There is a common misconception that, after the final judgment, if the custodial parent relocates with the children, in time, their new home state gains jurisdiction of the children for purposes of hearing post-judgment custody and visitation issues.

Generally, that is not the case.

The state that entered the final judgment in the first place, normally retains child custody jurisdiction, until it says otherwise. (Of course, just because a state has jurisdiction, doesn’t mean that it must exercise it.)

Of course, there are common exceptions to this rule. For example if both parents and the children move out of the state, that would typically justify a change of jurisdiction.

Although jurisdiction may not change when the custodial parent moves, the custodial parent may wish to enforce the original judgment in the children’s new home state. That may be possible and desirable.

To do so, the custodial parent should obtain a certified or exemplified copy of the original judgment entered in the original home state and register it in their new state of residence.

Read more in this Honolulu Star Bulletin Q&A piece: Register your custody order with court.

An Alabama father is trying to organize a Father’s Day rally at the Tuscaloosa County courthouse.

To arouse interest, he has been parading around the courthouse grounds for two days, sporting a sign reading “Fathers’ Rights Movement … New Laws Needed … I love my kids.”

The man views both the current Alabama visitation and child support laws as off-base – and wants to see them changed so that divorced fathers can participate more actively in their kids’ lives.

Interestingly, he sees allies in both father’s rights and women’s rights groups.

Read more in this WVUA TV 7 article: Man Striving to Change Fathers’ Rights Laws.

The young wife of a man who allegedly burned their two month old baby in a microwave oven wants custody of her baby – and to keep her husband.

After the father’s arrest for felony injury to a child, the baby was placed into foster care.

The mother was reportedly not present when the father allegedly microwaved the baby.

The mother is now allowed supervised visitation with the baby, provided she complete parenting classes and undergo testing for drug and alcohol use.

The father aspires to become a minister …

Read more in this KHOU-TV 11 News article: Microwaved baby’s mom wants her back.

Believe it or not.

In Michigan, judges are advocating for changes to the state’s child protection laws. The reason is that the state is creating too many legal orphans, by terminating parental rights in a record number of cases.

But academics at the University of Michigan are arguing that the current laws are just fine. The problem, from their perspective, is the judges and the attorneys, untrained and underpaid, respectively.

Interesting statistic though.

Ninety-seven percent of termination of parental rights cases taken on appeal in Michigan are upheld.

That fact tends to support the proposition that Michigan judges know the law and generally apply it correctly.

So why does Michigan have so many orphans resulting from legal judgments? And what is to be done?

Perhaps there is a flaw in the Michigan laws, that can be seen better from the trenches of the bench than the ivory tower…

Read more in this Detroit Free Press letter to the editor from judges: Judges well-trained in child law.

Last November, I posted about Canadian Kids Abducted to Lebanon By Way of Australia.

The mother eventually got her kids back, via unorthodox means that landed two men aiding her in jail temporarily. But both Canada and Lebanon now reportedly recognize that the mother has full legal custody of the kids.

Somehow, the mother was able to expend hundreds of thousands of dollars to recover her children from where they were allegedly abducted to in Lebanon. And the father now faces criminal charges in Canada.

But not all children have such a positive outcome when abducted from Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction – signatory countries to non-signatory countries.

The mother is now serving as a spokesperson for the Missing Children Society of Canada.

And her hard-learned message is:

stricter controls are needed in countries which are signatories to the Hague Convention, to prevent noncustodial parents from circumventing the Hague Convention by whisking children off to countries that are not signatories to the Hague Convention …

Because recovering children from countries that do not adhere to the Hague Convention is just plain dicey – at best.

Read more in this Toronto Star article: Mom says tough laws needed to stop child abductions.

A child is born within ten months after its mother’s divorce.

If mother and child live in Japan, this is a bit of a problem.

Under existing Japanese law, legally, the baby is the child of the mother’s former husband.

But, under a brand new Japanese statute, the baby may now be deemed to be the child of the mother’s new husband – provided that a physician certify that the baby was conceived after the divorce was finalized.

According to reports, about 2,800 Japanese babies each year are born within ten months after their mother’s divorce.

However, ninety percent of them will not qualify for the doctor’s certification required by the new statute.

As a result, it appears that the mothers may fail to register these babies, as is usually done there.

Read more in this Daily Yomiuri article: Registration of children born after divorce begins.

Despite the prevalence of “no fault” divorce, to the extent that fault approaches near-irrelevance, many spouses all but obsess over their partner’s real – or imagined – misdeeds.

Although it serves no real purpose, they just yearn to “get the goods” on the offending, or only possibly offending, spouse.

And this phenomenon is not limited to the US.

In the UK, it is reported that private investigators are all the rage in many divorces. Not just high profile ones either.

Unfortunately, in some cases, private investigators stray into illegal surveillance tactics – and succeed only in getting the hiring spouse in trouble with the law…

Causing the originally innocent spouse’s plan to backfire – with a vengeance.

And transform the “offending spouse” into the “injured party”.

Not worth it.

Read more in this ABC News article: Britain’s Divorce Craze: Hire a Detective.

A new study conducted in Canada offers some interesting insights about marriages and breakups.

Spouses from failed marriages are at greater risk of falling victim to depression than spouses in intact marriages. That may not really be terribly surprising.

But the following findings may:

1. husbands from unsuccessful marriages were six times more likely to suffer from depression than men in intact marriages and
2. by contrast, wives from failed marriages were only three times more likely to experience depression than women in intact marriages.

Read more in this Toronto Globe and Mail article: Men suffer more from divorce, study finds.

How do you punish a young child who misbehaves or is aggressive with family members?

This is a question that many families face at one time or another.

And there are many possible answers, lying across the spectrum from appropriate, to inappropriate – and worse.

For one Iowa mother, the ultimate solution to a child who was biting her was: to bite him back.

Local authorities didn’t second her sentiments though.

While examining her boy for an unrelated injury, hospital workers discovered and reported to police an apparently human bite mark on the child’s arm.

Although no charges have been filed at this time, the boy was taken into protective custody by the local child welfare agency.

Read more in this Daily Nonpareil [Council Bluffs, IA] article: Child in protective custody after parent bites.

Although there has been much written about it in the mainstream media and this blog, Florida is hardly the only state where the rich and the powerful have successfully cloaked their divorce (and other) proceedings in secrecy using a legal mechanism called sealing.

A high profile San Francisco attorney has zealously attempted to seal records pertaining to custody and visitation in his contested divorce case.

And that in itself has spawned quite a bit of publicity – not favorable to him.

Also unfavorable to him have been the court’s denials of the attorney’s motions to seal.

Perhaps as a result, the bitter proceedings appear to have ratcheted down, on their way to settling amicably.

Just like most family court cases eventually do.

Read more in this SF Weekly article: Sealed With a Dis – A powerful Bay Area trial lawyer with political connections tries to keep details of his messy divorce from going public.