Massachusetts Divorce & Family Law Blog

SCOTUS Says Cops Need Warrant for GPS Trackers

2012-01-29T14:03:00.002-05:00

At the US Supreme Court, sometimes they all get it right on a truly important issue, as they did on Monday: Justices Rein in Police on GPS Trackers (Wall Street Journal). See the court's opinion and the two concurring opinions in the court case here.

Divorce Books for Little Kids

2011-12-23T10:31:00.000-05:00

Many will soon be giving or receiving holiday gift cards for a certain megabook chain or amazon.com. So maybe now's a good time for some recommendations of books about divorce. I just created two listamania lists on amazon.com. One of them is a list of my recommended books for small children about divorce, and the other one is for a couple of books I recommend avoiding. Below you will find the substance of both lists and my comments. Happy Holidays!

These are good books for divorcing parents or other caregivers with children of preschool age. Read them first to see if they make sense for you and your own child.

1. Standing on My Own Two Feet: A Child's Affirmation of Love in the Midst of Divorce by Tamara Schmitz

2. Dinosaurs Divorce by Marc Brown

The list author says:
	"This book should stimulate discussion of more serious issues that may come up with slightly older children. Use what you need, and ignore what you don't. You might choose to skip the part with mommy dinosaur drinking a martini with wine and liquor bottles, and a spilled pill bottle, behind her."

3. Two Homes by Claire Masurel

4. Mom's House, Dad's House for Kids: Feeling at Home in One Home or Two by Isolina Ricci

5. Was It the Chocolate Pudding?: A Story For Little Kids About Divorce by Sandra Levins

6. When I Miss You (The Way I Feel Books) by Cornelia Maude Spelman

OK, now here are a few books to avoid:

1. If Daddy Only Knew Me by Lila Sprague McGinnis

2. Mom and Dad Don't Live Together Anymore by Kathy Stinson

New Probate and Family Court Rules

2011-12-20T15:00:00.000-05:00

Revised rules for the Probate and Family Court of Massachusetts will go into effect January 2, 2012. The new rules can be found on the website for the Massachusetts Trial Court Law Libraries, as reported today in their blog:

New Supplemental Rules of the Probate Court, which will replace the General Rules of the Probate Court and current Supplemental Rules of the Probate Court on January 2, 2012
Amended Uniform Practices of the Probate and Family Court, effective January 2, 2012
Amended Rules of Civil Procedure, effective January 2, 2012

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Kobe Bryant Headed for Divorce

2011-12-17T11:02:00.001-05:00

There's bound to be a bit of schadenfreude here in New England, as we Boston Celtics fans absorb the news of the impending divorce of our nemesis Kobe Bryant out in LA. But any divorce like this one - which involves two small children, ages five and eight - should be no cause for celebration.

On the bright side, it appears that this will be handled quickly and without painful public drama. According to both TMZ and the LA Times, Kobe's wife Vanessa signed her petition on December 1, Kobe penned his response on December 7, papers were filed with the court on December 16, and the couple has already issued a joint statement late yesterday that they have come to an agreement privately through counsel and will have their divorce judgment entered next year.

According to TMZ, Kobe has already vacated their huge Newport Coast mansion, which wife Vanessa is to keep in their deal. It is clear from the filings, as released by TMZ, that Vanessa has claimed some jewelry as her separate property (including, presumably, the multi-million dollar ring Kobe gave her after his infidelity with the Colorado woman who accused him of rape back in 2003), that they did not have a prenuptial agreement, that she is seeking spousal support, and that both have requested joint physical and legal custody of their two girls.

Even though California has tightened up its rules for prenuptial agreements (following the Barry Bonds divorce, which was thought to have been unfair to his Swedish wife), it is possible in California to waive the right to share in community property and to limit the right to spousal support in a prenuptial agreement. But Kobe Bryant, by failing to insist upon a prenuptial agreement at the time he and Vanessa married - over ten years ago, while they were very young, at the very beginning of what would become a very successful NBA career - will thus end up sharing a lot more, in both assets and in ongoing support obligations, of his earnings with Vanessa than he would likely have been required to do.

That is because the overwhelming bulk of their assets was accumulated during the past ten years of their marriage and Kobe's tenure with the NBA. Consequently, they will likely be splitting their assets in half as it will all be "community property" - except for the jewelry she can claim as separate property because it was a gift to her. That could mean she would walk away with slightly more than he does (on account of these expensive gifts she listed as separate property), and then continue to collect child support and alimony which will be tied to his continued high earnings.

But given estimates of their net worth in the $200-300 million range, and many more millions to come - through Kobe's expected NBA salary of $25 million plus endorsements for the next several years - the Bryants do not need our financial sympathy.

Let's just hope the girls will be okay with their parents living in separate lavish homes. And of course, go Celtics!

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Christopher Hitchens, Rest in Peace

2011-12-17T08:56:00.000-05:00

With the passing of Christopher Hitchens, we have lost a most brilliant, provocative writer and thinker. He was active and influential on both sides of the pond. I share my English brother John Bolch's admiration for the man and his writing. See John's post and the video contained therein: Family Lore: Christopher Hitchens, 1949 - 2011.

Lindsay Lohan's Judge Gives the Gift of Porn

2011-12-09T20:30:00.001-05:00

Photos from Lindsay Lohan's much-hyped nude photo spread, to be officially released in next week's Playboy, leaked out on the internet today. Playboy claims to fear the leak may negatively affect sales of the magazine, which will need to be phenomenal enough to justify its nearly million dollar payout to Lindsay.

But for this holiday gift of porn we really have a criminal court judge to thank. Many stockings can be stuffed, just in time for Christmas, with the Lindsay spread thanks to one Judge Stephanie Sautner. Sautner's the judge who last month allowed Lindsay Lohan to delay her scheduled stint in jail so she could do her photo shoot first and not jeopardize her contract with Playboy.

As TMZ put it, "justice is not only blind...sometimes it's stark naked."

Father Absence Affects Sons More than Daughters?

2011-12-08T10:50:00.000-05:00

A new working paper recently discussed in the Freakonomics blog, and which looks at the relationship between the absence of fathers from the home and juvenile delinquency, suggests that the presence of fathers, while beneficial for both sons and daughters, may be much more beneficial for sons than daughters. The working paper finds, among other things, that "adolescent boys engage in more delinquent behavior if there is no father figure in their lives. However, adolescent girls' behavior is largely independent of the presence (or absence) of their fathers."

Of course, we should always view claims of findings from such social "science" reports with a healthy dose of skepticism. A commenter on the Freakonomics blog named Todd makes the good point that this new study may be missing some important factors, especially as previous biological evidence shows father absence early in life may affect daughters by dramatically altering the age at which they get their first period. I would add that longitudinal studies in the United States and New Zealand have previously shown that father absence is strongly correlated with a higher risk for daughters of early sexual activity and teenage pregnancy.

However differently father absence may affect daughters versus sons, what is clear is that father presence has positive effects and father absence has negative effects - that is the common denominator of all studies to date, including this latest one. And while that may seem self-evident to most of us, it is not uniformly understood or believed due to the sad pervasiveness of men bashing in certain circles.

Father absence and its effects on children - both sons and daughters - should concern us all, as we have gone from a nation, here in the US, with 8 percent of children living in mother-only homes in 1960 to one with fully 23 percent living in such homes in 2010, according to the US Census bureau. I hope more such studies will be done, and that more of us will pay attention to them and the issues they raise.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Divorce Parties

2011-10-15T15:46:00.000-04:00

Divorce is not only the end of a marriage, but also the beginning of a new life, and for some people, even a cause for celebration. As I recently discussed here, some newly divorced or divorcing individuals have begun to mark the end of their marriages with some form or other of leisure travel.

Well, even if you prefer not to travel, you can celebrate your new status in a more public way right in your hometown: you can throw a divorce party for all your friends. Divorce parties are not new, as they have been going on for some time, but the ones I have known about have been relatively private, small, informal affairs. However, in Los Angeles at least, an industry has sprung up to cater to an apparently growing demand for divorce parties there. Maybe this is a trend that will catch on elsewhere.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Testosterone and Fatherhood

2011-10-11T01:17:00.000-04:00

A scientific study done in the Philippines suggests that men who become fathers have hormonal changes that may help them to adapt to their new role - i.e., they have a drop in testosterone upon becoming fathers. That should come as good news to those of us who already know that men can and do make excellent, nurturing parents, and who envision a world of increasing gender equity, both at work and at home.

Gender stereotypes and prejudices, backed by faulty biological assumptions, have inevitably resulted from thousands of years of history in a predominantly patriarchal culture (with fathers in the bread-winning role and mothers in the primary parenting role), and they continue to stand in the way of men in search of parenting equity at home, even as women have made tremendous strides in the workplace over the past fifty years. This scientific study provides hope to the optimist in me that parenting equity and equality in the home will eventually catch up to, and parallel, the rapidly advancing workplace equality women have achieved, and are continuing to achieving, both in this country and throughout the developed world.

New York Times: In Study, Fatherhood Leads to Drop in Testosterone, excerpt:

This is probably not the news most fathers want to hear.

Testosterone, that most male of hormones, takes a dive after a man becomes a parent. And the more he gets involved in caring for his children — changing diapers, jiggling the boy or girl on his knee, reading “Goodnight Moon” for the umpteenth time — the lower his testosterone drops.

So says the first large study measuring testosterone in men when they were single and childless and several years after they had children. Experts say the research has implications for understanding the biology of fatherhood, hormone roles in men and even health issues like prostate cancer.

“The real take-home message,” said Peter Ellison, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard who was not involved in the study, is that “male parental care is important. It’s important enough that it’s actually shaped the physiology of men.”

“Unfortunately,” Dr. Ellison added, “I think American males have been brainwashed” to believe lower testosterone means that “maybe you’re a wimp, that it’s because you’re not really a man.

“My hope would be that this kind of research has an impact on the American male. It would make them realize that we’re meant to be active fathers and participate in the care of our offspring.”

The study, experts say, suggests that men’s bodies evolved hormonal systems that helped them commit to their families once children were born. It also suggests that men’s behavior can affect hormonal signals their bodies send, not just that hormones influence behavior. And, experts say, it underscores that mothers were meant to have child care help.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Third Marriage for Paul McCartney, Third Divorce for Demi Moore

2011-10-09T21:10:00.000-04:00

In recent celebrity news, Paul McCartney just got married again in London.

Wikipedia photo

Meanwhile in Hollywood, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher are apparently headed for divorce.

Stevie B, Owing $420K in Child Support, Arrested At Springfield Concert

2011-10-07T00:04:00.000-04:00

Stevie B, singer of "Because I Love You" (The Postman Song) and other hits from the 80s and 90s, was arrested in Springfield this past Friday night after his concert at the MassMutual Center and hauled off to jail for an apparent child support debt, to a woman in Agawam, of a whopping $420,000.

According to the Springfield Republican, when Stevie B was apprehended as he was leaving the arena after his show, the arresting officer found him "cooperative but surprised by the arrest" and concerned "that he might miss a weekend gig in Providence, RI."

Stevie B is apparently now regularly residing and working in Vegas. Did he forget about the child support he skipped out on here in Massachusetts? Did he think he was in the clear by now?

Hmmm, reminds me of another music celebrity, Bobby Brown. He too was arrested several years back after returning to his native Massachusetts (from Georgia, in his case) to see his daughter cheerleading, and was hauled off to jail for huge back child support. One of the lessons I derived from this story, as I blogged back then, was:

If you happen to become a celebrity when you "grow up" and if you happen to get way behind on your child support, then do not go to visit your daughter as she is cheerleading in public.

Perhaps I now should add to that:

...and do not perform a public concert in the very state, and in the nearest city, in which the ex to whom you owe massive child support happens to live.

On this past Monday, October 3, TMZ reported that Stevie B was indeed arraigned on Monday, but still remained in custody until able to pay at least $10,000 of what he owes to get out of jail. The Associated Press more recently has reported that he got out of jail on Tuesday by paying $11,000, but Stevie B disputes the amount of the debt. More details, from the the AP story:

On Monday, he agreed to a schedule of payments for approximately $420,000 in child support, including a lump sum payment of $10,000 and weekly payments of $921. His lawyer said he paid an additional $1,000 with the required lump sum and has offered to pay an extra $500 per week.

An extra $500 a week toward arrears would be just a tad less than what would be necessary just to pay the 6 percent annual interest that would be assessed on his $400K+ debt (to say nothing of the other 6 percent ordinarily assessed in penalties). I see more lump sum payments and possibly seizure of assets in Stevie B's future.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Divorce: Hair Loss, Weight Gain, Binge Drinking

2011-10-06T11:34:00.001-04:00

We hardly need any more reasons to convince us that divorce is to be avoided if possible. But some recent studies indicate that following divorce women are more likely to lose hair (hat tip to Family Lore) and men are more likely to gain weight. What about the kids, you ask? Well, after their parents split, kids are more likely to become binge drinkers by the time they reach 16.

Could be worse, I guess. It could have been found that after divorce, women are more likely to gain weight and men are more likely to lose hair. After all, we know women really hate to gain weight, and men really hate to lose their hair. But you know, since men as they age are much more likely to lose hair than women anyway, and as women are more likely to have already gained weight during the marriage, there's not really any good news here for those of us who get married and divorced.

I do promise, however, to report any good news when I see it.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Judicial Guidelines Updated for Abuse Prevention Orders

2011-10-05T10:47:00.000-04:00

The Massachusetts trial court system has issued the fourth edition of Guidelines for Judicial Practice: Abuse Prevention Proceedings. The updated guidelines reflect a number of substantive and procedural changes, and reflect changes in statutory and case law since the guidelines were last revised in 2000. Hat tip to Massachusetts Law Updates.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Census Bureau Reports Marriage & Divorce Statistics

2011-10-03T18:00:00.000-04:00

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released its report "Marital Events of Americans: 2009," which is the bureau's first such report after including questions about marital events as part of its American Community Survey (ACS), beginning in 2008. The report confirms previous indications from other sources that divorce rates, and marriage rates, are higher in the South than in the Northeast, among other things. See the bureau's report here or read the summary from Reuters.

From the Reuters news article (August 25, 2011):

....Statistics from "Marital Events of Americans: 2009," show that in the South, per 1,000 men or women, divorce rates were 10.2 and 11.1 percent.

By contrast, Northeastern men and women had divorce rates at 7.2 and 7.5 percent.The national divorce rate was almost 10 percent, at 9.2 for men and 9.7 for women.

The report is the first to examine and detail marriage, divorce and widowhood among Americans ages 15 and older, using data from the 2009 American Community Survey (ACS).

"Divorce rates tend to be higher in the South because marriage rates are also higher in the South," Diana Elliott, a family demographer at the Census Bureau, stated in the report's release.

"In contrast, in the Northeast, first marriages tend to be delayed and the marriage rates are lower, meaning there are also fewer divorces."

Fourteen states had above-average divorce rates for men and women. Southern states such as Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas had divorce rates above the United States average for both genders.

For the 10 or so states that had below-average divorce rates for each gender, about half were in the Northeast.

States like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York saw fewer divorces than average for men and women.

Divorces did impact the economic well-being of families.
Three quarters of children living with a parent who divorced in 2009 lived in a household headed by their mother.
Of women who divorced in the year studied, 23 percent received public assistance, against 15 percent of recently divorced men who received such assistance.
But such women also reported less household income than recently divorced men, with 27 percent having less than $25,000 in annual household income compared to 17 percent of recently divorced males.
They also were more likely to be in poverty; 22 percent of recently divorced women compared to 11 percent of such men.
Almost 30 percent of children living with a parent who recently divorced lived in a household below the poverty level, compared with 19 percent for other children.
Historically, data on U.S. marriages and divorces were collected from marriage and divorce certificates filed at the state level. According to the report, beginning in 2008, questions about marital events were added to the ACS to fill a void in the data collected in the United States.

Previous Post on Related Issues:

BASEBALL BRINGS DOWN THE DIVORCE RATE?

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Destination Divorce

2011-09-28T20:55:00.003-04:00

We have long had destination weddings. Why not destination divorce? Zagat has published a guide to the best restaurants for dumping your mate, as I have reported here two years ago. There are already restaurants you can visit to dine and dump your spouse, so why can't there be destination resorts or hotels where you can go to make that dumping official?

It's not so easy just to head to the beach, or somewhere exotic, to get an actual legal divorce, you say? Well, not only are some enterprising travel businesses trying to sell the idea of divorce vacations , in Mexico and elsewhere, but there is now even, in the Netherlands, what is called the Divorce Hotel (Hotelscheiden). If you are Dutch, you can actually show up at a five-star hotel for about three days with your spouse and mediate your divorce settlement, spending potentially far less time and money on the trip and the luxurious hotel accommodations than you might otherwise have spent on legal fees back home.

Or so they say. So far, the new idea has only had a small number of takers, and it is of course only available to Dutch citizens. Take a look at the Divorce Hotel's website and video.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Alimony Reform Bill Signed Into Law

2011-09-27T09:44:00.003-04:00

It's official! Around 4 PM yesterday, Governor Deval Patrick signed into law the alimony reform bill. (See my discussion of this in my last post where I link to previous blogs on alimony reform). The new law goes into effect March 1, 2012. Go ahead and peruse the complete text of the new law, or check out the well-written summary of the new law provided by Francine Gardikas of Burns & Levinson at their law firm's family law blog, Massachusetts Divorce Law Monitor.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Sweeping Massachusetts Alimony Reform Bill Now Awaits Governor's Signature

2011-09-23T14:51:00.013-04:00

At long last, a sweeping alimony reform bill, passed by both houses of the Massachusetts state legislature, has been sent to the Governor's Desk, it was reported on Monday. Governor Patrick has 10 days to sign it, and there is nobody saying that he won't. In fact, I just heard from a reliable source that the Governor will sign it on this coming Monday.

