There's Help if You Want to Adopt but Can't Afford the Fees

One of the most heartbreaking phenomena in our foster care system is children "aging out," reaching legal adulthood without ever getting adopted. The Dave Thomas Foundation (listed under the alphabetical Relevant Websites list here) at 1-800-ASK-DTFA tracks and provides college scholarship referrals to foster children who graduate from high school. But such happy endings are all too rare. Unadopted foster children often populate some of the unhappier statistical categories, whether substance abuse, unwed pregnancy, or crime, both as victims and perpetrators.

One of the problems is that adoption is perceived as outlandishly expensive. Indeed it is, in some cases, but it doesn't have to be. The North American Council on Adoptable Children at 1-800-470-6665 tracks state-based adoption subsidy programs. Families adopting children from foster care in the U.S. or Canada can get adoption subsidy information from the child's caseworker or from the adoption worker assigned to the case.

The Seattle-area World Association for Children and Parents at (206) 575-4550 has a menu of special funds and programs that help parents adopt older children, children with medical issues, and sibling groups. It has a no-interest loan program for parents who adopt African-American infants.

Show Hope (formerly Shaohannah's Hope)provides grants and A Child Waits Foundation provides loans to families that adopt internationally. They're both listed alphabetically in Relevant Websites at right. See also (in the same list): the National Adoption Foundation, the Gift of Adoption Fund and the Orphan Foundation.

Alienation of Affection and Criminal Conversation

Most states have abolished the Alienation of Affection tort, but North Carolina is an exception, and there have been recent (2003) developments in the legal details there.

I have long felt that it was an unfortunate error to abolish this cause of action, but its abolition is consistent with no-fault divorce, part of the same broad legal movement catalyzed and largely funded by the Playboy Foundation in the 1960s and thereafter.

If left unmolested and allowed to ripen, the doctrine might even have provided parents in the 1980s and 1990s with a tool to resist criminal street gangs' recruitment of their teenage boys, a way to seize gang assets and hold the seducers accountable. Alas, we went in a different direction, and amputated the tort to accomodate our own depravity.

Here, from Family Law Associates in Charlotte, is a brief introduction to the current state of the (North Carolina) law of Alienation of Affection and the closely related Criminal Conversation tort, only lightly edited:

Alienation of Affection and Criminal Conversation

In the State of North Carolina, a married person may be able to file suit against a third party who has interfered with their marital relationship. North Carolina is in the minority of states allowing these types of actions. These lawsuits are "alienation of affection" and/or “criminal conversation.”

The innocent spouse typically brings these types of lawsuits against the guilty spouse’s paramour/lover. A claim for alienation of affection, however, can also be brought against a third party such as an in-law or other near relative who has advised a defecting spouse to leave the marital relationship. The statute of limitation for criminal conversation and alienation of affection, pursuant to N.C.G.S. Section 1-52(5) is three (3) years. The three-year statute of limitation will begin to run on the date that alienation occurred, which is determined by a court on a case-by-case basis.

When considering an alienation of affection or criminal conversation claim, the date of separation becomes an important date. This date is important because the [North Carolina] courts have stated that conduct prior to the date of separation is relevant whereas conduct after the date of separation may not be relevant. It is very important to note, however, that a judge may also consider conduct which occurs after the date of separation, if that conduct corroborates the conduct that occurred before the date of separation.

In an alienation of affection claim, a plaintiff spouse must show: (1) that the parties were happily married with genuine love and affection between them; (2) that the love and affection between the parties was alienated and destroyed; and (3) that the loss of love and affection was caused by the "wrongful and malicious" acts of the defendant. There are virtually no defenses to this cause of action except for a total absence of love and affection. Punitive damages will be allowed under certain circumstances.

A defense against an alienation claim may exist if a defendant can show that defendant did not know that the object of his or her affections was in fact married. This, however, is not a defense to criminal conversation. The parties to the marriage must still be together in order to prove this claim.

Criminal Conversation

In a criminal conversation claim, post-separation conduct becomes more important. Conduct which occurs after the date of separation can be considered by a court to not only corroborate behavior that occurred before the date of separation, but is enough on its own to maintain an action for criminal conversation.

Criminal conversation is often referred to as a "strict liability tort" because a plaintiff only has to demonstrate that: (1) there existed a valid marriage between the spouses; and (2) evidence of voluntary sexual relations between the defendant and the plaintiff's spouse during the course of the marriage, i.e. adultery. The only real defense to criminal conversation is that the plaintiff spouse consented to the adultery between the defendant and his/her spouse.

