I hate these stories. A couple in love decides to start a family. They do. Their bond cracks under the strain of parenting (parents, y’all know exactly what I’m talking about). As they break up, instead of putting the child’s well-being first, one of them tries to keep the other one entirely out of their child’s life.

In this case, both parents are women, “law enforcement officers,” according to the AP. In order to have their bond to their child be mutual from the start, one donated her eggs and the other implanted the embryo and bore the child. When they broke up, the birth mom took the child to Australia. The bereft ova-mom hired a private detective and tracked her down. Now they’re in the Florida courts, where the ova-mom is insisting that they were both parents all along. ...

If only they could have gotten married! One major reason for marriage is that it clarifies parenthood. It’s long been settled law that, biology or not, the mother’s husband is the child’s father—even if the husband was on another continent when the child was conceived. (Check out Michael D. v. Gerald H., in which Scalia rejects a biological father’s claim to paternity, ruling in favor of the husband who had acted as a father.) If a cuckold is a legal father, why not the woman without whom the child would never have been conceived—either literally, donating the egg, or figuratively, dreaming up the plan of adding to the family?

Labels: biological parenthood, children, custody, donor conception, Florida, gay couples, gay marriage, gay parenting, law, more than two parents, motherhood, parenting, relationship dissolution

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After a couple years of sending my girlfriend a clear message of, "We're never getting married," I proposed. There are reasons it took me so long to come around, but none of them fell into those magazine/sitcom stereotypes (which can be summed up as, "He's having too much fun screwing around and doesn't want to commit").

In fact, I'm pretty sure that the people who write sitcoms and jewelry commercials and movies about bachelor parties don't have any goddamned idea how actual human relationships work. So for the women who have been conditioned to believe that we men are afraid of commitment because we don't want to give up our seat on the Saturday Night [expletive] Train, allow me to give you the real reasons marriage scares guys.

#5. We're Flooded with Anti-Marriage Messages

Labels: child support, children, cohabitation, culture, custody, divorce, Marriage, men, weddings, weddings vs. marriage

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Labels: adultery, childhood, children, culture, custody, divorce, economics, Marriage, men, poverty, women

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The December 2011 peer-reviewed journal Family Relations [pdf] reports the latest findings from the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) on the well-being of children whose mothers split up before they were 17. The NLLFS has been following 85 children of lesbians born through donor insemination beginnning in the 1980's. Information about the study and its earlier published research is all located on the NLLFS website.

Of the 73 two-mother families in the study, 40 couples had split up by the time their child was 17 (over 90% of these occurred before the child was 13). This is a higher rate of separation than the divorce rate for married heterosexuals. 71% of separated couples reported shared custody of the children, a number considerably higher than the rate of shared custody among divorced heterosexuals. 59% of the couples had completed second-parent adoptions, and parents in that group were more likely to share custody. The children whose mothers had completed second parent adoptions were much more likely to report feeling close to both mothers. In 10 families, the birth mother was primary custodial parent. The study reports no families in which there was one primary custodial parent and that parent was the nonbiological mother.

The study's key finding: there was no difference in psychological health or problem behavior between those children whose mothers had completed second parent adoptions and those who had not, or between those whose mothers shared custody and those who did not. The authors note that this lack of association could reflect the small size of each subgroup. (Previous research from the NLLFS, published in Pediatrics [pdf], reported no difference in the well-being of children whose moms split up and those whose moms were still together.)

Labels: adoption, children, civil unions, custody, gay marriage, gay parenting, lesbians, motherhood, parenting, relationship dissolution

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I NEVER wanted to get divorced. My parents’ split had been like an antipersonnel bomb, ripping everyone to pieces. So for 16 years, I stayed married.

But the relationship curdled over time, and, ultimately, it rotted into nothing. The contrast of these two endings always reminds me of that pithy old Robert Frost poem “Fire and Ice,” in which passion leads to detonation and dispassion to gelidity. In both cases, it’s over and terrible.