What started long ago as an impassioned struggle has in recent years gathered strength as Massachusetts Alimony Reform, a new organization directed by Steve Hitner, came into being. The Massachusetts Alimony Reform organization came onto the scene with a tenacity, dedication, and persuasiveness that caused many, including opinion makers in the media and in politics, to wake up and pay attention.

A House bill which called for real reform was countered by a Senate bill that was, by contrast, a slight tinkering with the law that would not really have changed or helped much. Fortunately, as support for real reform continued to grow, and political support became apparent, it came to pass that legislators, lawyers, and bar associations all moved in the direction of supporting real reform. Now, with the passage of the final version of the legislation by both houses, real reform has prevailed; in other words, the final version is much closer to the original House bill than to the Senate bill, and it will bring about very substantial, extensive reform. Thus an alimony reform movement which once had only limited vocal support from a handful of family law litigants, legislators and attorneys, eventually gained very broad support - indeed support of seemingly everyone, including many lawyers and bar associations that had previously ignored, dismissed, minimized, or opposed any serious alimony reform efforts.

With the passage of this alimony reform legislation, we will see the law of alimony in Massachusetts at last reflect the social and economic realities of our time. I expect alimony determinations to be much more sensible and predictable, and much fairer as a result, as previously lengthy or even lifelong awards of alimony, many of which were out of all proportion to the length of the preceding marriages or the equities of their respective cases, will become a thing of the past. Although I have a few reservations about one or two provisions of the bill, overall I am very pleased with the legislation and I have no doubt the new law will be a huge improvement over the current law.

I will have more thoughts to express soon. Meanwhile we all await the official word that the Governor has signed this bill. For a brief description of the bill, see Alimony Reform Heads to Governor's Desk, Monday's Boston Business Journal article on this.

Previous Posts on Massachusetts Alimony Reform:

ALIMONY REFORM AND THE BUSINESS OF DIVORCE
OF TWO ALIMONY REFORM BILLS, HOUSE BILL IS FAR BETTER
"TILL DEATH DO US PAY" - MORE ON THE NEED FOR ALIMONY REFORM
EMILY ROONEY DISCUSSES ALIMONY REFORM
MASSACHUSETTS ALIMONY: TIME FOR REFORM?

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

How Not To Serve Court Papers (especially on a Red Sox pitcher)

2011-09-21T21:25:00.000-04:00

From The Docket, the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly blog, David Frank brings us this interesting story behind the Red Sox loss yesterday to the Orioles: a civil process server showed up at Fenway Park and served child support papers on Red Sox starting pitcher Erik Bedard a few hours before the pitcher was scheduled to take the mound.

Don't the Red Sox have enough problems right now? And get this - to add insult to injury, the process server was wearing a Yankees shirt!

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Sham Marriage Scheme Busted in Vermont

2011-09-21T13:18:00.000-04:00

Many sham marriages - fraudulent marriages which often lead to residency and ultimately citizenship benefits for immigrants - go undetected each year by the United States government. But sometimes sham marriage immigration schemes are uncovered, as in this recent example from Vermont, as reported in the Boston Globe, A Marriage of a Dream and a Scheme, in which case illegal immigrants (mostly, if not all, from Brazil) paid Americans to marry them to get legal residency status. According to the article, Maria-Helena Knoller, a Holyoke woman and Brazilian immigrant responsible for the scheme, was recently prosecuted and convicted for marriage fraud and concealing and shielding illegal immigrants in the case of 32 sham marriages, and is now out free on a $100,000 bond and working in a Chicopee Donut shop while awaiting sentencing. 22 of those 32 sham marriages occurred in Brattleboro, Vermont, and half of these 32 sham marriages have already ended in divorce here in Massachusetts. Apparently, the scheme seemed to begin and end in Massachusetts, although many of these participants were led across the Vermont border to Brattleboro for their nuptials. (There were seven other additional sham marriages revealed, but Knoller was not prosecuted for those.)

Knoller, it turned out, was a matchmaker of a special kind. For fees as high as $12,000, she would pair illegal immigrants from Brazil with Americans, arrange their marriages - and, in some cases, their subsequent divorces - after they received status as “lawful permanent residents’’ of the United States.
She pleaded guilty in February to federal charges of marriage fraud and concealing and shielding illegal immigrants for 32 of those marriages. But her prosecution is an exception, and Knoller’s case is a vivid example of how easy it is for illegal immigrants to dodge US immigration laws by getting married.
The US government estimates that of the 200,000 marriages that result in temporary or illegal immigrants receiving green cards each year, up to 30 percent are shams. And yet, while billions of federal dollars are devoted to protecting borders, enforcement efforts aimed at immigration fraud are hobbled by sparse budgets and understaffed agencies that, according to government auditors, allow an estimated 60,000 sham marriages a year to evade detection.
“The process of weeding out the fraudulent [marriages] - those arranged solely to obtain … a work permit and green card - is nearly impossible,’’ said David Seminara, a former US consular officer who wrote a 2008 study that faulted the process of identifying fraud in immigration petitions filed domestically and overseas. “Even when documentation is asked for, to show that the couple is living together, it’s easily doctored. There’s just too many applications and too few immigration officers handling these cases.’’
Taking her clients to Vermont for their nuptials made Knoller’s scam easier. Vermont does not require waiting periods or proof of identity to obtain a marriage license. While some of the 32 marriages for which Knoller was prosecuted were licensed in Connecticut and Massachusetts, 22 occurred in Brattleboro. Massachusetts, and every other state bordering Vermont, requires proof of identity.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

A Couple More Massachusetts Blogs for Your Blogroll

2011-09-19T12:26:00.007-04:00

In the nearly two years I have been absent from the blogosphere (from November of 2009 until today), I have noticed a number of good Massachusetts legal blogs that either weren't around before, or just hadn't caught my attention yet. There are in particular two I would suggest that you check out, and add to your blogroll as well:

1) Scaling the Summit: A Family Law Blog. This blog is primarily the work of Justin Kelsey and his associate Jonathan Eaton and is published by their law firm, Kelsey & Trask in Framingham. Much thought and analysis has gone into this blog, and there is very helpful information about recent, and pending, legislation in the area of alimony reform (which is about to become law at last) and proposed custody law reform.

2) Massachusetts Elder Law Blog. This is an excellent blog I have recently enjoyed reading by elder law attorney Sasha Golden of the Golden Law Center, a practice devoted to elder law and disability planning in Needham.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Reduced Office Hours in Family Court

2011-09-19T11:41:00.004-04:00

As a result of state budget cuts that have led to a reduction in staff in the court system, which is suffering from "case backlogs and staff shortages," many of the Massachusetts state courts (38 of them, to be exact, including all of the Probate and Family Courts) have reduced their public office hours. All the family courts will now have registry and phone coverage restricted after 3 PM on Monday through Friday. (However, apparently the Springfield family court will continue to stay open until 4:30, as Hampden County Register Thomas Moriarty has vowed to do so because he does not want to "deny our most important stakeholders, the taxpaying public, access to justice.")

Court sessions will continue as before, beginning at 8:30, and the only thing that will change will be the public office hours and phone coverage in the registry offices. So if you have business you need to transact with the family court registry in your county, make sure you get to the courthouse and to the registry's office, or make your phone calls, well before 3 PM. This change has been reported to be aimed at giving a shrunken staff more time to handle administrative work at the end of the day, free of interruptions from visitors to the front desk by individuals and attorneys.

I imagine it is sort of like what the banks do when they shut the doors to customers but keep the lights on while their workers continue to carry on their business at the end of the afternoon. For more info, including information about the other courts affected (some of the district, housing, juvenile and land courts), see the Supreme Judicial Court's press release.

FROM THE PRESS RELEASE:

Probate and Family Court
All Divisions
Registry Counter and phone coverage restricted after 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Applies to any court business, except emergency restraining orders and other emergencies. Court sessions still will begin at 8:30 a.m.

[BUT see first paragraph above: Hampden County's Probate and Family Court will stay open until 4:30 as before.]

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Back to Blogging Again!

2011-09-19T11:29:00.005-04:00

I have neglected my blog here for quite some time. I see my last post was in November of 2009! I could explain why I have been gone so long, and give all kinds of excuses. But it really is simple. I stopped blogging at a time when I was extraordinarily busy, and just never got back to it.

Until now! I hope once again to contribute some of my thoughts on divorce and family law and other issues that concern me and my practice, as I continue also to spread the word about ideas and information from others in this field.

As usual, I welcome your feedback here!

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Maine Voters Repeal Gay Marriage Law

2009-11-04T09:27:00.011-05:00

Maine voters repealed their state's gay marriage law yesterday.

BOSTON GLOBE - PORTLAND, Maine - Maine voters overturned the state’s same-sex marriage law yesterday, delivering a potentially crushing blow to gay-rights advocates after a year when their cause seemed to be gaining momentum with legislative and legal victories in four states.

The “people’s veto’’ came six months after Maine’s law was approved, and one year after California voters rejected gay marriage by a similar margin.

....

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Alimony Reform and the Business of Divorce

2009-10-05T19:04:00.004-04:00

The Boston Business Journal continues to cover the controversy over the competing Massachusetts alimony bills, and in Friday's article by Lisa van der Pool, Dueling alimony bills raise hackles in legal circles, the focus was on the question of whether Senator Cynthia Creem, chair of the Senate's Judiciary Committee, has a "conflict of interest" on account of her sponsorship of the alimony reform bill being heard by her committee, because she is also practicing divorce law in Boston.

Many in the Massachusetts Alimony Reform organization have voiced their belief that she has a conflict of interest. In the article, I was among the quoted legal observers who fail to find any conflict of interest here. And that is so even though I do not support Cynthia Creem's Senate bill, but support instead the much more comprehensive reforms of the House bill. As often happens in the world of family law litigants, logic and reason have become victims to emotion. And once again, I have gone on record to call it like I see it, only to insure I will probably please no one.

It is hardly shocking to find lawyers as legislators, and it is quite normal for them to take up, and draft, legislation within their own areas of expertise. Divorce lawyers such as Sen. Creem regularly take cases involving clients on both sides of alimony disputes, and will inevitably have clients who benefit, and others who will not, from any change to the law. That is true for her, and that is also true for me. We simply have different opinions as to what the law should be.

The argument of those who think they see a "conflict of interest" (although they mostly do not really understand the concept) goes something like this: Divorce and family law practices, or at least certain practices such as that of Senator Creem, benefit from preserving the status quo, and/or encouraging more, rather than less, litigation.

Any real alimony reform - the argument goes - such as that which would result from enactment of the House bill, would inevitably lead to less litigation, while the enactment of the Senate bill would either fail to reduce litigation, or might even increase it, as the Senate bill would only add durational language, but without any real guidance, thus leaving extremely vague the legal standard for determining alimony awards, and thus continuing to confer upon judges overly broad discretion that would lead to more disputes and more litigation. Lawyers in general, and supposedly rich divorce lawyers in particular, would thus continue to reap huge financial benefits from this vague alimony standard.

But do you know what? The only parts of that argument which are not obviously specious are at their very best merely speculative, and the available evidence might more readily support a quite contrary thesis: that is, that our very vague, quite unpredictable, and often unreasonably high and long, alimony obligations may be partly responsible for the fact that we have had a declining rate of marriage in recent years (interestingly, this particular point has indeed been made by the Alimony Reform Movement itself), and also for the fact that we have a very low rate of divorce relative to other states.

Indeed, the only studies of which I am aware point out that New England in general, and Massachusetts in particular, have the lowest divorce rates in the nation. (See the end of my earlier post on divorce and baseball for links on this issue).

Could it be that draconian, unpredictable, seemingly dreadful divorce laws have contributed to preserving many marriages? Here, I'm reminded of the male joke about not getting divorced because "it's cheaper to keep her." Also might it be possible that these supposedly bad laws prevent many who would otherwise eventually divorce from marrying in the first place? And is it so bad to have laws that make marriage a serious commitment, with very serious consequences? Indeed, that is how marriage used to be in this country before the advent of no-fault divorce. Funny, but some of the conservative, male critics of the current family law system are also the same ones who pine for those more traditional times.

Let me be clear. I believe the current alimony law in Massachusetts is in need of reform, because it too often leads to absurdly unfair results, as it fails to compel judges to limit alimony in the way most people today believe it should be limited, and in the way current economic and social realities suggest it should be limited. However, I am not at all sure that either bill under consideration would help or hurt lawyers in the modestly paid field of family law.

Many of the big problems with current alimony law in Massachusetts relate to the higher economic class of divorcing couples, who are more likely to be caught up in fights with opponents who have considerable assets and earnings, and who are therefore able to pursue "money is no object" battles in court. When the law is too vague, as I do believe it is, there is more at stake in such disputes, and wealthier individuals often believe, however wrongly, that they have no choice but to hire the most expensive, high-overhead law firms to fight spouses who have hired other expensive, high-overhead law firms, all to determine how much will be paid, and for how long, in spousal support.

If I had to guess, I would predict that the passing of the House bill, or any such extensive reform bill limiting alimony, might eventually lead people to marry more often, and earlier, and lead more already married people to get out of marriage when things go wrong; less cumbersome alimony obligations would be less of an impediment both to divorce and to marriage in the first place.

I imagine that with more reasonable alimony laws, we could see higher marriage rates and higher divorce rates, like those that currently exist for example in the state of Georgia, and other "red" states, where it is easier and less costly for the higher-earning spouse to get divorced (and by "costly" here I am referring to the total economic costs in a broad sense, not simply the narrow costs of paying legal fees). Perhaps only the nature, but not the size, of family law practice would thus change, as divorce lawyers would have more clients, but would also spend less time, and bill less, on each individual case; furthermore, high income and high conflict cases would likely account for a smaller percentage of client caseloads.

But all of this is speculation. Would the whole family law business shrink or grow with alimony reform? Who knows? Even if we could answer this, it is really the wrong question.

We really should be debating what the appropriate spousal support obligations of divorcing parties should be, period, rather than making speculative arguments about how different laws might affect a small sector of the legal services industry. Our alimony law should reflect what our community believes those obligations should be, and should reflect current economic and social realities. That is what is important.

The reason this misguided "conflict of interest" argument has gotten any traction is that angry individuals hate lawyers and judges, and not just the flawed law and legal system of which they are a part, and these guys are venting (for more on this, see my last post on this blog). It has all become personal.

By the way, if you're not already exhausted after reading this ridiculously long blog, you can find more level-headed, interesting, and even funny, comments on the issue of alimony reform in Massachusetts at Stephen McDonough's blog.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Is Family Law a Masterful Scam? A Criminal Enterprise?

2009-09-29T10:07:00.009-04:00

I thought I would reprint my response to a comment on my last post, which was on the issue of alimony reform, as I believe it deserves its own post here. Over the years, I have found some people to be so angry and bitter, after going through difficult experiences in the family law system, that they lose all sense of reality and become paranoid. I have thought about this again recently after reading my colleague, family law blogger Sam Hasler's post Paranoia and Divorce, which links to yet another very thoughtful post by British blogger Marilyn Stowe, Divorce is an emotional rollercoaster – but are you paranoid?

I have heard, read, and otherwise witnessed a surprising number of comments from prospective clients, litigants, and others, who seem truly to believe that the family law system is a corrupt, criminal enterprise. The comment below is a representative sample of that misguided belief. Following that is my response to the anonymous comment.

Anonymous said...
Reprint of blog on Boston Business Journal website in response to Lisa Van der Pool's article 9/18/09
"BBA BACKS BILL TO CAP ALIMONY" Take note. Senate bill 1616 seeks to do one thing and one thing only. That is, to keep the power to control your life, determine your future, and keep you under the jurisdiction of the courts until they feel they are done with you. Family law is a masterful scam not unlike TV wrestling. The lawyers and judges put on a great act in their pretend roles. But, the truth is they all belong to the same organization and they will never act on their own to stifle their own power to run the scam. Any legislator who doesn't act to stop it is an accessory to organized judicial crime. The Bar by seeking to give judges the power to determine alimony duration, knows that 1616 will rely on the honor of "his honor" who in the past has proven that he has no honor in the family court ring. They are all winking at each other because they know how easy it has been to pull the wool over the public's eye in the past. But when it comes to family law, "the emperor has no clothes".

Steven Ballard said...
Anonymous- most posts like yours I do not allow here. Since you make an ad hominem attack on all lawyers and judges in the family law system, rather than upon any single individual, I have allowed it to be published here, but only because it is representative of the response of so many who - though justified in being outraged - go over the top in their paranoia.

While there are very real biases and vested interests, family law is not a masterful scam or a criminal enterprise. People who are divorcing and fighting each other need to take responsibility for their own mistakes rather than simply blaming their lawyers and the system, and subscribing to inane, ridiculous conspiracy theories about lawyers and judges who are supposedly getting rich at their clients' expense.

Those who are in the legal system -especially including those within the most profitable, big law firms, firms which in fact do not even have family law sections, even as loss leaders, because they would be insufficiently lucrative -find comments such as yours to be laughable.

It's sad many people are so bitter that they actually believe this kind of conspiratorial crap. Many hate lawyers and judges so much that they can't even think straight, or examine basic facts.