In criminal conversation, it is not a defense that: the defendant did not know the other person was married; that the person consented to the sex; that the plaintiff was separated from his or her spouse; that the marriage was an unhappy one, that the defendant’s sex with the spouse did not otherwise impact on the plaintiff’s marriage; or that the plaintiff had also been unfaithful.

Can Therapeutic Family Lawyers Avoid Increased Malpractice Liability?

One of the problems that bedevils any attorney who wants to reconcile and restore broken marriages instead of pillaging them is that the lawyer may very well subject himself or herself to malpractice liability or professional discipline by the bar association for failing to zealously advocate the client's interests. There are an awful lot of ways that it can go wrong for the attorney who tries to practice family law collaboratively. It's safer and more profitable to just dismember the marriage, amputate one of the parents from the household, proceed to division of marital assets and, along with opposing counsel, plunder the broken couple's estate for such legal fees as the market - and the bar association - will bear.

Can a prudent lawyer actually practice collaborative law, or is it a fond pipe dream? It can be done, and it is being done. The article below is an excerpt from the Cutting Edge Law blog. Click on its title in the bloglist on this page to read the full entry, and explore its numerous links.

Although there is a lot to learn from these collaborative practitioners, Therapeutic Family Law is an even more radical departure from conventional family law practice. We are not merely advocating alternative dispute resolution techniques - civility and cooperation - in the divorce process. We seek the restoration of families and the healing of broken marriages. In our view, the worst outcome of collaborative law practice would be to make divorce less ominous, to make it easier for self-absorbed parents to to leave children fatherless in truncated, vulnerable families.

Collaborative Law/Collaborative Practice
Cutting Edge Law Categories: Collaborative Law and Practice
Collaborative Law is a method of practicing law where the parties and the lawyers representing them sign a contract in which they agree to work towards settlement. If the parties are unable to settle and adversarial proceedings are to be filed, the lawyers are required to withdraw. New lawyers must be obtained for trial. In this method, the attorneys must focus on settlement and are free to use their creative problem solving skills. Communication is respectful and the process is future-focused. It works best if several lawyers in the community are trained in collaborative law so there are options for the clients and lawyers to work together.

Collaborative Law was created by Stu Webb, a Minnesota family lawyer. An interview with Stu is included on this site. In one Canadian community, Medicine Hat, Alberta, collaborative law has virtually replaced the adversarial family law system.

The International Academy of Collaborative Professionals [http://www.collaborativepractice.com] is a network of over 3,000 collaborative professionals and they have an annual conference.

Collaborative Law is suitable for many types of law and experiments are applying it to many civil contexts: probate, employment, medical error, and business. Still, it most often occurs in the domestic area. There are several different models of collaborative law. In some places, the prevailing model in the community is the two-lawyer model. In other places, there is a multi-disciplinary team approach using a counseling team and financial advisor to work with a family in a collaborative process.

You may also hear the terms Collaborative Practice, Collaborative Divorce or Civil Collaborative Law. Collaborative Practice is actually the preferred term since so much of collaborative law is actually interdisciplinary and it is more inclusive to say "collaborative practice". Collaborative Divorce refers to the full team interdisciplinary model of family law. Civil Collaborative Law refers to non-divorce applications of collaborative practice.

There is also an active and informative YahooGroup where over 700 interdisciplinary professionals discuss issues relating to Collaborative Law. See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollabLaw.

Interstate lesbian custody trial continues

Lesbian custody trial continues (OneNewsNow.com)

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The Poverty of First World Family Culture

The World Congress of Families is meeting in Amsterdam as I write this. A panel of Third World speakers stated an insight yesterday that is not new to anybody who has traveled in the so-called Third World: there is a richness of family life in much of the developing world that we in the more prosperous West would do well to study.

This is actually diplomatic euphemism for the more negative point that Western family culture has fallen into a deplorable state, pillaged by divorce, consumerism, narcissism, salacious music and television, cultic celebrity worship, premature sexualization of children, violence against unborn children, and the most depraved counterfeits of the natural family.

Here is a rewritten press release from the 5th of the Congresses, about yesterday's panel discussion.