Frankly, hearing the word-sandwich of “good” and “divorce” — which I do with some frequency — makes me queasy. Bluntly, there is precious little upside to divorce. It is a horror, its effects on everyone are real and enduring, and in a parenting culture that sees skinned knees as spiritual gifts, it can seem as if we’re giving our children the big door prize of relentless psycho-economic distress. It is hard to feel as if one is a good, divorced parent. But one can try.

Weirdly, and mercifully, ending our marriage was not utterly devastating. My former husband and I were, and are, never going to have one of those California divorces, where the exes all sit around the Hockney-style pool drinking Chablis. Not our style. But we have concentrated not on our rancor but on our children. Like most divorced people our age we know.

“It could be that, because this group is marrying later in life, if at all — and mostly staying together — if they do get divorced, they do it very differently,” said Betsey Stevenson, an assistant professor at the Wharton School of Business who tracks marriage and divorce trends.

“Differently” may not sound like a radical move, but in the annals of American divorce, it actually is. First of all, “this group” (by and large, Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980) according to Dr. Stevenson’s research and census data, does a full recon to avoid divorce in advance, to the extent that nearly 60 percent of us now live with their future spouses before marrying. Almost 80 percent of us over all have made it a decade into marriage, a good indicator of marital longevity.

So it makes sense that if we do divorce, we do our due diligence there, too. Consider that just 30 years ago, only three states upheld joint custody; today, all do. Also consider that divorce mediation and collaborative divorce are on the rise, a result of parents’ wanting to spare children the horrors of the Kramer v. Kramer bloodbaths of their own childhoods. Survey the increasing legions of exes who continue to share homes, holidays, vacations to preserve a sense of family for the children.

Labels: children, culture, custody, divorce, Marriage, parenting

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The police found about 10 grams of marijuana, or about a third of an ounce, when they searched Penelope Harris’s apartment in the Bronx last year. The amount was below the legal threshold for even a misdemeanor, and prosecutors declined to charge her. But Ms. Harris, a mother whose son and niece were home when she was briefly in custody, could hardly rest easy.

The police had reported her arrest to the state’s child welfare hot line, and city caseworkers quickly arrived and took the children away.

Her son, then 10, spent more than a week in foster care. Her niece, who was 8 and living with her as a foster child, was placed in another home and not returned by the foster care agency for more than a year. Ms. Harris, 31, had to weather a lengthy child neglect inquiry, though she had no criminal record and had never before been investigated by the child welfare authorities, Ms. Harris and her lawyer said.

“I felt like less of a parent, like I had failed my children,” Ms. Harris said. “It tore me up.”

Hundreds of New Yorkers who have been caught with small amounts of marijuana, or who have simply admitted to using it, have become ensnared in civil child neglect cases in recent years, though they did not face even the least of criminal charges, according to city records and defense lawyers. A small number of parents in these cases have even lost custody of their children.

New York City’s child welfare agency said that it was pursuing these cases for appropriate reasons, and that marijuana use by parents could often hint at other serious problems in the way they cared for their children.

Labels: children, culture, custody, foster parenting, New York, parenting, race

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...Here are the troubling aspects of the court's ruling. (As opposed to the troubling aspects of M.C.'s life, which are, of course, numerous). I'm chronicling these because the reasoning of this case may hold sway when there is a known biological father in what are the more common circumstances of a same-sex couple who are both fit parents.

The law must be able to recognize that a child can have three parents. The categorical statement in this opinion to the contrary is wrong on California law and as a matter of policy. California trial courts are already allowing a bio mom's partner to adopt a child without terminating the rights of a semen donor who is functioning as a father. A nonbio mom in California becomes a legal parent through holding the child out as her own or through being married to or in a domestic partnership with the bio mom. That should not be jeopardized by the existence of an identifiable genetic father. The Children's Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law filed a friend of the court brief advocating that M.C. had three parents. ...