One of those facts is that there are many very good people who work as divorce and family law practitioners and judges. Most of them in fact work very hard in a very difficult profession, dealing with very difficult people in contentious cases, and many of them also perform important pro bono work and public service in their communities, while generally earning modest incomes relative to others in the legal profession.

Change the law, improve the system, yes. But in your own individual cases, you should always take a good hard look in the mirror before assessing blame for problems in your own home.

-------------------------
For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Of Two Alimony Reform Bills, House Bill is Far Better

2009-09-26T14:47:00.025-04:00

There are two competing alimony reform bills currently pending in the Massachusetts legislature: Senate Bill 1616 and House Bill 1785. The Senate bill, backed by influential members of the Boston Bar Association, essentially would preserve the status quo. It would merely add language to the statute so as to give judges the explicit ability to set a duration for alimony - i.e. to set a term of years, depending on the circumstances.

The Senate bill would indeed improve current alimony law in this limited way. But it would do far too little. In fact, the Senate bill would not be sufficient to bring Massachusetts out of the realm of the absurd. Even with the passage of this modest single reform in the Senate bill, Massachusetts would remain way outside the reasonable norms for alimony, as reflected by the laws in almost every - if not every single other - state in this country.

The House bill, on the other hand, would effect real reform that would bring Massachusetts alimony law into much closer alignment with the alimony law of other states, as it more closely reflects current conventional wisdom on alimony. The House bill would require alimony awards to reflect current economic and social realities. Thus it would be much less likely that outrageous alimony awards, which lead to illogical and unfair economic results, would continue to be regularly negotiated and ordered in our family courts.

The House bill is much more intelligent, reasoned, and has the support of the Massachusetts Alimony Reform organization. However, unlike the Senate bill, which is now backed by the Boston Bar Association, the much more sensible House bill has a broad base of support beyond the most directly affected interest groups - that is, both those interest groups that have been formed by opponents of the current law, and associations of attorneys who would be more inclined to preserve the status quo. And that is why House Bill 1785 is already cosponsored by a very diverse group of 72 legislators, "liberal" as well as "conservative."

Please read both bills (see links above), and tell your House and Senate representatives which bill you favor. For more on this, see Bar association wades into divorce law spat - Boston Business Journal.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Baucus Bullshit

2009-09-16T13:20:00.016-04:00

Well, now we know: Baucus outlines health plan without GOP support - AP/Yahoo News. The Max Baucus Plan is awful.

Actually, the Max Baucus Plan Sucks. Well, I'd use even stronger words than that. Baucus Bullshit, I'd call it.

It would cost $856 billion, but some $500 billion of that cost would be paid out of cuts to Medicare. The plan, which would have no public option, would do next to nothing to cut costs, next to nothing to provide competition or otherwise to reduce stealing and killing by the health insurance mafia. In place of the old Kennedy bill, which would have cost much less, at about $600 billion, and which would have had a public option, the "Democrat" Max Baucus has been crafting this crap for the health insurance industry.

And that industry is the only entity that should be happy with it. In fact the industry is directly responsible for it. It comes as little surprise to me that it was actually a former vice president of WellPoint, now working for Baucus, who penned this Bullshit. See The Max Baucus WellPoint/Liz Fowler Plan

Under this plan, in a manner similar to that of the Massachusetts system ushered in by Mitt Romney, the middle class would be forced to buy health insurance from the health insurance mafia - if ineligible for employer-sponsored health insurance - or it would be financially penalized. Far from being "socialistic" this legislation would force individuals to pay too much for crappy coverage directly to the health insurance mafia. It would be like a tax requiring citizens to pay money not to the government, but to a private racket.

Meanwhile, we should expect this same health insurance racket to continue paying out only between 55 to 80 percent of the money it collects from us in premiums to pay claims, while in constrast, the supposedly inefficient government Medicare and Medicaid programs pay out around 95 percent of their funds for actual medical care. The health insurance racket, with the help of its lackeys in Congress, wants us to allow it to keep sucking up 20 to 45 percent of our money for administrative costs and profits, while doing nothing effective to bring overall medical costs down.

Well, I did not expect much more from our Congress. If this passes, in anything like the present form, we will have a "Democratic" bill that truly sucks, and the Republicans will later easily be able to show that it sucks, and then blame the "left" for wasting money on a program that screws the middle class yet again and does nothing to solve any problems. Not enough people will notice that it was the health insurance mafia that brought all this about. Instead they will believe the health insurance racket's propaganda, through the voice of the Republican Party, that it is the "left's" fault.

Machiavelli must be smiling.

Huffington Post on Health Care

2009-09-15T10:39:00.014-04:00

More good stuff on the health insurance racket's attempt to prevent even the first step towards its own demise can be found in some recent articles in the Huffington Post. I have my doubts about the emasculated reform legislation that is pending, and am still quite angry that our supposed liberal, alleged representatives in Congress have refused to fight hard for a single-payer system, but if the currently pending health care reform bill, with a true public option, ever sees the light of day, there would indeed be a sliver of hope that eventually we will all have the single-payer system we need, and the health insurance racket would thus end up every bit as dead as the many patients who are now its daily victims.

It is interesting that a majority of doctors support a public option. Majority Of Doctors Back Public Option: New England Journal Of Medicine Study. Makes sense. And to that I say: Why can't we just take it one step further with a single-payer plan. We can't we just pay our doctors for care? Why do we have to pay the health insurance mafia as well?

Economist Dean Baker has predictably intelligent comments on the big government "conservatives" who serve the interests of the health insurance racket while pretending to do otherwise. Dean Baker: The Public Plan Option and the Big Government Conservatives

And finally, although not so recent (this one's from June) here's the following article, about the health insurance mafia. It's an oldie but goodie: Bob Cesca: The Health Insurance Mafia Deserves a Good Screwing

The Health Insurers Have Won Again - Of Course

2009-09-14T15:00:00.003-04:00

Well, it seems pretty clear that the health-care "reform" bill will be a joke. Even if it were to have a public option, it would still be a joke, but without one, there will continue to be little to no hope that after several decades of struggle, paralleling the career of our late Senator Ted Kennedy, the good people of this country will ever have a humane and decent health care system.

Of course what we have needed for a long time is a single-payer system, privately delivered - by some of the best medical providers in the world - but publicly financed. It has been very interesting, and ironic, to see that some of the most vociferous supporters of the health insurance racket are in fact older individuals on medicare. All we need is to expand medicare to cover everyone - thus eliminating the waste, greed and inefficiency of the health insurance racket - and then we could join the ranks of the other rich, and not-so-rich, countries, that have long ago created humane health care systems.

But the writing was on the wall a long time ago. In early August, Business Week already reported that The Health Insurers Have Already Won ("The Health Insurers Have Already Won; How UnitedHealth and rival carriers, maneuvering behind the scenes in Washington, shaped health-care reform for their own benefit").

Our supposedly liberal Congressional "leaders" from Massachusetts, which has not a single Republican in Congress, were complete wimps and sounded like it when they wimped out on the issue of a single-payer system. "We don't have the votes," they said, in explaining why they would use their own votes, and clout, in a way to insure that we don't have the votes. Pathetic. Shame on you, Kerry, Frank et al. Your "efforts" should be chronicled in "Profiles in Cowardice."

With "liberal leaders" like these pretending to fight the cause for us, it is no wonder that we the people will once again lose to the health insurance racket, which continues to control Congress, along with all the other corporate lobbies. Whatever shitty bill is eventually passed will simply change our course in an insignificant manner, and the big problems will remain. We will continue to be plagued with an insane health insurance racket and the US will continue to be a place where barbaric social and economic inequality and injustice for the benefit of the rich will be the norm. Brave New Films tells the sad story:

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

"Till Death Do Us Pay" - More on the Need for Alimony Reform

2009-08-02T18:41:00.012-04:00

Finally, a little slice of la vida real in our Massachusetts family court system: Till Death Do Us Pay - Boston Magazine.

I'm encouraged to see such critical words from a local media source, in this case Boston Magazine. You definitely will not get such truth from the Boston Globe. And what a shame that is, as the Boston Globe is still the best newspaper we have in this state. Yet, by its gross negligence and incompetence in its reporting in the area of family law, the Boston Globe continues to hold back family law progress, even though it, together with its parent The New York Times Company, had earlier been so instrumental in pushing forward progress in the gay rights and gay marriage arena.

This is definitely a must-read article for anyone interested in the crazy world of alimony law in Massachusetts. I've written about this here before. Our archaic alimony law in Massachusetts has created a number of family law problems that should have been solved long ago. I do hope that reasonable heads will eventually prevail here, and that there will be a complete, extensive overhaul of our absurd alimony law and accompanying practices.

This article, though not perfect, provides a penetrating look into a system in great need of common sense overhaul, in this state which claims to be progressive, but is actually only selectively so. And when I say that I mean a system much broader than merely that which sustains a ridiculously outdated alimony system, but the entire family law system which is backward and unfair in so many other respects.

It is way past time that our state treated fathers and exhusbands and their children, along with all the various family units of which they are a part, with the same level of dignity as gay and lesbian individuals and female-headed households. Until that happens, Massachusetts will continue to be the oddball state, where progressive policies in favor of gay and lesbian couples (policies about which I believe we should be very proud) stand in stark contrast to backwards, archaic, protectionist, sexist policies that promote traditional family structures and female dependency in heterosexual relationships over independence, equality and justice.

And when I say policies, I mean not only laws - both statutes and rulings by our appellate courts - but also practices and other rules, written and unwritten, which continue to be perpetuated by the family law establishment.

Please read the article.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Child Support Blues

2009-06-07T21:49:00.008-04:00

If you think you have the child support blues, because of frustration in trying to receive or to pay child support, here's a real story for you. A minimum-wage-earning 29-year-old man in Knoxville, Tennessee, is already the father of 21 children with 11 different mothers. On second thought, I also should have mentioned frustration of the taxpayers, as they will in their own way undoubtedly be sharing the child support blues in this case as well.

Here's daddy on youtube:

Although this story appeared in the Huffington Post last month, I give my hat tip to Family Lore and Divorce Discourse, where I first found this interesting story in the blogosphere today.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

New Hampshire Becomes Sixth State to Allow Gay and Lesbian Marriages

2009-06-03T22:45:00.000-04:00

Well, now it has happened: the New Hampshire legislature passed the final version of its gay marriage bill and the governor signed it this afternoon. It will become law in January of next year: N.H. Governor Signs Gay Marriage Bill.

EXCERPT FROM TODAY'S AP ARTICLE:

CONCORD, New Hampshire - New Hampshire became the sixth state to legalize gay marriage after the Senate and House passed key language on religious rights and Gov. John Lynch — who personally opposes gay marriage — signed the legislation Wednesday afternoon.

After rallies outside the Statehouse by both sides in the morning, the last of three bills in the package went to the Senate, which approved it 14-10 Wednesday afternoon.

Cheers from the gallery greeted the key vote in the House, which passed it 198-176. Surrounded by gay marriage supporters, Lynch signed the bill about an hour later.

'Today, we are standing up for the liberties of same-sex couples by making clear that they will receive the same rights, responsibilities — and respect — under New Hampshire law,' Lynch said.

Lynch, a Democrat, had promised a veto if the law didn't clearly spell out that churches and religious groups would not be forced to officiate at gay marriages or provide other services. Legislators made the changes.

Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont and Iowa already allow gay marriage, though opponents hope to overturn Maine's law with a public vote.

California briefly allowed gay marriage before a public vote banned it; a court ruling grandfathered in couples who were already married.

The New Hampshire law will take effect Jan. 1, exactly two years after the state began recognizing civil unions.

.....

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Baseball Brings Down the Divorce Rate?

2009-05-31T23:00:00.006-04:00

As recently reported by Nolo’s Divorce, Custody & Family Law Blog, cities that have acquired professional baseball teams have subsequently seen their divorce rates fall at faster rates than other cities that have wanted but did not get baseball teams. Nolo's blog points to last month's Business Week article which discussed the interesting study on this from the University of Denver's Center for Marital and Family Studies. Although I'm very skeptical - as I usually am with such social "science" studies - I am also a baseball fan, and as such, I really want to believe that baseball might actually bring down the divorce rate.

Many complain their spouses spend too much time watching that big game. But you know, perhaps we would have more marital disharmony if we didn't have that big game to watch.

Massachusetts in particular, and New England in general, have in many recent years boasted the lowest divorce rates in the nation. As Boston and New England have also had more than their fair share of winning sports teams in the last several years, maybe we need a wider study to test the broader hypothesis that spectator sports in general may be helpful in bringing the divorce rate down.

Usually far different reasons are suggested for such lower rates of divorce in New England than other regions of the country, such as the Southeast. For more on such comparisons between and among states, start with these two articles: To Avoid Divorce, Move to Massachusetts from the New York Times, and Blue Over You. Why Red States Have Higher Divorce Rates.

Who knows? While we await the answer to such questions, I say take me out to the ballgame, and Go Red Sox!

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Maine Now Permits Gay Marriage; New Hampshire Will Likely Be Next

2009-05-31T09:30:00.001-04:00

This past month, Maine has become the fifth state to legalize gay marriage. For the basic story, see the Huffington Post's article from earlier this month: Maine Gay Marriage Legalized. Meanwhile it seems New Hampshire is on the verge of approving same-sex marriage as well, although there is presently what supporters hope will only be a slight delay.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Corri Fetman, of Sleazy Divorce Ad Fame, Sues Playboy

2009-04-09T06:38:00.004-04:00

Thanks to John Bolch at the blog Family Lore, for the news that former divorce attorney, turned Playboy columnist, Corri Fetman, is no longer writing the "Lawyer of Love" column for the magazine, and is instead suing the magazine for sexual harassment, claiming over $4.5 million in damages for "gender violence" and emotional distress. You may recall that she became famous, and got her position at Playboy, after posing in sexy, provocative photos for a tasteless billboard ad for her Chicago law firm, as I have discussed here previously.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Vermont Legislates Right to Gay Marriage

2009-04-08T18:26:00.005-04:00

And yes, now it's happened in Vermont: Vermont has legalized gay marriage. Vermont legalizes gay marriage | burlingtonfreepress.com | The Burlington Free Press. Yesterday, Vermont joined Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa and is now the fourth state with a right to gay and lesbian marriages. Unlike the other states before it, however, Vermont created this right through legislative rather than judicial enactment. After the governor vetoed the legislation, both houses of the legislature over-rode his veto. The new law takes effect September 1, 2009.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Iowa's Highest Court Institutes Gay Marriage; Vermont's Legislature Is Well On the Way to the Same Goal; New York Grants First Same-Sex Divorce

2009-04-03T10:39:00.008-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Wow, there have been quite a few developments on the gay marriage front - today, yesterday, and this past week. As Vermont moves closer to becoming, possibly, the first state to create gay marriage by legislative enactment, now that its House has joined the Senate in passing a bill that would permit gay and lesbian couples to marry there, Iowa today has become the next state to do it judicially, as have Massachusetts and Connecticut before it (and also, for a time, California, although that was short-lived): Iowa gay marriage ban ruled unconstitutional - msnbc.com.

From the website of the Iowa Judicial Branch, you can find the summary/press release describing the decision, and the full decision as well.

Also, New York has now made good on its earlier promise to recognize gay and lesbian marriages performed in other states by accepting jurisdiction and granting divorces to such couples if and when they move to New York. The first such divorce was granted in New York this week. See Same Sex Divorce-Granted! - New York Divorce and Family Law Blog.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Australian Divorce Blog

2009-04-01T21:10:00.002-04:00

Another very good divorce blog I've recently discovered is the Australian Divorce Blog. We Yanks can learn a lot from it, just as we can from the family law blogs in the UK.

So, here's yet one more for my ever-expanding blogroll.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Nationalize the Banks Already

2009-04-01T20:36:00.014-04:00

I must say, I find myself agreeing entirely with the following article by Matthew Rothschild in this past month's Progressive Magazine: Nationalize the Banks | The Progressive. The Obama administration, and Congress, are continuing the Big Heist begun by Bush, as the oligarchy continues to pull the strings of our federal government officials. As usual, there are only a few in Congress who are primarily representing the interests of their citizens, rather than just pretending to do so while actually serving the interests of the ruling financial elite. I still have hope for our government headed by Obama, who already has been an improvement, in so many ways, over Bush. Yet so often it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

New Massachusetts Divorce Law Blogs

2009-03-30T09:39:00.005-04:00

Thanks to Kyra Crusco at the New Hampshire Family Law Blog for calling my attention to the fact that Nancy Van Tine, one of the very best and most experienced family law practitioners in Boston, has just started a new Massachusetts divorce law blog, the Massachusetts Divorce Law Monitor. Also my friend Steve Zlochiver, another excellent, experienced family law attorney in the Boston area, recently called my attention to the fact he too now has a blog, the Massachusetts Divorce Lawyer Blog. Add 'em to your blogroll, bookmark 'em, subscribe to their feeds. I'm always happy to see more blogs from which I will be able to borrow (steal?) ideas for my own blog!

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Recession, Pink Slips, and Child Support

2009-03-29T12:21:00.001-04:00

Yes, we're in a recession, and that's obvious in family court, where pink slips have resulted in more child support modification cases: Fighting Over Child Support After the Pink Slip Arrives - NYTimes.com.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Gay Marriage Coming Soon to Vermont? New Hampshire?

2009-03-28T21:59:00.012-04:00

New England continues to be center stage in the gay marriage debate.

Both Vermont and New Hampshire each have legislative proposals that were recently approved by one of their legislative bodies to legalize gay or same-sex marriage. See yesterday's New York Times article, Gay Marriage, Set Back in One State, Gains in a 2nd - NYTimes.com.

