blamed violations of the Indian Child Welfare Act on poor communications between the state and the tribe.

Over the last few years, however, things have gotten much better in South Dakota.

Communications have improved, thanks to a governor’s task force and the Collaborative Circle.

The Circle has representatives from the state, various social services experts and all the regional tribes. The Circle meets quarterly and its executive council meets monthly.

Today, American Indians have been certified to serve as foster parents and families. This has helped to keep American Indian foster children within their tribes.

Today, American Indian children’s cases are more smoothly moved to tribal courts when there are custody disputes and related issues.

Now, the tribes have set their sights on educating judges and expert witnesses, as they have educated social services workers.

South Dakota has become a model for other states that have not made comparable progress in state-tribal relations – despite similar measures.

Read more in this Indian Country Today article: Collaborative Circle aids in Indian Child Welfare Act compliance.

Divorce in childhood can have a longstanding impact on a child, including how attentive the child will be toward its aging parents in the future.

That’s the conclusion reached by a Temple University researcher, who publishes his findings in the Advances in Life Course Research journal.

In particular, it is the transitions experienced by the child in the aftermath of divorce and the child’s age at the time of those transitions that determine how the child and its long term relationships with its parents will be influenced.

The study also found that stepchildren are far less likely than biological children to closely attend to aging (step)parents.

Read more in this EurekAlert! science news article: Divorce foretells child’s future care for elderly parent.

The divorce rate is climbing … Half of all marriages will fail …

That’s what we hear in the media all the time … Until today.

A couple of professors at the respected Wharton School say it isn’t so.

According to them, the studies typically cited for the above proposition are statistically flawed. And, they report, the Census Bureau in essence admitted it.

In reality, they claim, the divorce rate is falling … Is now at its lowest point since 1970.

They grant that the marriage rate has also fallen … But those who marry today tend to stay married longer, they conclude.

Read more in this New York Times editorial: Divorced From Reality.

Why do couples divorce? Here’s a theory you may not have heard before.

Menopause.

An American psychiatrist posits that hormonal changes associated with menopause, among other things, reduce women’s tendencies to foster harmony in the home and increase moodiness and sensitivity.

Statistics reveal that divorces of couples over forty are more likely to be started by the wife. These statistics are compatible with this psychiatrist’s theory.

This theory seems to fly in the face of the proverbial male “midlife crisis” as the cause of post-40 marital breakups.

But it may be tempting to imagine that skyrocketing divorce rates may be “cured” by hormone therapy.

Read more in this Sydney Morning Herald article: Menopause may prompt divorce.