The appeals court says Irene "likely" had a superficial attachment to M.C. because the couple and child lived together for only three weeks. Well, a couple of years ago a different California appeals court rejected the argument that a period of time was necessary before a nonbio mom could be considered a parent. (See my post about Charisma R. v. Kristina S. here.) This court reveals its hostility to nonbio moms in another place -- a completely unnecessary footnote in which it suggests that the purpose of "paternity" determinations is providing genetic history for a child and that those provisions should not be interpreted to facilitate "parentage" determinations for nonbiological parents. Fortunately, the California Supreme Court has ruled otherwise, going back to 2005.

I've written elsewhere that we are likely to see increasing instances of a child conceived through sexual intercourse born to a woman who has a same-sex partner or spouse. I am deeply troubled by the idea that method of conception determines legal parental status, although I begrudgingly admit that seems to be the current state of the law.

Labels: biological parenthood, California, children, custody, Fathers, more than two parents, parenting, sex

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This should have been a good New Year’s for Aharon Friedman, a 34-year-old tax counsel for the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee. He spent time with his 3-year-old daughter, and could have been thinking about the influence he will have starting Wednesday, when his boss, Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, becomes chairman of the powerful tax-writing committee.

Instead, Mr. Friedman, an Orthodox Jew, finds himself scrutinized in the Jewish press, condemned by important rabbis, and attacked in a YouTube video showing about 200 people protesting outside his Silver Spring, Md., apartment on Dec. 19. They were angered by Mr. Friedman’s refusal to give his wife, Tamar Epstein, 27, a Jewish decree of divorce, known as a get.

The Friedman case has become emblematic of a torturous issue in which only a husband can “give” a get. While Jewish communities have historically pressured obstinate husbands to give gets, this was a very rare case of seeking to shame the husband in the secular world. ...

Mr. Friedman and Ms. Epstein have been civilly divorced since April and share custody of their daughter, but they are still married according to Jewish law. And without a get neither he nor Ms. Epstein can remarry within the faith. She is considered an agunah, or chained woman.

Although the majority of men in Jewish divorces grant their wives a get with little fuss, the husbands who refuse — it is estimated there are several hundred agunot in the United States today — can provoke a clash between religious folkways and secular divorce law. ...

And the Rabbinical Council of Greater Washington issued a statement saying that the parties had not yet exhausted the rabbinical courts, suggesting it was premature to blame Mr. Friedman for withholding the get.

But other rabbis have argued that it is Jewish custom to give a get once divorce terms have been settled, and with no possibility of reconciliation.

Labels: custody, divorce, Judaism, men, religion, remarriage, women

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Marriage absence is the greatest domestic problem America faces. Our most daunting social, economic, budgetary, criminal and constitutional dilemmas are driven by marriage absence and will not abate unless traditional marriage is protected and encouraged.

Establishing sensible policies to return America to a marriage-based society will prove rewarding, productive and seminal. The major problems of most unmarried mothers and their children will be naturally resolved. A woman's right to be supported by, cared for and helped by her husband will be ensured. Health-care coverage will become commonplace without resorting to national health care. Chronic budgetary deficits at state levels will disappear, and the federal deficit will drop as the number of single-parent families costing taxpayers $20,000 each plummets. Most children will grow up in intact homes, disciplined and prepared to learn in school. Substance abuse, child abuse and neglect and poverty will decrease to manageable norms. The dollar will regain strength as the currency of world exchange.

The future of the United States is in jeopardy. Therefore, we must recreate marriage in America now, while we still have time to prevent certain financial and social collapse.

The rewards of the following "Marriage Values" policies are certain. We can reconstitute our nation's most valuable asset: healthy marriages, the social and economic cornerstone on which all successful nations have been powered.

Labels: culture, custody, divorce, divorce reform, economics, Marriage, parenting, poverty, stepparents

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Debra H. is the mother of her six-year-old son, a child she raised with Janice R,. her ex-partner who is the child's biological mother. So ruled the New York Court of Appeals today (and that's the highest court in NY, so their decision is final). For that reason, press reports, at least the early ones, refer to the opinion as expanding the rights of gay parents.