New Hampshire's House of Representatives just narrowly approved its gay marriage bill this past Thursday, and its Senate may consider a similar bill but prospects do not appear to be good in this more conservative-leaning state. Vermont's Senate overwhelmingly approved its own bill the Friday before last, and its House is already actively considering a similar proposal. But both states have governors who are likely to veto the bills if they come before them. Governor Jim Douglas of Vermont has already stated he will veto the Vermont bill if it comes to his desk.

Vermont was the first state to legalize gay and lesbian civil unions. New Hampshire only created civil unions this past year. If the other legislative bodies also approve the bills in each state, and then can override the probable vetoes by their governors, then we will see a further expansion of gay marriage in this region.

It would hardly be a surprise to see one of these New England states become the next to join Massachusetts and Connecticut, as the only states currently and fully santioning the legal formation of gay and lesbian marriages. My bet would be on Vermont. Maybe not this year, but eventually.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Best Divorce Cartoon

2009-03-18T16:05:00.000-04:00

A colleague, who happens to be a psychotherapist and not a lawyer, just gave me a copy of the following New Yorker Divorce Cartoon a few days ago. The cartoon is very good and to publish it here I would have to pay more than I am willing to pay for the license, so if you want to see it, you will have to follow my link. But I may have to order a print of this myself.

The cartoon, by Mick Stevens, appeared in the January 12, 2009 New Yorker, and was part of the magazine's Caption Contest. It appeared with the following winning caption, suggested by reader Ann Seger of Chicago, Illinois: "For a divorce case, that went smoothly."

By the way (and to relate this to my last post), if this cartoon looks like it could serve as the illustration for your impending divorce, you are definitely not a candidate for do-it-yourself divorce.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

A Fool for a Client? More on DIY Divorce

2009-03-18T12:54:00.012-04:00

Now it is often said that he who represents himself has a fool for a client. But is that always true? When something very important is at stake, the answer is usually yes.

However, I was just quoted in today's Boston Globe, by relationship columnist Meredith Goldstein, in her short piece DIY divorce: Is it a good idea? - The Boston Globe. I appear in the article as the attorney who surprised the reporter by favoring do it yourself (DIY) divorce in some cases. Unfortunately, given the shortness of the article, my view that most divorces require legal representation, and that DIY divorces are only advisable, or even possible, in a limited number cases where there is really little in dispute, probably did not come through clearly enough. But the important counterpoint was provided by Attorney Laurie Israel, my friend from Brookline. Of course I think there are important truths in the comments by both of us.

If you're interested in the subject, see my previous post Massachusetts Divorce & Family Law Blog: NOLO, Its New Divorce Blog, and Do It Yourself Divorce and also see the Massachusetts Trial Court Law Library's blog post from back in January, discussing and linking to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's recent report on self-represented litigants: Massachusetts Law Updates: Self-Represented Litigants Report.

The fact is many people are taking their divorces, and family law representation, into their own hands, whether we like it or not. As a result our court system is reacting. Eventually, perhaps, there will be more unbundling of legal services, after the current experimentation with such unbundling of legal services in a few counties in Massachusetts has been sufficiently tested so that the results will give a greater degree of comfort to the judges, lawyers and clients who are trying this out, and consequently also to those of us who have not yet tried this out.

I do not believe one size fits all.

The longer I practice, and the more people I see, the more I am convinced that some people need no lawyers, while others should use a mediator, others could make very brief and efficient use of attorneys outside of court (unbundled legal services), others would be wise to choose collaborative lawyers, and still others should use more traditional divorce lawyers, and yes, sometimes even very aggressive trial lawyers who will have to take their cases all the way to trial.

I do imagine that some day it will not seem odd to find other trial lawyers, like me, who can openly acknowledge that many people should in fact handle their divorces on their own, or with minimal help from a mediator or a few attorneys outside of court.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Dine and Dump

2009-03-10T13:59:00.011-04:00

Advice columnist Meredith Goldstein of the Boston Globe had a great column this past week on "finding the perfect dumping grounds," exploring the art of picking the right restaurant in which to break up with your partner:
Finding the perfect dumping grounds - The Boston Globe.

Taking one's spouse to a nice restaurant and breaking the news over dinner is probably a better way to break up than completely surprising your spouse by sending a constable to serve him or her with divorce papers. Still, I don't know. There are some obvious, potential problems, as noted in the article. Indeed, there are many ways to break up, and probably none is easy.

Apparently Zagat has already published guides to the best restaurant dumping grounds in New York and Los Angeles. If you can't wait for Zagat to get around to publishing its guide for Boston, for now you'll have to read Meredith Goldstein's column for her ideas on the best dumping grounds here in Beantown. What would the criteria be, you wonder? What would make a restaurant a good place to dump your partner?

Well, one of the more interesting criteria, mentioned by the Zagat people and in the Boston Globe column, is the accessibility of exits. You've heard of the phrase "Dine and Dash"? If this style of dumping one's partner really catches on, maybe we will need even more the phrase "Dine and Dump" or even "Dine and Dump and Dash."

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Washington Gives Huge Holiday Bonus To Bank of America

2009-01-14T21:39:00.006-05:00

Here's a little bit of news on the ongoing Big Heist, from video-journalist Robert Greenwald, on how the Bank of America used the $25 Billion in bailout funds our supposed representatives in Washington have already given to it:

Taxpayers have given Bank of America $25 billion in bailout funds to help jumpstart our economy, but instead the bank has misspent on executive salaries and corporate jets. Then Bank of America took even more money from cash-strapped states by not paying for workers' healthcare.

Fathers & Families Group Unsuccessfully Sought to Block Implementation of New Child Support Guidelines

2009-01-09T00:24:00.004-05:00

The organization Fathers and Families (www.fathersandfamilies.org) has recently gone to federal court in an unsuccessful attempt to block use of the new Massachusetts Child Support Guidelines in our family courts. See The Docket » Blog Archive » Fathers’ group sues to stop new child support rules. I am writing an article on the new child support guidelines for a law journal, and am trying to keep an open mind as I continue to review and analyze these new guidelines. Otherwise, I would have already posted my analysis here after making brief comments on this blog right after the November announcement.

The new guidelines are now in effect, and have been as of January 1.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

A Wicked Good Parenting Resource

2008-12-21T15:02:00.007-05:00

Although many parents in and around Boston are already familiar with it, I want to make a plug for the free monthly publication Parents and Kids Magazine, and its parent site (pun intended), Wicked Local Parents (http://www.wickedlocalparents.com/). I was just looking through its recent articles online, including articles on ideas for parents in the coming holidays and New Year's, when I found an article quoting me as a custodial parent (see my last blog entry). Then I realized I have yet to add this great site to my blogroll, and to mention this resource here on my blog. Well then, here you have it.

The magazine is really well written, by and for Massachusetts parents, and is very helpfully available for free at schools, daycare centers, libraries, pharmacies and other stores throughout the greater Boston area. Take a look at it. You might just get an idea of something to do during the holidays, or learn something new that could benefit you and your kids.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Single Custodial Dads

2008-12-21T14:42:00.006-05:00

I just came across this article, The Life of a Single Dad, in which I am quoted, quite extensively, and not just as a divorce and family law attorney this time, but rather, primarily at least, as a single, custodial father. The article was published in the award-winning local Parents and Kids Magazine back at the end of May, but I have just now gotten around to finding it today. It's a good story about the interesting and small but growing demographic to which I belong - single custodial fathers - and some of the common challenges this particular group of parents faces.

EXCERPT, "THE LIFE OF A SINGLE DAD" (PARENTS AND KIDS MAGAZINE):
....In the past 40 years, the number of single fathers raising their children has swelled from 400,000 to more than 2.5 million, according to the U.S. census bureau. But, according to several single dads in the area, they are still few and far enough between to raise eyebrows when they appear at playgrounds with their kids and no wife in sight.
....

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Madonna Divorce Settlement - It'll Be A Big "Payout" to Guy Ritchie

2008-12-16T08:09:00.009-05:00

News was just released of the Madonna divorce settlement, under which Guy Ritchie will take around $76 Million as his part of the couple's marital assets division. For more, see the Guardian's report, Madonna divorce deal 'worth £50m' to husband Guy Ritchie | guardian.co.uk, and look at People Magazine's web story, Rep: Madonna to Pay Guy Ritchie $76 Million in Divorce Settlement - People.com.

This will be one of the biggest "payouts" in celebrity cases, and will probably be the biggest one going from a high-earning female star to her husband. Also, according to some reports, it is believed the two parents will share residence of their children. Apparently, there had been hope the divorce would be settled amicably, but that was not really the case, as John Bolch points out on his blog here: Family Lore: Not So Amicable.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Cathy Young on Gender Gaps, Gender Differences and Competition

2008-12-11T21:17:00.013-05:00

Cathy Young is back! For quite some time, I have patiently followed The Y Files, the blog by former Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young, one of the most fair minded, intelligent, reasonable, and important commentators on gender issues today, and author of what is in my humble view the best book of the last ten years on gender issues, hands down. (If it doesn't sound as if my view is very "humble" that's probably because I have read a lot of books and other writings on gender issues, by radical feminists and radical men, left and right and everything in between.)

The book, Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, which I have discussed here previously, is a book which is as relevant today as it was when written in 1999, and still way under-appreciated.

Unfortunately, Cathy Young had recently gone on some sort of writing hiatus.

But now she is back, with two very insightful posts during the last few days. If you don't already have her on your blog roll, or haven't already subscribed to her feed, go to her blog and do it now. Here are the recent posts:

The Y Files: The paradoxes of gender gaps

The Y Files: More about gender differences and competition

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Men As Caregivers

2008-12-05T10:51:00.010-05:00

There was an interesting blog post by Leanna Hamill at the Massachusetts Estate Planning and Elder Law Blog yesterday commenting on a recent report that more men have in recent years taken on caregiving roles for aging parents or other relatives: Massachusetts Estate Planning and Elder Law: More Men Taking Over the Caregiving Role. It's interesting to see that just as men have become more active in recent years in caring for children, they are also becoming more active in caring for aging parents as well.

EXCERPT, MASSACHUSETTS ESTATE PLANNING & ELDER LAW BLOG:

The image of a caregiver for an aging parent or relative is usually a woman in her 40's or 50's who is raising her own children, probably working outside the home, and then trying to care for her aging loved one at the same time. But according to a recent article in the New York Times, more men are serving as caregivers than ever before.

[Quoting the New York Times - link directly above:] "The Alzheimer’s Association and the National Alliance for Care- giving estimate that men make up nearly 40 percent of family care providers now, up from 19 percent in a 1996 study by the Alzheimer’s Association. About 17 million men are caring for an adult.

Often they are overshadowed by their female counterparts and faced with employers, friends, support organizations and sometimes even parents who view care-giving as an essentially female role. Male caregivers are more likely to say they feel unprepared for the role and become socially isolated, and less likely to ask for help."
....

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Florida Trial Judge Rules That State's Ban on Gay Adoptions Is Unconstitutional

2008-11-25T22:22:00.003-05:00

Today in the news there was yet another interesting development in the world of gay rights, this one in Florida: Florida ban on gay adoptions ruled unconstitutional - MiamiHerald.com.

EXCERPT FROM MIAMI HERALD ARTICLE OF TODAY:
BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER (cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com)
A Miami-Dade circuit judge Tuesday declared Florida's 30-year-old ban on gay adoption unconstitutional, allowing a North Miami man to adopt two foster kids he has raised since 2004.

In a 53-page order that sets the stage for what could become a constitutional showdown, Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman permitted 47-year-old Frank Gill to adopt the 4- and 8-year-old boys he and his partner have raised since just before Christmas four years ago. A child abuse investigator had asked Gill to care for the boys temporarily; they were never able to return to their birth parents.

''This is the forum where we try to heal children, find permanent families for them so they can get another chance at what every child should know and feel from birth, and go on to lead productive lives,'' Lederman said in court before releasing the order. ``We pray for them to thrive, but that is a word we rarely hear in dependency court.''

''These children are thriving; it is uncontroverted,'' the judge added.

Moments after Lederman released the ruling, attorneys for Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum announced they would appeal the decision to the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami.

.....

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

California, Arizona and Florida Join Long List of States Banning Gay Marriage

2008-11-13T10:09:00.005-05:00

Two more states besides California - namely, Arizona and Florida - have joined the list of nearly 30 U.S. states banning gay marriage, as the result of last week's elections. Although California still has civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, most of the states with bans, including Arizona and Florida, do not have civil unions, domestic partnerships, or any kind of recognition of these relationships. For a basic overview, see this New York Times article about the three state bans, and also read this from the New Hampshire Family Law Blog.

It seems the Northeast, and particularly New England, is exceptional. Massachusetts and Connecticut are now the only states sanctioning gay marriage. Vermont and New Hampshire have civil unions and Maine also has a degree of recognition of same-sex relationships through domestic partnerships. New York recognizes same-sex marriages formed in other states, and New Jersey also has civil unions. Outside this, our very tolerant area of the country, only the West Coast states have some formal, legal recognition of gay and lesbian couples: California still has civil unions, while Oregon and Washington have domestic partnerships.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

California Electorate Voted to Ban Gay Marriage; Legislators Try Hail Mary Pass to California Supreme Court

2008-11-12T10:01:00.011-05:00

California voters approved the gay marriage ban in that state, by voting for Proposition 8, during their election last week. Meanwhile, Democratic legislators are asking the California Supreme Court to void Proposition 8, in what the manager of the Proposition 8 campaign derides as a "Hail Mary" pass: Democratic legislators ask state Supreme Court to void Prop. 8 - Los Angeles Times. Some gay and lesbian couples have already gotten married in California, between the time the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage and the time when the gay marriage ban was approved last week. Their future is unclear.

Meanwhile, it is likely this development will improve the tourism prospects for Massachusetts and Connecticut, as these New England states, now the only states currently sanctioning gay marriage, should have a monopoly on the gay destination wedding market in the U.S.

EXCERPT FROM LA TIMES ARTICLE, BY DAN MORAIN, 11/11/08:

Reporting from Sacramento -- Forty-three Democratic legislators, including leaders of the California Senate and Assembly, filed a brief Monday urging the California Supreme Court to void Proposition 8.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and incoming President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg signed the friend of the court brief, filed with the state Supreme Court.

No Republican legislator signed the petition, though Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, denounced the anti-gay marriage measure over the weekend.

With almost 11 million ballots tallied, Proposition 8 had 52.3% of the vote to 47.7%. Although many ballots remain to be counted, the 500,000-vote spread is viewed as insurmountable.

"The citizens of California rely on the Legislature and the courts to safeguard against unlawful discrimination by temporary, and often short-lived, majorities," the legislators said in the document, written by attorneys at the firm Gibson, Dunn &Crutcher.

"This is a Hail Mary, no question about it," said Frank Schubert, manager of the Proposition 8 campaign.

....

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

New & Improved Child Support Guidelines To Go Into Effect on January 1

2008-11-07T14:45:00.005-05:00

New child support guidelines have just been promulgated, and they will go into effect in Massachusetts on January 1, 2009. See the Massachusetts Court System Press Release - November 5, 2008. I am one of the many attorneys, litigants, and other concerned citizens, who have long complained before that our current guidelines are not appropriate for our times, particularly as they are not precise and comprehensive enough to cover enough of our families.

The new guidelines, for the first time, will address some of the longstanding concerns many of us have had. For one, I see the task force has for the first time made it clear how to determine child support when there is joint physical custody. It is good to see that the task force this time included Fathers and Families founder Ned Holstein, as well as many of the usual participants (attorneys and judges and other family law establishment people). After I have time to give it a complete review, I will post my analysis. But right away, after a quick scan, I can already say it is a wonderful improvement over the guidelines that are currently in effect. Have a read for yourself and tell me what you think: http://www.mass.gov/courts/childsupport/guidelines.pdf.

Excerpt from Press Release of Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court:

Chief Justice for Administration & Management Robert A. Mulligan today announced the promulgation of revised Child Support Guidelines to be effective on January 1, 2009, based on a comprehensive review of the guidelines by the Child Support Guidelines Task Force he appointed in 2006. The 12-member Task Force was chaired by Probate and Family Court Chief Justice Paula M. Carey.

The report recommended significant, broad-based changes intended to make the guidelines more simple, clear, comprehensive and consistent with economic and societal changes of the last two decades. The report of the Task Force, available at www.mass.gov/courts/childsupport, explains the rationale behind the guidelines to assist attorneys and litigants in understanding and using them.

The recommendations include provisions that place greater value and emphasis on the involvement of both parents in the lives of children; consider the increase in health insurance costs and the requirement of mandatory health insurance in Massachusetts; provide greater guidance relative to when a child support order should be modified; and set forth specific deviation factors for deviation from the guidelines. These guidelines will apply to the circumstances of many more families in the Commonwealth.

....

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

More On The Big Heist

2008-10-26T15:38:00.007-04:00

Beat the Press Archive The American Prospect: "The Post Misleads Readers on the Bailout, Yet Again" :

Many school teachers, autoworkers, and plumbers do not like the idea of paying higher taxes so that the incompetent executives at major financial institutions can continue to collect their multi-million dollar paychecks. But, that is exactly what is happening as Congress voted to "spread the wealth around" by redistributing tax dollars from ordinary workers to some of the very richest people in the county.

Yeah, we know about the limits on executive compensation. But these limits are a joke, that's what all the experts said. People who read the Washington Post know that the limits on executive compensation are a joke because the Post ran a very good article (after the passage of the bailout) telling readers that the limits on compensation are a joke.

