From yesterday’s Atchley v. Atchley: The trial court addressed the following inquiry to the husband. Q. Now, you said you attend a Morning Star Church? A. Correct. Q. Do you donate money to the church? A. I don’t donate money to the church. Q. Do you—does [husband’s girlfriend]? A. No, she has not yet. Q. […]
Archive | Parental Rights
Court Upholds Decision Giving Parent Authority Over Child’s Medical Care Because That Parent Would Immunize the Child
The decision seems correct to me, because it is in the child’s best interests. And while I think that there should be serious First Amendment constraints on decisions based on a parent’s speech, I think courts may and should consider each parent’s non-speech conduct that may seriously affect the physical health of the child. And […]
North Carolina Supreme Court on Two-Mother Families
In Boseman v. Jarrell (Dec. 20), Julia Boseman and Melissa Jarrell decided to raise a child together: Plaintiff [Boseman] and defendant [Jarrell] met in 1998. At that time, plaintiff lived in Wilmington, North Carolina, and defendant lived in Rhode Island. The first time they met, they “discussed their desires to have children.” Roughly one month […]
Adoption of Children and Religious Matching
A commenter on the Adoption of Muslim Children thread, apparently reacting to the AP article statement that “State child welfare agencies that permanently remove Muslim children from troubled homes usually can’t find Muslim families to adopt them because of the restrictions in Islamic law,” asks: Could someone please clarify which U.S. law identifies an orphaned […]
American Court Refuses to Honor Lebanese Islamic Court Child Custody Order
By Eugene Volokh on November 23, 2010 5:53 pm in Islamic Law in the American Legal System, Parental Rights
Strikes me as quite sensible, not because of some special disability imposed on Sharia law as such, but because of the application of generally applicable American rules, under which comity is given to certain foreign child custody decrees only if they generally comply with American norms. The case is Charara v. Yatim (Mass. Ct. App., […]
One Parent’s Denial of Access to the Other Parent, and the Best Interests of the Child
Chris and Pat have a daughter. They split up. The basic child custody rule is that the choice of which parent should have custody must be based on the best interests of the child. And if one parent has taken the lead childrearing role, and had the most contact with the child, that tends to […]
Sibling Visitation
May a state give siblings — usually adult siblings — a right to visitation with a child, over the parents’ objection? The issue is discussed in In re D.C. & D.C., decided yesterday by the New Jersey Supreme Court. That case involved prospective adoptive parents (currently foster parents, but an adoption request is pending), but […]
Conservative Christian Religious Beliefs, Use of Moderate Corporal Punishment, High Sex Drive, and Interest in Wife’s Private Areas Do Not Show Family Violence
From In re Wean (Tex. Ct. App. Aug. 31), which reversed a trial court finding that a father engaged in family violence against his children, and a protective order based on that finding. The opinion discussed many matters, and I can’t do full justice to it here. But I thought I’d quote a few passages: […]
Living in Sin and Judicial Activism
From today’s In re the Petition of Theresa Goudeau to Adopt a Minor Child (Ga. Ct. App.), 2010 WL 3369363 (some paragraph breaks added) (opinion not yet on any free online site, to my knowledge). I should say that the trial court’s decision to take a child away from foster parents because they’re an unmarried […]
An Interesting (Though Sad) Development in the Rifqa Bary Case
Rifqa Bary, about whom I blogged before, is the 17-year-old girl from a Muslim family in America who ran away from home, claiming her father had threatened to “hurt her, kill her or send her back to Sri Lanka” because she had converted to Christianity. A police investigation apparently concluded that the girl’s charges were […]
May Child’s Grandfather Adopt the Child, While the Child’s Mother Retains Her Parental Rights?
That’s the issue in In re Adoption of A.M., decided yesterday by the Indiana Court of Appeals. The biological father was fine with the adoption, which terminated father’s parental rights — the plan was basically for the grandfather (on the mother’s side) to take on the father role, with the mother retaining her role as […]
To Get Children Back, Father Must Get Counseling to “Address His Use of Sexist and Racist Language”
So holds In re G.G. (Cal. Ct. App. June 29, 2010), by a 2-1 vote. (The court order said that “Father to be in individual counseling to address issues with a male therapist regarding father‘s racist and sexist views,” but the appellate opinion seems to treat the counseling as focused solely on the father’s use […]
Third Circuit Upholds Injunction of Threatened “Sexting” Prosecution
The case is Miller v. Mitchell, just handed down today, and it’s important but complicated. Please bear with me. [UPDATE: For more on this case, and how it could impose stringent constitutional limits on anger management classes, anti-drug/alcohol-abuse classes, or even traffic school offered as alternatives to prosecution, see this follow-up post.] Here are the […]
Adoption Over Parent’s Objection Requires Showing That Continued Parent-Child Relationship Would Be Detrimental to the Child
An interesting, but unsurprising, decision in Todd v. Copeland (Va. Ct. App. Mar. 9, 2010): Before 1995, Virginia’s adoption statutes, as interpreted by Virginia’s appellate courts, passed constitutional muster despite the absence of an explicit standard because the courts read into the statute the requirement that “[a]n adoption over objection by a natural parent should […]
“Honor Killings” by Muslim Men in the U.S.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that “Police say that at least six Muslim men have been arrested in the US in the past two years for crimes that suggest honor killings.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t point to the specific incidents, nor tell us the number of honor killings (the number of arrestees may not match the […]