Not so fast. What the court actually did was limit the rights of children of same-sex couples to a relationship with only one parent, unless the parents married each other (or entered a civil union or a domestic partnership comferring all the rights of marriage) or completed a second-parent adoption. (Debra H. and Janice R. were in a Vermont civil union.) This is not good news. Children are not supposed to suffer for the decision of their parents not to marry. That has been an elemental principle of family law for more than four decades. Yet suffer they will, those New York children, because apparently that principle goes out the window when it comes to lesbian couples raising children.

New York is not an isolated case. In Massachusetts, where same-sex couples have been allowed to marry for six years, a child born to a married lesbian couple is the child of both parents, but a child born to an unmarried couple, under identical circumstances (such as conception using an unknown donor) has only one parent, unless the nonbiological parent completes a second-parent adoption. Such adoptions take time and money, both often in short supply. (In a New Jersey cases a few years back, the couple made the economically sensible decision to have their second child and then go through one adoption proceeding for both of them. Unfortunately, the nonbio mom died unexpectedly before any adoption took place, and the child was unable to collect social security survivors benefits because under the law he had only one parent.) I have said repeatedly (and it's the title of my new Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties article), A Mother Should Not Have to Adopt Her Own Child.

Labels: civil unions, custody, de facto parenting, gay couples, gay marriage, gay parenting, Massachusetts, New York

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Joseph Reyes, an Afghanistan war veteran and second-year law student, converted to Judaism when he married Rebecca Shapiro in 2004. When they split up in 2008, Rebecca won primary custody of their daughter, and Joseph got regular visitation. The couple had allegedly agreed to raise their child Jewish, but Joseph, seeking to expose his 3-year-old to his Catholic faith, had her baptized last November. When she learned that her daughter had been baptized without her consent, Rebecca obtained a temporary restraining order in December 2009, forbidding Joseph from "exposing Ela Reyes to another religion other than the Jewish religion during his visitation." In January of this year, Reyes again took Ela to Mass at Holy Name Cathedral, with a local TV news crew in tow. His ex-wife's lawyers demanded he be held in criminal contempt—with a maximum punishment of six months in prison.

Can a court really tell a parent what religion his child will be? And can a judge possibly back up such an order with the threat of jail time?

Labels: Catholic Church, children, custody, divorce, Judaism, religion

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Today, Lambda Legal argued before the New York State Court of Appeals on behalf of a non-biological mother after an intermediate appeals court denied her right to seek custody and visitation with, and provide financial support to the child she has parented with her former same-sex partner. ...

Lambda Legal represents Debra H. in her effort to continue to parent the son she and her former partner, Janice R., planned together. The couple agreed they would raise a family together in a two-parent household and conceived their son using in vitro fertilization. Janice promised that Debra would formally adopt their child, and they met with an adoption lawyer prior to their son's birth. In 2003, before he was born, they entered into a civil union in Vermont, which at that time was the most legally significant relationship available to same-sex couples under U.S. law. Debra was by Janice's side throughout labor and delivery and cut their son's umbilical cord; her last name was included in their son's name on his birth certificate. In the years that followed Debra gave him the day and night love, nurture and care of a mother. When it came time for the second-parent adoption, Janice, an attorney, advised Debra "as a lawyer" that they didn't need to get the courts involved and Debra would always be the boy's parent. When the couple's relationship ended in 2006, Debra continued actively to parent her son, who moved with Janice into an apartment only a block away. Debra and her son were together daily, and she often put him to bed.

In May of 2008, when the child was 4 ½ years old, Janice abruptly refused Debra any further contact with him. Debra immediately filed for emergency joint custody and restoration of parental access.

Labels: custody, de facto parenting, donor conception

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AS we have just passed the 40th anniversary of that much vilified institution, the no-fault divorce, it is an appropriate moment to re-evaluate how divorce affects families, and particularly children. The California law took effect on Jan. 1, 1970, and was followed by a wave of marital separations that continues to this day — and also a wave of rhetoric condemning divorce for harming children and undermining the fabric of society.