Since everyone knows that the limits on executive compensation are a joke, why did the Post tell readers in an article on the potential bailout of insurers that the banks who received government money "also must accept limits on executive compensation."

The reality is that these bailouts are being structured to be a massive transfer of wealth to the very richest people in the country. It is not supposed to be the media's job to conceal this fact from the public.
--Dean Baker
Posted by Dean Baker on October 25, 2008 9:22 AM

The Presidential Election and the Latest on Vote Suppression Efforts

2008-10-20T14:12:00.004-04:00

The Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays just played a great series, and last night, in the seventh game, the Rays won the right to go to the World Series. The series was a close, but fair, contest. Let's hope our own Presidential election, which looks like it may be close as well, will also be fair.

On that issue, here's a must-read article by Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Greg Palast, in Rolling Stone Magazine: Block the Vote: Rolling Stone. It's good to see we don't always have to go to the UK to get decent investigative news reports on our own Presidential election. We just have to look harder.

EXCERPT FROM ROLLING STONE ARTICLE:
....In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."

.....

ACORN Voter Fraud Hoax: A Case of Projection?

2008-10-20T14:00:00.001-04:00

Now here's more on the Presidential election, from the Guardian in England (as I've said here, it seems we have to go to the other side of the Atlantic to get the best reports on our own election): Brad Friedman: The Republican voter fraud hoax guardian.co.uk. Well, some of the real story is also being reported right here in the USA, though not as widely as the ACORN hoax story. The important story, for example, does indeed appear in the current edition of Rolling Stone, Block the Vote: Rolling Stone, an article by Greg Palast and Bobby Kennedy, Jr. To their credit, the New York Times and CBS News(see links in the excerpt below) have actually also reported a bit of the real story.

The Republicans/FOX News have been disseminating their ACORN voter fraud story to distract attention from the main story, in what is sort of the political and journalistic version of "projection."

EXCERPT FROM BRAD FRIEDMAN'S GUARDIAN ARTICLE:
[The Acorn fraud story] is all a hoax. All of it.But it's been an effective one, as it's served to distract from very real concerns about tens of thousands of voters who have been illegally purged from the voting rolls in dozens of states, as the New York Times reported in a remarkable front page investigative story. That story followed a report the week before from CBS News detailing still more wholesale purges of voting rolls in some 20 states.That will be the November surprise, when thousands, if not millions show up to vote only to find they are no longer welcome to do so and are forced to vote on a "provisional ballot" which may or may not be counted.These real concerns of election fraud, such as voting roll purges, electronic voting machines that don't work and so much more that actually matters, have been obscured by the smoke and mirrors and sleight of hand of the Republican party's phoney Acorn voter fraud charade.And where they can, they'll parlay it all into new photo ID restrictions at the polls (knowing full well that some 20m, largely Democratic-leaning voters don't own the type of ID they'd need to jump over that next Republican hurdle.)Yet, with all of the unsubstantiated, wholly bogus claims of voter fraud being carried out by Democrats, there remains at least one case of absolutely ironclad, documented, yet still-unprosecuted case of voter fraud that, for some reason, Republicans don't much like to talk about.We can only wonder why.

www.gregpalast.com
www.stealbackyourvote.org

More on Connecticut's Same-Sex Marriage Decision

2008-10-18T19:57:00.006-04:00

Here's another good article by Hofstra Law Professor Joanna Grossman, this one on the recent Connecticut Supreme Court's same-sex marriage decision: FindLaw's Writ - Grossman: And Connecticut Makes Three: The State's Highest Court Declares Same-Sex Marriage Ban Unconstitutional.

....Connecticut's ruling is similar to the ones in Massachusetts and California, though in subtle ways it is also stronger. Connecticut's civil union law did grant same-sex couples identical rights and benefits to married couples, unlike California's domestic partnership law, which had one tangible difference. And Connecticut's ruling on constitutional sufficiency is marginally stronger than that of Massachusetts, since it came as part of a fully-litigated controversy rather than as an advisory opinion. But these distinctions are minor; it's fair to treat all three of these cases as standing for the same principle: When it comes to marriage, separate is not equal.

The civil union operates as a pragmatic step toward marriage equality - one that secures tangible benefits for same-sex couples despite the present political climate. Polls often show majority support for civil unions, but not for same-sex marriage. Despite the practical benefits, however, the stigma and second-class nature inherent in an alternative status is inescapable. That is a reality that Massachusetts, California and, now, Connecticut have rightly faced up to - and acknowledged with rulings ensuring the name of marriage is accessible to all.

It's hard to know how many states must recognize same-sex marriage before we have a critical mass, but three is a good place to start.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

We Must Watch The BBC To Learn About Our Own Presidential Election

2008-10-12T02:01:00.011-04:00

Our American corporate media is still busy spewing Wall Street's propaganda, which is responsible for helping to sell the Great Heist (a/k/a "the bailout") which the Wall Street banking community and its friends in the White House have succeeded in forcing upon a reluctant Congress.

Now it is clear that Congress, in almost complete unanimity, has struck out on three of the most important issues during the Bush Years: 1) Patriot Act, 2) Iraq War authorization, and 3) the bailout for banks. It must be depressing and lonely to be one of the handful in Congress, such as Vermont's Representative Bernie Sanders or Wisconsin's Senator Russ Feingold, who were smart and decent enough to take the lonely, principled position in opposition to each of these wrong moves. It is no coincidence that those few who turned out to have been right on those previously wrongly decided issues are the same ones who have correctly opposed the corporate/bank welfare legislation now.

And it will hardly be any consolation once these few courageous politicians who were right on those other issues are eventually judged by history to have been right again on this latest issue. It is hard to make good judgments and look ahead when the media is so caught up in the government and Wall Street propaganda of the present.

Naturally, this same American corporate media, whose normal modus operandi is to pass off as actual news the many warmed-over press releases from the government, whether on the economy or on war or on almost anything else, despite the huge credibility problems of this government, is now completely ignoring one of the most important news stories of our time. That important news is the greatest unreported story about the current Presidential campaign - the fact that Obama may lose the election due to Republican efforts to reduce, block, or eliminate vast numbers of poor voters in many states, in order to throw the election to the Republicans. Of course, our Republican administration would not be sending out press releases to ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and FOX on all of that.

So once again, just like in 2000 and 2004, we have to go overseas, to the BBC, to get this important news, even though the news comes from an American, Greg Palast, the greatest living investigative reporter in this country. Here are the reports as recently broadcast by the BBC:

BBC Report, by Greg Palast, Part One

BBC Report, by Greg Palast, Part Two

Connecticut Finds Right to Same-Sex Marriage - Joins Massachusetts and California

2008-10-11T17:10:00.005-04:00

In a long-awaited decision, the Connecticut Supreme Court yesterday joined the highest courts of California and Massachusetts in creating, or recognizing, a right of same-sex marriage on state constitutional grounds. As in those other courts, the decision was a close 4-3. See the news here: Connecticut Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage - The Boston Globe. The majority opinion of the court is here, and the three separate dissenting opinions are here, here and here.

EXCERPT FROM OCTOBER 10, 2008 BOSTON GLOBE ARTICLE:
(By Michael Levenson and Andrew Ryan)

Connecticut became the third state to legalize same-sex marriage today in a 4-3 decision by the state Supreme Court.

In an 85-page decision issued at 11:30 a.m., the court struck down a law barring same-sex marriage, ruling that the state had "failed to establish adequate reason to justify the statutory ban."

The justices noted in the majority opinion that they recognized "as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court did in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health … that 'our decision marks a change in the history of our marriage law.' "

The case, Kerrigan v. the state Commissioner of Public Health, was brought by eight same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses by the Madison town clerk. They argued that the state's civil union law was discriminatory and unconstitutional because it established a separate and therefore inherently unequal institution for a
minority group. Citing equal protection under the law, the state Supreme Court
agreed.

"In accordance with these state constitutional requirements, same sex couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry," said the majority opinion, which was written by Justice Richard N. Palmer.

....

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Hooray, The Bailout Was Defeated

2008-09-29T20:11:00.007-04:00

Hooray, the bailout was defeated. But don't expect the likes of Nancy Pelosi and our own Barney Frank to do any soul searching.

This defeat shows that politics certainly makes strange bedfellows. Many Republicans joined with some Democrats in opposing this horrible bill. Of course there were only three Congressman in Massachusetts who voted against this horrible bill - John Tierney, Bill Delahunt and Stephen Lynch. And they are to be commended. The others should be condemned for their cowardice.

Now let's see if the sky falls. More likely, the housing bubble will continue to burst, as it should. If Congress really wants to help the situation they should do what Obama has said we should do (despite his similarly shameful, cowardly support of this horrible bill), and stimulate the economy "from the bottom up" rather than from the top down.

But don't hold your breath. I doubt this is the end of corporate welfare as we know it. This particular kind of welfare is far too important to the large campaign contributors.

My previous posts on this bailout attempt:
A Shameful Suck Up
Just Say No To The Bailout

A Shameful Suck Up

2008-09-29T09:58:00.009-04:00

Another shameful moment for our Congress is coming in its suck up to Wall Street. Once again we have bad leadership in the Democratic party, and that has and will result in more ass-kissing of the power elite, including the Bush Administration, whose incompetent Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will now have incredible power over taxpayer money to aid the unworthy on Wall Street.

As I feared in the bailout there will be no meaningful restrictions on executive pay, despite what is being generally reported, even on NPR this morning. We are also wrongly being told that we taxpayers, who will be expected to foot the bill for this further giveaway to the rich, may actually profit from this bill eventually.

Today's latest article by economist Dean Baker, TPMCafe | Economist Dean Baker| Why Bail? The Banks Have a Gun Pointed at Their Head and Are Threatening to Pull the Trigger, explains why we should not accept the banking community's propaganda, which is being disseminated by the government "leaders" - both in the White House and Congress.

Here is our Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi:

Wow, I think this is her most shameful moment in office, probably akin to Colin Powell's most shameful moment of his career, when he presented false intelligence information to the UN to justify the invasion of Iraq.

And here, with Dennis Kucinich, is what our Speaker of the House should be saying today instead:

Just Say No To The Bailout

2008-09-25T23:50:00.018-04:00

Once again we are being asked to trust the liars and fools who run Washington.

First we were asked to take the Bush Regime's word that suddenly terrorism was such a threat to us that we needed to give up some of our civil liberties. And thus we got the abominable Patriot Act.

Shortly thereafter we were asked by Bush, and the foreign policy duo of Dick Cheney and Cheney's pal and longtime mentor and partner-in-crime Don Rumsfeld - who together have screwed up foreign policy in their work for several different presidents, from Ford to the present Bush - to trust them about the need to go to war against Iraq because it supposedly had weapons of mass destruction. They asked for, and got, from Congress a blank check to go to war if and when these liars chose to go to war. And what a shameful disgrace this war against Iraq has been.

And now, Bush and the banking elite, for whom the Bush family has worked for decades, have asked Congress for a blank check for "$700 billion" (who knows how much, really?) to bail out Wall Street. Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, current Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, have overseen the stock bubble and/or the housing bubble, and have continuously either lied about one or both of these bubbles, or stupidly and irresponsibly told us everything was fine while doing nothing to prevent or ameliorate the predictable problems so many other economists, not similarly blinded by the elite's narrow Wall Street agenda, could and did foresee. And now we are being asked to believe these liars and incompetents once again? And let them stay in charge?

As they attempt to bail out unworthy Wall Street, will these incompetents and/or liars also do the things they should do, such as adopt strict conditions (caps on executive pay, for example) in exchange for appropriating our taxpayer dollars? Will they democratize the Federal Reserve?

Not a chance. They were happy to expand in an instant the role of the Federal Reserve with the Bear Stearns bailout, but would they actually put it more directly under the control of the people? No way.

Sometimes, we should just say no. No to the incompetents, the liars, the crooks, the thieves, the criminals in high places, and no to the greedy capitalist pigs who have sucked lots of the lifeblood of the economy from the ordinary people who truly keep the economy working. No to the incompetents who have screwed up the economy while telling us all is well. The banking and economic elites who pretend to manage our economy for the greater good, while actually and primarily serving the narrow interests of the greedy on Wall Street, have been the tyrants of our economy for decades.

They need to get a strong message from the people that there will be no more business as usual. Will the Democrats step up to the plate? Sadly, that is not likely, because they are far too much aligned themselves with the same economic elite so undeserving of their power. So far they appear to be wimps. I have no confidence that our spineless Congress will engineer a bailout with the kind of conditions, and structural changes, that are really needed, and which would benefit the vast majority of us in the long run. I think, then, that we should instead insist that there be no bailout at all.

Bush and Company told us all was well, but suddenly now the sky is falling. We've been there before with these clowns. It's too bad the media is going along with the latest lies and manipulations and not exposing these phonies and questioning their motives. Instead, we should listen to one of the economists who was right about both the stock bubble and the housing bubble while the economic elite were irresponsibly full of happy talk. Dean Baker is one of these, and he says we should not reward incompetence and should not give these elites the bailout they now seek: No Bailout: Stop Rewarding Incompetence, by Dean Baker.

To understand better what is really going on (as the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal frequently do not get it right), see Dean Baker's blog Beat The Press | The American Prospect: Dean Baker's commentary on economic reporting. And, now more than ever, it's a fine time to read his tome The Conservative Nanny State - How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer.

NOLO, Its New Divorce Blog, and Do It Yourself Divorce

2008-09-22T00:10:00.005-04:00

Nolo, the very reputable publisher of legal forms, books, and other aids for those with legal problems they can handle on their own ("Do It Yourself" or "DIY") has recently sponsored blogs in various legal areas.

Since April of this year, Nolo’s Divorce, Custody & Family Law Blog has been in operation. Although the blog has not had very many posts to date, the quality is excellent, as the blog is written by California family lawyer Emily Doskow, who is the very author of Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce.

While on the subject of DIY divorce, I want to say two more things:

1) DIY divorce is not for everyone, and it is best actually to get an initial consultation with a divorce attorney in your state to discern whether you can and should in fact handle your divorce on your own, or whether you need to hire an attorney, mediator, or other professionals. OK, you can stop laughing now. Honest to God, I myself have told many individuals, at their initial free consultations with me, that they should not hire me or anyone else, and should instead consider handling their divorces themselves. Of course, DIY is generally only appropriate when there are few, if any, unresolved issues between the parties, that is, when there is little or nothing in dispute, and also when there are no matters of any complexity.

2) The Nolo book is a good book for general reference and a general understanding of divorce, but one should actually find, if possible, a more specific book applicable to the laws of one's own state. Divorce and family law are governed by state law, and each state's laws, while similar in many respects, are in fact oftentimes quite different.

When I see a good candidate for DIY here in Massachusetts, I show them my copy of How To File For Divorce In Massachusetts, a book written and published by the founders of Divorcenet.com, Massachusetts' own divorce attorney Sharyn T. Sooho, and Steven L. Fuchs.

Full Disclosure: I am not just an ardent admirer of the book and especially the website, divorcenet.com, for which these two are responsible; I am also a longtime member/advertiser on their website, http://www.divorcenet.com/. But I get no benefit from this plug, of which the authors have had no advance notice from me, nor have I even informed them that that I have been quietly promoting their book for years. (As for the Nolo book, I do not even know its author nor have I ever communicated with her.)

Now, my own edition of the Massachusetts book is quite old and I am not sure if it has been updated. But it is still the best book - even the old edition I have - which I have seen for DIY divorce on the market in Massachusetts. I have recently seen another book in several of the big bookstores and it seemed reasonably good as well, but the Sooho-Fuchs one is the best.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Crockefeller's Sealed Divorce Records Released to Prosecutor

2008-09-16T10:19:00.004-04:00

It seems whenever I miss a story in my own state, at least regarding the fascinating "Clark Rockefeller" (hereinafter "Crockefeller") case, Jeanne Hannah over in Michigan picks up on it. In her blog Updates in Michigan Family Law: Sealed divorce files?, she discusses the news of last week, here in the Boston Globe, that certain of Crockefeller's sealed divorce records were ordered released to the Suffolk County District Attorney. Although it is not ordinary for a court to seal divorce records in the first place (except for personal financial statements, Guardian ad Litem reports, and other confidential documents, divorce files are public records), it does happen, and I have had a number of cases where one or both parties successfully sought to have their divorce records sealed.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Massachusetts Divorce & Wills Lawyer Blog

2008-09-15T15:26:00.008-04:00

I just found another good, new legal blog in Massachusetts, and this one should be of interest to my readers as it is devoted to my primary area of practice - family law - as well as estate planning: Massachusetts Divorce & Wills Lawyer. It is published and written by Gabriel Cheong, who practices both family law and estate planning from his office in Quincy, Massachusetts. I have just added it to my blogroll. Have a read, subscribe to it, blogroll it, and pass the word.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Stimulus Checks Intercepted for Child Support: My Client's Story and a Rant

2008-09-15T14:19:00.003-04:00

While I myself have been too busy to post this past week, a few of my clients have found themselves quoted in the news. There's only one I can mention here. Cheryl Hayes, my former client, has authorized me to discuss her case after she thanked me for directing Associated Press reporter Steve LeBlanc to her this past Tuesday, thus resulting in her interview an hour later and a photo session that resulted in the following Associated Press article, AP IMPACT: Stimulus checks boost child support - washingtonpost.com, immediately published and picked up by some 300 news outlets around the world.