World Congress of Families V:
"The Developing World is the First World of the Family"

AMSTERDAM -- Moira Chimombo (Executive Director of SAFE), Dr. Farooq Hassan (a Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan), Christine Vollmer (founder of the Latin American Alliance for the Family), Yuri Mantilla (Focus on the Family's director of International Government Affairs), Dr. Moise Napon (the general secretary of the Christian Relief and Development Organization) and (King) Drolor Basso Adamley I of Ghana held a panel discussion before an audience of media members at World Congress of Families in Amsterdam yesterday.

Adamley said that when it comes to policies and cultural attitudes that promote the Natural Family, the developing world can make a significant contribution and has a "great deal to teach the West."

Hassan likewise said that "there are many things the East has to teach the West and the West has to teach the East."

Napon, observed that "our values are blurred by a global vision." Mantilla and Chimombo addressed that blurred global vision within the context of HIV/AIDS prevention and the struggle to promote the cause of life around the world.

Mantilla, stated that the prevailing view in developing countries is that, "population is not the problem" and referred to policies and values which affirm abortion, population control in this time of worldwide population decline and devalue the natural family and traditional marriage as "neo-cultural imperialism" that "promotes a culture of death."

Vollmer said that "the underdeveloped world is beginning to teach the developed world humanity."

In the context of the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS, Chimombo said the world must realize that AIDS is not just a medical problem but a "behavioral problem" as well and advocated a "family approach" to combating HIV/AIDS.

Moderator Larry Jacobs, Managing Director of the World Congress of Families projects, said the tradition of referring to developing countries as the "Third World" can be inaccurate in many respects: While there can be little argument that the economies of many Western nations are more robust than the economies of emerging nations, the economy is only one measure of the richness of a society and when it comes to the strength of the family, countries that are part of what has been traditionally called the "third world" are actually the "first world."

The World Congress of Families is the premier gathering of individuals and organizations that promote the concept of the "Natural Family" from around the world.

World Congress of Families V will continue through the evening of August 12, 2009.

The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60 countries that seek to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the 'seedbed' of civil society. The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org). To date, there have been four World Congresses of Families – Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004) and Warsaw, Poland (2007). A fifth World Congress of Families is currently being held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, August 10-12, 2009 (www.worldcongress.nl).

British Families Under the Microscope

This solution is almost as disturbing as the problem it addresses, but it is an indication of how serious child abuse and neglect has become in Great Britain. It will be a closely watched experiment, in more ways than one. If it works, other Western societies will probably find it irresistable, as it is undeniably cheaper than legions of publicly employed social workers.

LifeSiteNews.com
Big Brother is Watching Britain: Government Announces 24-Hour CCTV Surveillance for Bad Parents
By Hilary White

LONDON - The British government will force thousands of the "worst" families in the country to live with 24-hour CCTV surveillance in a bid to cut back on child abuse and neglect, the Children's Ministry has said. In the next two years the government plans to expand an existing family monitoring program from 2000 families to 20,000 at a total estimated cost of £400million.

Despite growing complaints that New Labour's new Britain has in the last ten years become the most spied upon nation in the world, ahead of even China, the Labour government announced late last month that 20,000 "problem families" who have run afoul of social services officials will be watched around the clock and subjected to surprise inspections by government agents.

The new rules will begin by focusing on truancy, alcohol abuse or reports of malnutrition. Parents will be monitored to make sure children go to bed on time, eat proper meals and attend school.

"This is pretty tough and non-negotiable support for families to get to the root of the problem. There should be Family Intervention Projects in every local authority area because every area has families that need support," said Children's Secretary Ed Balls in announcing the massive expansion of the surveillance program.

The Family Intervention Projects already exist in half the councils in the country. These so-called government "sin bins" are the latest addition to what is being called the "most watched" culture on earth.

Last month, teachers' unions in London expressed their concerns about the installation of dozens of CCTV cameras in Stockwell Park High School in south London. While the school's headmaster, Mike Rush, insisted that the move had the support of most parents and teachers, Association of Teachers and Lecturers general secretary Mary Bousted said, "This all sounds very Big Brother-ish."

Bousted said, "We have major reservations about using CCTV to monitor staff. It would be hard to see how teachers would act naturally if they knew they might be being watched all the time on camera."

A recent report found that Britain has a staggering 4.2 million CCTV cameras - representing 20 percent of cameras globally - watching its citizens in the name of safety. However, police have admitted that the cameras do little to cut back on the increasing rates of violent crime.