As divorce is clearly here to stay, it may be more productive to instead ask how the process of dissolving a marriage might be changed to avoid, as much as possible, damaging children. ...

What children need instead are no-fault custody proceedings — which could be accomplished with two changes to state family law. First, take the money out of the picture by establishing fixed formulas for child support that ensure the children are well taken care of in both homes, regardless of the number of days they spend in each. Second, defuse tension by requiring parents to enter mediation to find a custody solution that best meets the needs of all concerned.

Labels: custody, divorce

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In a case that could have far-reaching implications for gay rights, a Santa Cruz woman is seeking to maintain joint custody of 10-month-old twins that she and her former partner, the biological mother of the children, had agreed to raise.

As court battles over the rights of non-biological gay parents garner national attention, the Santa Cruz case contains a complicated wrinkle: The biological mother is now involved in a romantic relationship with the sperm donor, who has joined her in seeking full custody of the boys.

"It's the first case I'm aware of where a lesbian couple in a committed relationship has brought a child into the world, then after breaking up, the biological mother has tried to sub in the biological father," said Deborah Wald, a family law attorney who, along with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, represents the non-biological mother.

"If they won, we would consider it a very dangerous precedent for lesbian couples having children with the assistance of known sperm donors," Wald said.

The biological parents, Maggie Quale and Shawn Wallace, who now live together, say they should be allowed to fully parent their twins, Max and Levi, without a court order allowing even partial custody to Quale's former partner, Kim T. Smith. They say the civil lawsuit filed by Smith, who declined to comment, has put them in the painful position of asserting their rights while still appearing to support the growing effort to protect the rights of gay parents.

Labels: custody, de facto parenting, donor conception, Fathers

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A handful of people rallied outside the Japanese Embassy on Saturday to show support for an American man who is jailed in Japan, accused of trying to kidnap his own children. ...

Christopher Savoie, 38, a Tennessee native and naturalized Japanese citizen, allegedly abducted his two children -- 8-year-old Isaac and 6-year-old Rebecca -- as his ex-wife walked them to school Monday in a rural town in southern Japan, police in Japan said.

With the children, Savoie headed for the nearest U.S. consulate in the city of Fukuoka to try to obtain passports for them, screaming at guards to let him in the compound. Savoie was steps away from the front gate but still standing on Japanese soil when Japanese police arrested him. Amy Savoie said the separation is taking a toll on her. ...

Christopher Savoie and his first wife, Noriko Savoie, were married for 14 years before their divorce in January. The couple, both citizens of the United States and Japan, had lived in Japan but moved to the United States before the divorce.

Noriko Savoie was given custody of the children and agreed to remain in the United States. Christopher Savoie had visitation rights. During the summer, she fled with the children to Japan, according to court documents. A U.S. court than granted Christopher Savoie sole custody.

Japanese law, however, recognizes Noriko Savoie as the primary custodian. The law there also follows a tradition of sole-custody divorces. When the couple splits, one parent typically makes a complete and lifelong break from the children.

Complicating the matter further is the fact that the couple still are considered married in Japan because they never divorced there, police said Wednesday. And, police said, the children are Japanese and have Japanese passports.

Labels: custody, divorce, Japan

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New ads airing in Virginia are highlighting an ongoing child custody battle between a Vermont lesbian and her former partner.

Ads from the Protect Isaballa Coalition, which are hosted online by Liberty University, suggest Virginia’s constitutional ban on same-sex unions is “being violated” by rulings in the custody case.

“Virginia does not recognize homosexual marriages and civil unions — or does it?” says one ad. “Activist judges say Isabella Miller has two mommies. And she must travel between Vermont and Virginia to spend time with both. Our marriage laws are not protecting this child. Virginia’s Constitution is being violated. This is tyranny. Will you help Isabella?”

The campaign revolves around a child custody order that arose out of a Vermont civil union between Janet Jenkins of Fair Haven, Vt., and Lisa Miller of Winchester, Va.

Labels: custody

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