I find it a bit ironic that I had a hand in having my client pictured in this article, as she is a woman owed lots of child support by her exhusband and she is arguing that it is absolutely correct that the federal stimulus checks should be intercepted to pay down child support arrears. Well, I agree with her. However, up until just five or six years ago I was predominantly representing men in divorce actions. I have probably had more than my fair share of male clients who were the victims of child support orders that were too high. Indeed, I have long been both personally and professionally aware of the recent history of unfairness toward men in the Massachusetts family courts, both in custody and visitation matters and in child support determinations.

But what I now understand much better - now that I represent a larger, more representative sample of family law clients, including many more women now than before - is that family law victims are not of one gender. Too often irresponsible and even abusive individuals, whether male or female, are able to "win" in court, at least in some respects, even when the facts are against them.

When the reporter contacted me on Tuesday, and was seeking clients or previous clients who could speak to him about the issue of stimulus checks being intercepted to pay child support obligations, I immediately told him to speak with the Fathers and Families organization here in Massachusetts, and was told that he had already done so. The reporter needed, instead, somebody who was in favor of the interception of stimulus checks to pay child support arrears. Well, I certainly had someone for him. After calling Cheryl Hayes to get her approval to give her name and phone number to the reporter, I helped the reporter to make contact.

Cheryl Hayes wants even more publicity for her case, and wants me to tell even more of her story here, because it is so illustrative of the fact that there are indeed deadbeat dads out there. And boy, if there ever was one, her exhusband fits the bill. (Of course, there are deadbeat moms as well, and there are misguided, mistaken, and sometimes even incompetent court officials, and thus there exist numerous types of miscarriages of justice, leading to suffering by men, women, and children.)

The man who owes Cheryl Hayes some $30,000 somehow had the gall and the wherewithal to hire expensive attorneys to fight for the right to see his children, despite the fact that he had abused them and they were terrified of him. But this man failed to show up in court when the children's therapist and another mental health professional testified in court that the children suffered from quite egregious abuse by him while they were with him in North Dakota, and before the children moved with their mother to Massachusetts. This man has since left North Dakota and now lives in Minnesota, where he has managed to pay next to nothing in child support in the past three years, while the children have continued to struggle with therapy, and even institutionalization, as a result of his unspeakable abuse.

This man has failed to show up personally in Massachusetts to court for either of his family law cases - his visitation case (which led to a trial in which we won a ruling, after the above-described testimony, that he would have no contact with the children) and his child support case. This man has been able to avoid, halt, or otherwise dodge investigation by social service agencies and the police by moving from one state to another, and has avoided paying child support by perjuring himself in courts of at least two states, and by hiring attorneys in this state while achieving some degree of success in manipulating the court systems in at least two, and possibly three, states.

It is "men" like this who give all of us fathers a bad name and truly deserve to be called deadbeats. And it is cases like his - no less than the cases of fathers who are paying too much child support - that point up the fact that our courts are falling far short of their responsibility to find facts and dispense true justice.

We should not demonize all men who owe child support, as most of them are good people, even many of those who fall far behind in their support. (See my previous post Deadly Delinquents, Deadbeat Dads, and the Dangers of Demonization.)

Nor should we demonize men simply because they are accused of abuse. Men are more likely to be accused of abuse, but not really that much more likely actually to be guilty of abuse (physical or mental) than women, according to the available evidence. Because men are less likely to have custody of their children, and because men are still more likely to have greater expectations for financial contributions to their families, men are also more likely to be required to pay child support than women, and there is a greater number of men than women who fall behind in their support. However, men with child support obligations are more likely than women with child support obligations to actually pay those awards, according to the evidence.

These real statistics, often covered up by feminist groups and trumpeted by fathers' advocates, point out not only the inequality, unfairness, and gender bias in our expectations of both mothers and fathers that have resulted in numerous injustices in our family courts. These statistics also point to the sad reality that the facts of individual cases often do not matter: that family law conflicts too often lead to the wrong results (too much child support, not enough child support, custody to the wrong parent, etc.) because of the unfair procedures, bias, incompetence, and other failings in the judicial system.

Each case should be judged on its own facts. Far too often, because of the problems with our court system, the facts do not determine the outcome of cases. And irresponsible and abusive individuals too often are permitted to harm others with seeming impunity. And that's just sad. And wrong.

I have faith that our courts will improve. But we need more people who have suffered injustice in the family law arena to take the time to get involved and try to change the system. People like Cheryl Hayes. And people like the good men and women at Fathers & Families.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Stealing the Vote - Will the Republicans Be Able To Do It Again This Year?

2008-09-03T22:30:00.002-04:00

Did Al Gore win in 2000? Yes, he did. The hanging chads, and the corrupt ruling of five members of the US Supreme Court were only part of the story. If thousands upon thousands of black voters had not been deliberately disenfranchised by Jeb Bush's Florida government, as documented and reported by Greg Palast at BBC and elsewhere, and if other intentional Republican cheating had not occurred (e.g., counting overseas military votes although the ballots arrived late), Gore would have been declared President in 2000. Despite Nader. Despite the hanging chads. Even despite a corrupt US Supreme Court which was willing to overturn the Florida Supreme Court in order to put Bush in the White House. Gore would have won, and those problems would not have mattered.

And then did Kerry win in 2004? Greg Palast has made a strong case that he did in fact win - specifically, that he actually won Ohio and New Mexico, and but for Republican cheating in those states, Kerry would have, and should have, been named President in 2004. In 2004, I contributed financially to Kerry's campaign and also I was one of the many lawyers who volunteered to help the Kerry campaign monitor elections in several important states. Given a choice of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, I chose Pennsylvania, and was therefore responsible for monitoring a particular voting precinct in Scranton. (Afterwards, I joked that Kerry won Pennsylvania because I was there, and that had I opted for Ohio, Kerry would not have "lost.") The discrepancies in Pennsylvania and Florida in 2004 were not so many, but in Ohio and New Mexico they were enough, arguably (see Greg Palast's reports) to rob Kerry of the presidency.

Both Gore and Kerry did the polite, establishment thing and stepped aside for the sake of their own future careers - or whatever. To me, Gore was particularly disappointing in his refusal to fight, not for himself, but for the many disenfranchised voters whose votes were stolen in Florida. Many blamed Ralph Nader for the "loss" but the real blame belongs with the Jeb Bush-Jim Crow tactics that are frighteningly a major part of the Republican playbook, and which continue to threaten our "democracy" - that is, whatever remains of our democracy, now that big business has bought and paid for most of the politicians in Washington.

The mainstream media did not timely, accurately, and fully report the real story of 2000. Instead, weeks after the real story should have been on page one, the corporate media instead made allusions to the real story, as had already been reported in England and elsewhere in Europe, typically in a shamefully short article about the NAACP's "claims" buried on page 26. Nor did the media report on the vote stealing of 2004. The corporate media (General Electric, Disney, Rupert Murdoch, et al.) has also not reported the real story on the "Help America Vote Act" (an Orwellian name for a frighteningly repulsive federal law that continues to threaten our democracy).

For the real story - as there is hardly any guarantee we will get the unvarnished truth from the corporate media just because they have the constitutional "right" of a free press - one must read Greg Palast's articles and books at www.gregpalast.com.

Now Greg Palast has teamed up with Robert Kennedy, Jr., in an effort to prevent a repeat of the Republican vote stealing that has occurred in the last two elections. See www.StealBackYourVote.org. Perhaps Obama will win in a landslide, as Kerry should have done in 2004, and thus it will be impossible for the corrupt Republican machine to steal enough votes to take the election this time. But all who care about democratic values should be vigilant. Vote stealing is a time-honored tradition, both in this country and throughout the world - both "democratic" and "non-democratic". But while Jimmy Carter may monitor the elections in other countries, we can't expect to have outside monitors with any clout monitoring our own elections. We certainly can't count on our media to monitor the election accurately; the media, and not just FOX, has been a huge part of the problem, both in 2000 and 2004.

There is a documentary, now showing in East Cambridge, at Kendall Square's landmark theater, about vote stealing - Stealing America - The Movie - which I have not yet seen but which I will see soon. From the previews, I can see that both Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Greg Palast, among many others, are interviewed in the documentary.

Parental Kidnapping and Amber Alerts - Crockefeller Provides Teachable Moment

2008-08-16T08:23:00.021-04:00

Since the case of Crockefeller (the man who most recently called himself "Clark Rockefeller" and who apparently has used numerous other names since coming to this country from Germany as Christian Gerhartsreiter) has begun to dominate the news, several people have asked me how a father can be charged with kidnapping his own son. (Whatever this man's identity, there is no question that he is the father of the child he took away during a supervised visit in Boston.) My previous posts on this case are here (right after the arrest in Baltimore) and then here(Crockefeller, His Lawyer and the Media).

I respond that parents can indeed "kidnap" their own children, and there are "parental kidnapping" laws which make it a crime for parents to kidnap their own children, such as the Massachusetts law, Chapter M.G.L. 265, Section 26A ("Kidnapping of minor or incompetent by relative")under which Crockefeller has been charged:

Whoever, being a relative of a child less than eighteen years old, without lawful authority, holds or intends to hold such a child permanently or for a protracted period, or takes or entices such a child from his lawful custodian, or takes or entices from lawful custody any incompetent person or other person entrusted by authority of law to the custody of another person or institution shall be punished by imprisonment in the house of correction for not more than one year or by a fine of up to one thousand dollars, or both. Whoever commits any offense described in this section by taking or holding said child outside the commonwealth or under circumstances which expose the person taken or enticed from lawful custody to a risk which endangers his safety shall be punished by a fine of not more than five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than five years, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

Some of the confusion may be the result of Crockefeller's lawyer's initial reported statements casting doubt on the viability of the kidnapping charge. In response, the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly Blog then issued a post on the criminal statute and case law interpreting it to explain how parents who take or hold children in violation of a valid custody order can indeed be charged, and convicted, of parental kidnapping.

Now I have just read another excellent post, with some good links to other informative sites, at the Updates in Michigan Family Law Blog, by Jeanne Hannah, an attorney with a lot of experience with parental kidnapping cases; her blog discusses the Crockefeller case, amber alerts and parental kidnapping: Amber Alerts-When Are They Used?

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website, and for information about Massachusetts criminal law, see the criminal defense page.

Crockefeller, His Lawyer, and the Media

2008-08-13T10:48:00.008-04:00

As I previously stated here right after "Clark Rockefeller" was arrested, there's got to be more to the weird story of Crockefeller and Snooks, and we're bound to hear more soon. Well we have now heard quite a bit more, and even some from Crockefeller's own lawyer.

The Boston Globe had an article in today's paper, Lone defender savors high-profile case - by Jonathan Saltzman, about Crockefeller and his lawyer, Stephen Hrones, who has taken his case to the press with a vengeance. This is precisely the kind of case in which going to the press is necessary, as the case is going to be tried in the media initially anyway, and something from the defendant needs to be heard.

But the article discusses speculation and second guessing by other lawyers about the lawyer's tactics, particularly Hrones' decision to reveal some rather uncomfortable facts about his client's past. I wouldn't second guess this very experienced, and very effective attorney's decisions. It is hard for any of us to know whether Crockefeller's attorney is making the right moves or not, because we don't know what he knows from his own client.

But there are some beliefs I have about the case as a result of what he is doing. Given the way that Crockefeller's attorney is handling this case, and divulging information, I would assume that there is too much bad news and he has a huge, huge need for damage control. It's akin to bringing out some very inconvenient truths by your witness on direct to take out some of the sting of cross examination.

EXCERPT FROM BOSTON GLOBE ARTICLE:

"I'm going to enjoy the ride as long as it goes," said Hrones, who characterizes the case as the climax of his career. "But I'm protecting my client. He goes first."

But whether Hrones is helping his client or hurting him through news interviews is a matter of debate in Boston legal circles.

Damon Scarano, a lawyer who has known Hrones for years, said Hrones has humanized his client by sharing what Rockefeller says he remembers about his past. Hrones has told reporters that Rockefeller speaks German but does not remember growing up in Germany. Rockefeller also remembers "bits and pieces" of his childhood, a Scottish nanny and a visit to Mount Rushmore in a station wagon, for example, Hrones said.

"I think he's handling it very well," Scarano said of Hrones. "He's been very low-key on this. Usually, he's very hyper."

But other lawyers say privately that Hrones may have hurt his client by telling reporters Monday that Rockefeller recalls living in a guesthouse in San Marino, Calif., that he rented from John and Linda Sohus, a young couple, and John's mother, Didi, in the early 1980s. Hrones said Rockefeller also recalls when John and Linda Sohus went missing in 1985. The remains of a man believed to be John Sohus were found on the couple's property in 1994, and his wife has never been found. Both are presumed dead, authorities say.

The alleged admission by Hrones, said some lawyers, may have put his client at the scene of a homicide.

Hrones has also confirmed Rockefeller's use of aliases, saying there is nothing wrong with using another name if one does not commit fraud. "You members of the press, you could call yourselves Joe Blow or anything, and it'd be no crime," he told reporters Monday evening.

As it happens, Hrones said, he met Rockefeller several weeks ago, before the alleged kidnapping. A mutual friend whom Hrones declined to identify introduced the lawyer to Rockefeller in Boston. After Rockefeller was arrested Aug. 2 in Baltimore and his daughter, Reigh Storrow Mills Boss, was found unharmed, Rockefeller called his friend and asked him to get in touch with Hrones.

Hrones, a Harvard-educated son of an MIT professor, has long had a deep distrust of authority and sympathy for people in trouble. In the 1960s, he protested the Vietnam War outside the Pentagon. In recent years, he has denounced the Boston Police Department for several wrongful convictions.

His successes included a 2004 ruling that erased the conviction of Angel S. Toro, who was sentenced to life in prison for killing a Howard Johnson's clerk in Dorchester during a 1981 holdup. Toro is still serving a sentence of three years to life for an unrelated murder conviction in Florida.

"I had about 14 attorneys since he was arrested, and without a doubt, he was the most effective," said Toro's wife, Debra, of Melrose.

Robert A. George, another defense lawyer, said that "when the world seems to be crashing down all around a defendant, there is not a better person to be fighting for your life."

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website, and for information about Massachusetts criminal law, see the criminal defense page.

The Economics of Gay Marriage

2008-08-10T22:46:00.025-04:00

I have long been waiting for the Law and Economics blogging professor duo from the University of Chicago - Judge Richard Posner and Gary Becker - to address gay marriage on their blog. Well, the wait is over, as they both specifically addressed the issue today. See Judge Posner's post The Economics of Gay Marriage and Gary Becker's post Should Gay Marriages be Allowed? Gary Becker's piece is especially interesting, as he discusses not only gay marriage, but also polygamy, in a short piece that contemplates, and advocates, marriage as a private contract with minimal interference from the government.

Of course, a must-read for anyone interested in the law and economics of the family is Gary Becker's fascinating tome A Treatise on the Family, recently updated and expanded. Becker won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1992.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Bush's Chauffeur Sentenced to "Time Served" For His Role in Aiding and Abetting Bush's War Crimes, But Will Be Held Indefinitely As Enemy Combatant

2008-08-07T21:31:00.022-04:00

Just kidding.

No, that would be Osama Bin Laden's chauffeur, not George Bush's. See today's story about Bin Laden's chauffeur, Salim Hamdan, getting a sentence of 5 1/2 years. He's already served 5 years but don't expect him to get out in half a year with "time served" as he is expected to be held indefinitely as an "enemy combatant" despite the military jury verdict's acknowledgement, even in the kangaroo court in which our government had both of its thumbs on the scales, that he was just a bit player.

Remember, Bush told us he is the "decider". He gets to decide to kill innocent civilians in an illegal war and lie about that with impunity, but he also gets to redefine what a war crime is so that he can otherwise punish those he wants to punish, by labeling them war criminals and then locking them up indefinitely as "enemy combatants" even after their kangaroo court sentences are over.

But no, Bush's own crimes do not count. For more on that, see John Dean's discussion, at Findlaw's Writ, of the Kucinich impeachment resolution FindLaw's Writ - Dean: Congressman Kucinich's Impeachment Resolution, the Parallel to Nixon, and Why Even Nixon's Defenders Finally Abandoned Him.

When I studied international law in law school, and my international law professor Louis Sohn kept leaving for Washington to advise the Bush I regime on the first Iraq War (at a time when international law seemed to get some degree of respect and attention instead of creative disregard and blatant disrespect), I recall hearing that the most fundamental, actual rule of "international law" is "might makes right." If that was true then, it sure as hell is true now.

Well, God Bless America. And God Bless our Decider.

Paris Hilton, Barack Obama and John McCain

2008-08-06T15:31:00.008-04:00

After the release of McCain's political ad attacking Obama as a celebrity who is not ready to lead (and juxtaposing images of Obama with those of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton)-

Paris Hilton made the following video in response. Pretty funny.

Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Adfunny videosFunnyOrDie.com

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

"Rockefeller" Arrested In Baltimore After Kidnapping His Daughter "Snooks" in Boston

2008-08-03T00:39:00.014-04:00

Crockefeller and Snooks. Hardly your everyday kidnapping.

I have followed with interest the recent news about the apparent con-man and divorced father, who calls himself Rockefeller (dubbed "Crockefeller" by the NY Daily News), who recently kidnapped his daughter in Boston after she returned with her mother from England for his first visit with the child after the move.

Apparently during the marriage, the mom had worked, and dad stayed home with the child, but eventually the couple split, reportedly at least in part because of the fact that this man who called himself "Clark Rockefeller" was a con-man, not at all related to the famous Rockefeller family, and without any kind of identity papers he could provide, although he moved easily within high society circles in Boston and New York.