The cameras are found in even the smallest rural villages, and it is estimated that there is one camera for every 14 people in the country. It has been noted that within 200 yards of the former home of George Orwell, the anti-authoritarian author of the iconic novel 1984, the city of London has installed 32 CCTV cameras, in addition to the hundreds of privately-owned cameras in the neighborhood.

In 2007, the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) issued a report warning that "Big Brother tactics" could eventually put lives at risk. Security systems are "vulnerable to abuse, including bribery of staff and computer hackers gaining access to it," they said.

The RAE report followed a warning by the Government's Information Commissioner Richard Thomas that excessive use of CCTV and other information-gathering was "creating a climate of suspicion."

Cohabitation Does Not Spontaneously Morph Into Marriage

Is your client planning to lock that commitment-averse gal or fellow into a marriage incrementally, by living together as if they were already married? That's not a good strategy, at least not in Canada, according to this recent article in the Montreal Gazette.

Too many unmarried couples are ignorant of the law
Many wrongly assume family law treats them as married after a few years
by Robert Leckey

Judgment came this week in the family law case of the year, in which a woman sued her former partner - a prominent billionaire - for $56,000 per month in alimony and $50 million. Her claim? Federal marriage law and Quebec family law discriminate against unmarried couples. A Quebec Superior Court judge has now ruled against her. The woman's lawyer says she will appeal.

The trial last January made headlines, especially in Quebec. The media here nicknamed the parties - a court order protects their identities - Lola and Eric. The case became a spectator sport. Many, including women, were vicious in treatment of the claimant. They called her a gold-digger. They said she should have known she had no rights if they didn't get married, and she should have known something was up when he refused to marry her. They pointed out how comfortable she already was in the house he paid for and with the child support he pays for their kids. The exotic facts - their meeting on a Brazilian beach when she was a minor and significantly his junior, their jet-set lifestyle, his extraordinary wealth - made the case more soap opera, less real life.

It's no surprise the judge rejected the woman's discrimination claim. These days it doesn't feel like unmarried couples are a persecuted minority - especially not in Quebec, where more than one-third of couples are unmarried. Moreover, when reforming Quebec family law 30 years ago, legislators here decided that keeping distinctions between married and unmarried couples best respected adults' autonomy. The judge held that getting married or not is a choice. The consequences that follow are not discrimination. After all, the Charter cases on gay marriage a few years ago were about just that, the choice to marry.

It would be a mistake, though, for anyone to turn the page on Lola and Eric like a made-for-TV movie or run-of-the-mill celebrity trial. Whether or not you believe this woman was in the dark about her rights doesn't matter. The point is, many Canadians remain in the dark about their rights and duties under family law. People spend more time reading the manual for a new iPod than boning up on their family law. It's not surprising. But it's a problem.

In the 2006 census, there were 1.4 million common-law-couple families in Canada. It's the fastest-growing family form. Many people know that the law no longer distinguishes between children born to married and unmarried couples - the age of bastardy is behind us. They know that child support and custody are the same, marriage or no marriage. People also know from doing their income tax that, in lots of ways, our governments treat married and unmarried couples the same.

But many people assume that if they've lived together a couple of years, family law treats them as a married couple. That's wrong. Many people find out where they really stand only when a relationship breaks down. Then it's too late.

In most provinces, unmarried partners don't have to share their property on separation. There's no right for one partner to stay in the family's home - even if she has custody of the kids - if the other owns it.

True, in all provinces but Quebec, there can be a right to spousal support. But that's a far cry from the division of property - including pensions - that takes place when married spouses divorce.

The group of unmarried people living together is diverse. Some are in their twenties, trying each other on for size. The most rapidly growing group is aged 60 to 64. Many of them have been married and divorced already. They likely know what they're doing. Still others are raising kids together, and often the woman, like many married mothers, has reduced or stopped paid work. The judge is right that using the Charter to treat all these people like married couples, as the claimant wanted, would be far too blunt.

Diversity of family forms is a positive development. But where people aren't informed about their legal rights and duties, they can't make meaningful choices. This week's case is best taken as a reminder for people - whatever their province - to make sure they know how their family life fits into law.

Robert Leckey is the author of the IRPP study, Families in the Eyes of the Law: The Challenges of Pluralism and the Grip of the Past. He teaches family law at McGill University.