He nonetheless got some of the assets in Massachusetts from their divorce here and agreed to let mom take custody and move with their daughter to England. Subsequently, and quite recently, it seems "Crockefeller" made a bad, bad move in kidnapping the child and disappearing out of state. He was just found in Baltimore yesterday. Snooks appears to be okay.

Boys and girls, this is not the way to conduct a marriage, a divorce, or a post-divorce visitation schedule. The craziest thing is that, apparently the father, despite being a con artist, a fraud, and a kidnapper, was otherwise somehow a good father to the child during the marriage. There's got to be more to this weird story, and we're bound to hear more soon. We'll have to pay close attention. You just can't make this stuff up.

For the latest reports, see the following news stories, in reverse chronological order:

1)FBI Busts Rockefeller (Boston Herald, August 3, 2008)

2)Suspected kidnap dad Clark Rockefeller in FBI custody in Maryland (New York Daily News, August 2, 2008)

3)Snooks' mom filed divorce over Clark's Crockefeller ruse (New York Daily News, August 1, 2008)

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Massachusetts House Joins Senate In Voting To Repeal 1913 Law

2008-07-29T23:57:00.005-04:00

The House voted overwhelmingly today to repeal the 1913 law. Now that both the Senate and the House have passed the bill, the bill will go to Governor Patrick, who is expected to sign it. As a result of the repeal of the old statute, gay and lesbian couples residing in other states will now be permitted to marry in Massachusetts even if their home states would not permit them to marry in their home states. See the Blue Mass Group Blog for more. My previous post on this story is here.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

YouTube Divorce - A Failed Strategy

2008-07-28T07:00:00.004-04:00

To follow up on the YouTube Divorce of Tricia Walsh-Smith, which I discussed here this past April (after which Tricia continued her tirades and crazy antics on YouTube, all of which I ignored), it appears that Tricia's adventurous approach to fighting her contested divorce has not helped her one bit.

Back in April, I thought Tricia had the craziness out of her system, as she appeared to have gotten smart after her first YouTube video by hiring a good lawyer who would prevent her from using YouTube again. But I was wrong. She apparently either ignored good advice from her lawyers (most likely) or she didn't get any. Thus she persisted in smearing her husband in further YouTube videos.

Now the judge has found that Tricia conducted a "calculated and callous campaign to embarrass and humiliate her husband and his daughters." The judge both ordered her to leave the New York apartment from which she complained on the first video that her husband had tried to evict her, and also refused to void her prenuptial agreement as she had sought. See Family Lore: Walsh-Smith: "Calculated and callous" .

If you really feel like airing dirty laundry in public, you should consult a good lawyer first. But then you should follow that good lawyer's advice, even though the advice will almost always be: No, don't do it. Keep it private.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Massachusetts Legislature Moves Toward Equality for Gay and Lesbian Couples

2008-07-27T08:00:00.004-04:00

Despite the fact that the Massachusetts Senate recently passed Senate Bill 800, which would repeal the 1913 law that prohibits non-resident gay and lesbian couples from marrying in Massachusetts unless their home state also would recognize their marriage, the House has yet to take up and pass the bill, and has until July 31 before its current session ends. See the New England Blade's most recent article from Thursday: House Ends Week Still Silent on 1913 Law; Bill Sent for Third Reading; Session Ends Next Week, and for more background the earlier article of Wednesday, July 23 (quoted below). Pressure from the advocates for marriage equality may overcome some political resistance in the House. Hopefully the advocates will prevail, and then the measure will go to the desk of Governor Patrick, who is expected to sign it into law.

In other, more decidedly positive news, also from the New England Blade: "The Massachusetts State Senate on Wednesday, July 23, by voice vote, passed the MassHealth Equality Bill H.B. 4107, which would grant married same-sex couples in Massachusetts the same access to Medicaid benefits as heterosexual couples. Currently, federal Defense of Marriage Act regulations prohibit same-sex couples legally married in Massachusetts from being treated as each other’s spouses for the purposes of federal benefits programs, including Medicaid, which is uniquely funded by both state and federal dollars. The bill passed in the House last week. Once the House and Senate agree on slight differences in language, the bill will go to Gov. Deval Patrick’s desk, who is expected to sign it into law...."

EXCERPT FROM NEW ENGLAND BLADE ARTICLE, JULY 23:

The House of Representatives, by the New England Blade print deadline, had not taken up Senate Bill 800, which, if passed, would repeal the 1913 law thatprohibits non-resident same-sex couples from getting married in Massachusetts unless their home state would recognize their marriage.

But despite the looming end of the current legislative session — July 31 — House Speaker Sal DiMasi remains committed to bringing the issue before the full House soon, said his spokesperson, David Guarino.

“It is something we hope to bring up in the next few days,” David Guarino, spokesperson for DiMasi, said on Tuesday. “Speaker DiMasi is a strong supporter of it and hopeful to get this done this session.”

Guarino did not return a call made to him on Wednesday.

MassEquality said on Wednesday that“it’s still very likely that it will come up before the end of the session,” and asked its membership to contact their respective legislators. The Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Caucus has also urged its membership to contact their legislators.

“The Senate acted quickly and decisively but the House may be a more difficult battle,” says the Caucus in an e-mail to its membership on Tuesday. “Our opponents have generated thousands of calls and e-mails to Representatives to stop our Repeal lobbying, and they’re having an impact. Now is the time to act. We need you to e-mail your state Representative and urge her/him to support the repeal.”

The State House News reported on Monday that some House members are concerned about taking up the repeal of the 1913 law during an election year, which has left doors open, says MassResistance, for opponents of the bill to talk with representatives.

“Last Thursday we sent people to personally visit every House office at the State House. They sat down with staff members and made them read our handouts explaining the facts about this issue,” said MassResistance in its blog(http://www.massresistance.org/). “They got both good and bad responses. Some were very supportive, some quite hostile. But we got the message across.”
....

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Double Standards and Gender Inequality

2008-07-26T12:07:00.004-04:00

I want to point out a few more articles on gender equality (or inequality) I have read while on vacation this past week. I'm always interested in debates between those looking for fairness for women and those who seek fairness for men. If I can't find common ground, I at least hope to get a little closer to the Truth by paying close attention to the gender dialectic.

First, I recently read the following article by Jed Hresko, Deputy Director of Fathers & Families, UK Equality Commission Chief: Maternity Leave Hurts Women in the Workplace, from the Fathers & Families Blog. It discusses the inequality of granting maternity leave, but not paternity leave, and the negative policy impacts, on women and men, of such policies of gender inequality. The article discusses current circumstances in the UK, but also alludes to the recent Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination pronouncement that our own Maternity Leave Act would be held to apply to men, despite the discriminatory text that remains in the written law. (I have already discussed this MCAD news here.) Hresko's article is insightful, and in my view, its message is spot on.

Also I came upon the following book review in the New York Times: Endangered Species or Still the Enemy? by Liesl Schillinger, in the July 13, 2008 New York Times. The article discusses both Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care, by Kathleen Parker, and He's a Stud, She's a Slut And 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, by Jessica Valenti.

I have read earlier writings by both of these very different social commentators, and have found much of great value in each. I will definitely be looking for these books the next time I find myself in a bookstore.

EXCERPT FROM NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BY LIESL SCHILLINGER:

AT last: Dan Quayle has a defender. In “Save the Males,” a scorching jeremiad against the forces that have demoralized the American male over the last 20 years, the conservative columnist Kathleen Parker writes that Dan Quayle “was right” to blame the TV show “Murphy Brown” for injuring family values. In 1992, when the show’s title character (played by Candice Bergen) decided to have a baby on her own, Ms. Parker writes, she “attractively delivered the message that men are not essential for family.”

The result of our society’s absorption of this message? “A new generation of child-men, perpetual adolescents who see no point in growing up.” Judd Apatow... got any quibble with that?

Sharp, silver-tongued and greatly exercised, Ms. Parker identifies many other agents of male distress as well — from “pole-dancing moms and prostitots decked in baby hookerware” to films and music that portray men as “dolts, bullies, brutes, deadbeats, rapists, sexual predators, and wife beaters.”

Ms. Parker was raised by her father and by four stepmothers (her mother died when she was little). Today, she is the mother (and stepmother) of sons only.

As a result of her “total immersion in maledom,” she understandably feels great sympathy for the troubles that boys and men have in building a secure, reputable identity in go-girl America. She makes the charge that our society discounts the importance of men as fathers and husbands, and does too little to make men feel self-assured in schools, in the workplace, the family and even the military.

Judging by a plethora of recent magazine articles, books and even presidential campaign speeches, this may be true. But if it is, who’s to blame? While the author doesn’t let Hollywood and the intelligentsia off scot-free, the chief offenders in her mind are the people in push-up bras ... liberated women.

As she sees it, an entire generation of men have lost their moral compass because women decided to flash skin instead of flashing behavioral cue cards that say: Respect. Protect. Marry. Provide.

If empowered women choose to look out for themselves, she asks, what are men to do? She raises the specter of “fake wombs,” which would allow men “weary of being used as sperm donors and human A.T.M.’s” to at last “enjoy a level playing field.”

“Save the Males” is one of two new books, each of them arresting, entertaining and serious in its own way, that inspect the battlefield of the sexes in America, and come to opposing conclusions about the nature of the conflict. The disparity would almost be funny if the outcome didn’t matter so much.

THE other book, “He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut,” was written by Jessica Valenti, a gutsy young third-wave feminist. (As Ms. Parker vividly puts it, first-wave feminists “got women the vote,” the second wave “got them employed and divorced,” and the third wave “is busy making them porn stars.”)

Ms. Valenti is the founder of the blog Feministing.com, and published a book called “Full Frontal Feminism.” Her new book tracks 50 double standards that punish female assertiveness (for instance, “He’s Angry, She’s PMSing,” “He’s Dating a Younger Woman, She’s a Cougar,” “He’s Childless, She’s Selfish.”)Eerily, both Ms. Parker and Ms. Valenti single out some of the same signs of change for comment. Both are freaked out by Bratz dolls. To Ms. Valenti, they show that, when toymakers “aren’t telling little girls that they should grow up to be happy homemakers, they’re telling them to be sexual.” To Ms. Parker, the dolls prove that little girls are “in training to drive boys wild,” inculcating sluttish dress habits that booby trap the workplace when they grow up to wear “provocative clothes that get men’s mind off their business.”

....

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Obama: Can We Have a Choice, Not an Echo?

2008-07-25T14:28:00.003-04:00

I have come out in favor of Obama, and have contributed to his campaign, just as I did to John Kerry's four years ago. But I have, like others, been very unhappy with Obama's flip on FISA, and his other moves to the "center." I always really hate this point of presidential campaigns when we seem to get an echo, rather than a choice, with the Democrats running to the middle and trying to look tough and presidential on war ("defense") issues, and the Republicans trying to act "compassionate" in their "conservatism."

Well it didn't really work for Dukakis when he appeared in an army tank. It didn't work for Gore when he chose as his running mate the warloving, empire-building de facto Republican Joe Lieberman. It didn't work for Kerry when he tried to convince us that not only was he a windsurfer, but also a hunter who loved guns. I wonder if Obama's new gunloving gestures will work. Of course, it is the Iraq and Afghanistan (and possibly Iran) wars and related issues that worry me most about our prospective new commander in chief.

Will we have the Republicrats and the Demopublicans again, as Ralph Nader has justifiably complained in elections past? I keep hoping that this time will be a real break, a real change, a choice not an echo.

Obama, please prove me wrong. I'll support you to the end. I supported Kerry through his flip-flops and his pandering to the "middle" and I will support you as well. But let's please have a choice, not an echo. The echos of Kerry and Gore to the "compassionate conservatism" of Bush led to close elections - close elections that, whether actually won by Bush, put Bush in the White House where he proved to be neither compassionate nor conservative.

We need to win by a convincing margin, by offering up a real alternative to more of the same bullshit. End the war now in Iraq, bring home the troops, and start no further wars for the neocons or oil industry lobbyists. Maybe after we change our foreign policy, we will then be able to make some progressive changes in spending and taxing priorities, after decades of irrational policies that have shifted more and more wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich. I'm doubtful we will be so lucky to get to that point any time soon. But here's hoping.

More On Same-Sex Marriage Recognition in Other States

2008-07-14T13:50:00.000-04:00

It's hard to keep up, but here are two more recent articles from Findlaw's Writ on issues related to same-sex marriage. These both deal with issues regarding the legal treatment of same-sex marriages in states that do not have same-sex marriage:

*The Virginia Supreme Court Enforces Vermont's Custody and Visitation Order Regarding a Same-Sex Couple's Child: Why an Anti-Same-Sex-Marriage State Recognized a Same-Sex Union For This Purpose, by Joanna Grossman, whose writing thus far proves her to be, at least to me, the foremost academic expert on these issues.

*The Case for a Right of Marriage Recognition: Why Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Should Protect Same-Sex Couples Who Change States, an interesting piece by Chicago attorney Steve Sanders.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Supreme Judicial Court Refuses to Permit Retroactive Same-Sex Marital Benefits

2008-07-13T07:28:00.002-04:00

In No Pre-Marriage Benefits for Same-Sex Couples Massachusetts Law Updates blog has reported on the latest Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case, Charron v. Amaral issued this past Thursday, in which the court put a very sensible limit on the reach of the Goodridge same-sex marriage case, in deciding that its prior constitutional holding in that case would not justify now ordering pre-marriage benefits (in this case, loss of consortium benefits in a medical malpractice case) to be applied retroactively for the benefit of a lesbian couple, for a cause of action that accrued before the couple was actually permitted to get married.

Although there were no dissents, it is interesting to see that Chief Justice Margaret Marshall, and two others, set out a different rationale in a separate concurrence, and thereby delineated some apparent differences on the court regarding the meaning of the Goodridge decision.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Christie Brinkley Divorce - Winner Takes All?

2008-07-11T07:28:00.011-04:00

The Christie Brinkley divorce case has just been settled, and Christie will walk away with sole custody of the children and all but $2 million in cash, from assets estimated to be worth around $60 million, including 18 properties in the Hamptons, all of which she will keep. For more see the latest stories from People Magazine, and The New York Post.

Looks like Christie won big, after choosing to insist on a public trial. But as Dahlia Lithwick said at Slate.com last week("Le Trainwreck-The Christie Brinkley divorce is a lesson in how not to cure a broken heart" July 2, 2008, Slate.com), her win may have come at a big price. As Lithwick put it:

Brinkley is about to become another victim of the fiction that you can use the tabloids more efficiently than they can use you. Won't happen. Brinkley, Cook, and their two kids will get spit out the other end of this trial, and the only real winners will be the chesty adulteresses—each of whom will have her own reality show/recording contract/clothing label by the end of the summer. I have watched enough nasty custody battles to know that if you really want your children to know the unfiltered truth, you sit down with them (when they are 18 or 21) and tell it to them. You don't run it through the double noise machine of a four-week custody trial and the 24-hour tabloid press. Whatever it is about divorce that sets the parties to behaving like children..., it would be good of them to get out of the way of the real children—whose best interests are meant to be the polestar of any custody fight. If raising children in the media spotlight isn't its own form of child abuse, subjecting them to four weeks of Daddy's dirty laundry surely is. If you can name me one celebrity who won her celebrity divorce, I'll name you a kid who lost one.

I'm not sure I completely buy her argument, but it's got some merit. I do think it is an open question how much kids really need to be sheltered from their parents' mistakes. And especially when they have been "raised in the media spotlight" how successful can we be in sheltering them? It may be that these children already knew most, if not all, of what was going on, and no further damage was done by the public airing of dad's dirty laundry. But there are those who would be in a position to know what was in the best interests of those children, including the lawyer for the children. Lithwick's best point is that the lawyer for the children wanted to close the trial, yet Christie insisted on going forward with her public trial.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

NEW YORK POST ARTICLE EXCERPT:

....After an intense, all-night negotiation at a Long Island hotel, the pair agreed that she would get full custody of their two children, final parental decision-making power and ownership of the large number of properties they had amassed during their 10-year marriage.

In the end, all Cook ended up with was the cash - most of which will go to pay his legal expenses, sources said.

Brinkley agreed to pay him a flat amount of $2.1 million - a drop in the bucket when compared to her fortune, which a source close to her estimated to be around $60 million.

"It's to me a very bittersweet moment because it really is the death of a marriage. It's also a new start for all of us," Brinkley said after the settlement was announced in Suffolk County Court in Central Islip. "I'm very pleased with the results today. I was here fighting for custody."
Following five bruising days in court, the two sides holed up at a Marriott in Islandia until the wee hours of the morning hammering out the final details of the settlement. They reached an agreement at 6:15 a.m.

A little more than three hours later, the 54-year-old stunner and her 49-year-old architect husband appeared in court to before Judge Mark Cohen to announce a deal.

....

How Can You Stand It In Family Court?

2008-07-10T00:39:00.026-04:00

As a divorce attorney, I sometimes ask myself, and I am sometimes asked by my clients, this very good question: How can you do this family law litigation every day?

Shortly after I read John Bolch's recent Family Lore entry posing this question, I found myself outside a divorce courtroom and suddenly called a "douchebag" by an irate husband. He called me this in the presence of his own lawyer and his wife, who was my client. The husband's lawyer and I had been having a calm, rational discussion, when suddenly the man stormed off and called me a douchebag.

My response? I actually smiled as I looked at opposing counsel, who seemed appropriately embarrassed by his client's sudden outburst. I then asked the other attorney, "Did you hear what your client just said?" No response. We quickly moved on. Back to business.

Parties to disputes sometimes say horrible things to the opposing parties and to the opposing attorneys, and occasionally even to judges as well. Incidents like this don't affect every attorney on every day in family court. But I would venture to say that an incident somewhat like the one I recently experienced does happen every day in each and every family courthouse I know, involving at least one divorce lawyer. When these things happen, and they have happened to most if not all of us divorce litigators, it is our job as lawyers to keep our cool. We as lawyers had better not respond in kind to any such taunts, threats or verbal assaults - or worse yet, take it up a notch and get physical.

And although we are indeed required to keep our cool, I was not too surprised to read the following article yesterday by Dianne Williamson, Divorce Court: He said, he said, in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette reporting on an apparent incident in one of the family courts where I regularly appear. Read the piece. Wow, what testosterone! This reads more like a story about barely grown, drunken dads fighting at their kids' hockey game, than about mature, respected professional men in suits in a courthouse. The facts, of course, are in dispute, but there's little doubt there was an altercation and it is likely that both a litigant and a lawyer were out of line, possibly way out of line.

For every story like this that makes the news, I bet there are dozens of similar stories you will never read. And given what is at stake in divorce and family law disputes, I sometimes wonder why we don't all witness more of such incidents.

A criminal defense attorney once questioned how I could possibly stand it in family court, and then he said to me, "If I had to go into probate [and family] court, I might have to kill someone." Of course these words should not be taken literally, or too seriously. They were spoken in a restaurant and after the consumption of a few drinks. However, his words do indicate he well knows he has no business being in family court, and that's why he stays out.

Some attorneys, probably most in fact, and even many very good civil and criminal litigators, just can't stand the heat of family court and should stay out for their own good, and for the good of their clients. Litigation is by its very nature contentious. But there is just nothing quite like the heat of family court.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

New Massachusetts Law on Child Passenger Safety

2008-07-07T16:49:00.015-04:00

Recently, and as previously noted by Massachusetts Law Updates Massachusetts has passed a new child passenger safety bill. The new law provides: "No child under the age of eight and measuring less than fifty-seven inches in height shall ride as a passenger in a motor vehicle on any way unless such child is properly fastened and secured, according to the manufacturer’s instructions, by a child passenger restraint."

As explained on the Massachusetts government website, the new Massachusetts Child Safety Passenger Law, as of July 10, 2008, will

require children to ride as passengers motor vehicles in a federally approved child passenger restraint that is properly fastened and secured until they are 8 years old OR over 57" tall. The expanded law will require a booster seat/safety belt combination for children who have outgrown a child safety seat - typically when they are above age five or 40 pounds - until they are 8 years old OR over 57" tall. The Massachusetts Safety Belt Law requires safety belt use by those 13 years of age and older.

The federal regulations for child safety seats can be found at 49 CFR 571.213. For comprehensive information on passenger safety for children of all sizes, see the following from the website of the American Academy of Pediatrics: Car Safety Seats: A Guide for Families 2008.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Massachusetts Legislature Acts to Reform Child Abuse Laws, Prevention Measures, and Bureaucracy

2008-07-03T00:36:00.020-04:00

Here's the best article I could find on the very important bill passed by the Massachusetts House and Senate on Tuesday, reforming child abuse laws and prevention within this state: Worcester Telegram and Gazette, by John Monahan: Child abuse protections approved/Legislature redefines laws, intervention. (It is interesting that when both the Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram and Gazette - the New York Times-owned newspapers of our two biggest cities - run similar legal stories about a development in family law or crime, it is often the considerably smaller Worcester paper which has the more comprehensive and better article.)

The bill, which is expected to be signed by Governor Patrick, will among other things formally establish the Office of the Child Advocate in the governor's office (this office was actually already created by Governor Patrick by executive order as earlier discussed on this blog), give college benefits to children in foster care, and make many other changes designed to improve the Department of Social Services (DSS) - which the law will in fact rename "Department of Children and Families."

Unfortunately, as State Rep. James J. O’Day, himself a former DSS social worker, points out in the article (see the end of the excerpt below), the bill doesn't exactly put its money where its mouth is. The overburdened and often incompetent DSS will now be mandated, as the newly named DCF, to improve its performance, raise its standards, and do more work. But how exactly will that be possible if we do not also pay for more, and better, social workers to do the extra work? New rules and new methods of oversight can only do so much.

It's certainly hard to ask for more tax money for abused children, especially in a down economy, even here in Massachusetts. After all, it's been a long time since Bill Clinton declared that the era of Big Government is over. (And of course, the era of Big Government is indeed still over, at least for welfare and social services, though not for corporate welfare and federal war spending... but I digress.)

I am afraid this new law will prove far less effective than it promises to be, much like other unfunded, or underfunded mandates, such as No Child Left Behind. But I sincerely hope I am wrong about that.

EXCERPT FROM TELEGRAM AND GAZETTE ARTICLE, BY JOHN MONAHAN:

BOSTON— The Legislature yesterday adopted broad changes in child abuse laws and prevention measures, beefing up police and social worker intervention programs, requiring closer monitoring of child abuse cases and more certain investigation requirements in cases of injured children.

Perhaps the largest change calls for the establishment of a powerful new Office of the Child Advocate in the governor’s office, independent of the state Department of Social Services, whose name is being changed by the bill to the Department of Children and Families.

Sections of the bill require the independent advocate’s office to investigate all critical incidents, receive and investigate complaints, and staff a 24-hour hot line for children in foster care. It also grants the office subpoena power to acquire witness statements and documents needed in child abuse investigations from private nonprofit agencies.

The bill is a compromise between two versions approved earlier in the House and Senate; it was adopted on unanimous votes in both chambers and sent to the governor yesterday for his review.

House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi said the bill followed up on findings from a House task force set up to investigate flaws in state child protection services and foster care, after revelations in the case of Haleigh Poutre, an 11-year-old foster child from Westfield.

In 2005, she was hospitalized in a coma from severe brain injuries allegedly suffered in beatings by a foster parent.

The bill would offer state assistance to pay not only tuition, but also college fees for state foster children and children adopted through the state Department of Families and Children, preventing an interruption of public services when they turn 18 as required under the existing system.

It also calls for social workers to have at least a bachelor’s degree and for supervisors to hold master’s degrees, and calls for police to investigate all cases of child injuries from the outset, and would bring police in to investigate situations that result in three child abuse complaints against a family.

Other provisions exempt information obtained by the Office of the Child Advocate from public records, and require more police training on handling minors when parents and guardians are arrested.

....

State Rep. James J. O’Day, D-West Boylston, a former DSS social worker, said while the bill improves child protection oversight and extends services past age 18 for foster children, it fails to invest in an expansion of the state’s social worker staff to provide better services and protective programs for children.

“This is not a panacea. There is always going to be, regrettably, child abuse,” he said.

“Oversight is oversight, but we need bodies out on the street dealing with families and helping families,” which is not accomplished in the bill, Mr. O’Day said.

“Without the workers to actually go out and do all the new work they are asked to do, it’s going to be an additional burden, to do more with less — the same old story,” Mr. O’Day said. “I would like to see more workers, more staffing, more services and the ability for workers to really do the work they are supposed to do with families. You can do that with 12 or 13 cases. You can’t do that with upwards of 22 cases.”

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

US Supreme Court Loves Exxon

2008-06-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

Thanks to investigative reporter Greg Palast for reminding us, amidst all the fuss over the US Supreme Court's recent big cases in the news - the gun rights case, and the Guantanamo detainees' habeas corpus case, among others - that the US Supreme Court just gave a huge gift, worth about $2 billion, to Exxon this past week: Greg Palast: Court Rewards Exxon for Valdez Oil Spill.

Yes, we knew it wasn't just our President, Vice President, and the other oilmen and women of the White House who were taking part in the big orgy with Big Oil. The Congress has long been in on the lovefest as well, although it has a much more discreet relationship with Big Oil - a relationship which tends to be especially discreet, if not outright deceptive, in election years. But now it seems a majority on the US Supreme Court, and not just oilman Dick Cheney's hunting partner on the Court, have joined in publicly kissing Exxon's ass (and boy does that ass stink!)

Well, at least there's one thing all three branches of our government seem to agree on.

Getting Tough On Child Rape

2008-06-29T14:09:00.008-04:00

Soon after the Massachusetts House passed a bill earlier this month that would be tougher on the crime of child rape, the US Supreme Court set a limit on just how tough any state can be, when on Wednesday it held capital punishment for child rape to be unconstitutional. For further background on the case, see my previous post: Supreme Court to Consider Whether Death Penalty Can Be Imposed for Child Rape.

EXCERPT FROM NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE, BY LINDA GREENHOUSE, JUNE 26, 2008:

WASHINGTON — The death penalty is unconstitutional as a punishment for the rape of a child, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The 5-to-4 decision overturned death penalty laws in Louisiana and five other states. The only two men in the country who have been sentenced to death for the crime of child rape, both in Louisiana, will receive new sentences of life without parole.

The court went beyond the question in the case to rule out the death penalty for any individual crime — as opposed to “offenses against the state,” such as treason or espionage — “where the victim’s life was not taken.”

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said there was “a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and non-homicide crimes against individual persons,” even such “devastating” crimes as the rape of a child, on the other.

The decision was the third in the last six years to place a categorical limitation on capital punishment. In 2002, the court barred the execution of mentally retarded defendants. In 2005, it ruled that the Constitution bars the death penalty for crimes committed before the age of 18.

....

For information about Massachusetts criminal law, see the criminal law page of my law firm website.

Emily Rooney Discusses Alimony Reform

2008-06-28T17:44:00.008-04:00

More on Massachusetts alimony reform. Boston's WGBH TV Show, "Greater Boston" with Emily Rooney, on Thursday evening, discussed recent efforts to reform alimony law in Massachusetts, including the recent push by the Second Wives Club. See WGBH's Recent Shows: "The Second Wives Club pushes for alimony reform". Appearing on the show to argue for reform was Elizabeth Benedict, whose recent Boston Globe op-ed article was discussed by me in my recent post on this topic. Also appearing on the panel were attorneys Timothy A. Taylor, the lawyer from Lincoln, Massachusetts, who drafted the alimony reform bill, and Gerald Nissenbaum, who essentially defended the status quo.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly Blog

2008-06-24T16:00:00.003-04:00

Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly has started its own blog recently.

The new blog, The Docket, promises to cover "breaking stories and noteworthy information from the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly newsroom. If it impacts Massachusetts lawyers, we’ll be blogging about it here."

As the blog is published by our state's legal newspaper, it will likely prove to be a useful resource, and so I have put it on my blogroll, and have also added its feed to the news feeds which appear on the right column of my blog. Hat tip to Real Estate Space.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Academics Discuss California Same-Sex Marriage Case

2008-06-20T11:42:00.000-04:00

I have compiled a list of articles by academics on the California same-sex marriage case; most of them appear at Findlaw's Writ. I have listed them here in chronological order, which may be useful if you are going to read them all, as many reference the previous articles. If you don't have time to read them all, I would suggest reading at least the last three - the two Grossman and McClain articles as they provide the best general overview and analysis, and Andrew Koppelman's piece, which helps to fit the case into a broader, national and historical perspective. (I wish I had time to write my own article on the subject right now, particularly to compare and contrast the California decision with the Massachusetts decision, as there are many more interesting points to be made. Maybe later.)

The California Same-Sex Marriage Ruling: What it Says, What it Means, and Why It's Right (Michael Dorf, May 19, 2008, Findlaw)

The California Supreme Court's Gay Marriage Opinion: The People of California Have the Power to Undo It By a Ballot Initiative Amending the State Constitution, But How Far Should That Power Extend? (Vikram Amar, May 22, 2008, Findlaw)

The California Supreme Court's Decision Equalizing Marriage for Gay and Straight Couples: Did the Court Overstep? (Edward Lazarus, May 23, 2008, Findlaw)

The California Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Marriage for Same-Sex Couples: Why Domestic Partnerships Are Not Enough (Part One in a Two-Part Series of Columns) (Joanna Grossman and Linda McClain, May 27, 2008, Findlaw)

The California Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Marriage for Same-Sex Couples: How Conservative Reasons Led to a Progressive Result (Part Two in a Two-Part Series of Columns)(Joanna Grossman and Linda McClain, May 28, 2008, Findlaw)

State of Chaos? (Andrew Koppelman, June 6, 2008, Balkinization Blog)

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

The Iraq War, Oil Industry War Profiteering, and High Gas Prices

2008-06-18T09:00:00.016-04:00

Greg Palast, in his article of several weeks ago, discussed the 500-pound elephant that is still in the room: Driving the Surge in Gas Prices? The Bush-McCain surge in Iraq. Even the Democrats, who have called for a "windfall profits tax" (what Greg Palast says should be called a "war profiteering tax"), seem to talk mostly about the increased demand for oil (mainly in China) as the dominant factor in the recent increase in world oil prices, and the resulting increase in gas prices at the pump.

But a huge factor over the past five years has been on the supply side as well, and the decrease in the supply in Iraq in particular. It was not until the end of 2007 that oil production in Iraq had finally returned to its early 2003, pre-war level. During the past five years, production from Iraq has been way, way down, and world prices have gone up, up, up. Had supply from Iraq been higher, prices would not have risen as fast.

Remember, the Bush neocon Wolfowitz told us that after we invaded Iraq, we would be able to pump enough oil in Iraq essentially to pay for the war and for reconstruction? Well, of course that didn't happen. That was just one of the many big lies of the Bush administration. Instead, we have been paying in many sad, painful ways for this war, and future generations in this country will pay most of the financial costs of this terrible war.

Meanwhile, Big Oil (which, together with the neocons, brought us into this war) has made out like bandits, as relative supply and demand have continued to bring oil prices up and up and up. Then of course there are the other big corporations, such as Blackwater, Halliburton/KBR, CACI and Titan, that are making a more direct killing onsite in Iraq; for dirty details on this direct war profiteering, see Robert Greenwald's documentary Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers.

It is apparent from the right side of the chart above, from the zfacts.com site created by economist Steve Stoft, that there has been a dramatic increase in gas prices from 2003 to date, precisely the long years of the most recent Iraq War. Yes, China has been booming during that period, and worldwide demand for oil has increased. But supply from Iraq, which is home to the world's second largest proven oil reserves and is still controlled in fact by the United States, has been way down because of the war we started there and which we are still conducting there.

I wonder if the Democrats refuse to make this obvious connection - to talk about the elephant in the room - for fear of how it will sell politically. I do want Obama to be elected. I support him, and I assume he has great advice as to what he should say and shouldn't say. But his silence on this issue makes me wonder if our whole nation is still unable to accept the depressing realities of Big Oil, the war, and windfall profits, or "war profiteering." More likely there is a more depressing reason for the silence: the Democratic Party still lacks the courage to challenge the war industry and Big Oil. One thing is for sure, however: the Republican Party, and McCain, have completely sold out to Big Oil, and the war establishment, just like the Bush Family has done long ago. We have no choice but to go with a Democratic President if we want to have any hope of ever ending the madness.

EXCERPT FROM GREG PALAST'S ARTICLE:
....
In 2002, after Bush Junior took power, the top ten oil companies took in a nice $31 billion in profits. But then, a miracle fell from the sky. Or, more precisely, the 101st Airborne landed. Bush declared, “Bring’m on!” and, as the dogs of war chewed up the world’s second largest source of oil, crude doubled in two years to an astonishing $40 a barrel and those same oil companies saw their profits triple to $87 billion.

In response, Senators Obama and Clinton propose something wrongly called a “windfall” profits tax on oil. But oil industry profits didn’t blow in on a breeze. It is war, not wind, that fills their coffers. The beastly leap in prices is nothing but war profiteering, hiking prices to take cruel advantage of oil fields shut by bullets and blood.

I wish to hell the Democrats would call their plan what it is: A war profiteering tax. War is profitable business – if you’re an oil man. But somehow, the public pays the price, at the pump and at the funerals, and the oil companies reap the benefits.

Indeed, the recent engorgement in oil prices and profits goes right back to the Bush-McCain “surge.” The Iraq government attack on a Basra militia was really nothing more than Baghdad’s leaping into a gang war over control of Iraq’s Southern oil fields and oil-loading docks. Moqtada al-Sadr’s gangsters and the government-sponsored greedsters of SCIRI (the Supreme Council For Islamic Revolution In Iraq) are battling over an estimated $5 billion a year in oil shipment kickbacks, theft and protection fees.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the surge-backed civil warring has cut Iraq’s exports by up to a million barrels a day. And that translates to slashing OPEC excess crude capacity by nearly half.

Result: ka-BOOM in oil prices and ka-ZOOM in oil profits. For 2007, Exxon recorded the highest annual profit, $40.6 billion, of any enterprise since the building of the pyramids. And that was BEFORE the war surge and price surge to over $100 a barrel.

It’s been a good war for Exxon and friends. Since George Bush began to beat the war-drum for an invasion of Iraq, the value of Exxon’s reserves has risen – are you ready for this? – by $2 trillion.

....

New Hampshire Family Law Blog

2008-06-17T09:00:00.003-04:00

I just found a relatively new family law blog, which is off to a great start, in neighboring New Hampshire - the New Hampshire Family Law Blog, which is written by Kysa Crusco, who practices law in Manchester, New Hampshire. I'm happy to welcome her blog to my blogroll and to the greater family law blog family. I should add that although Kysa Crusco is practicing law just over the border in New Hampshire, her bio states she was educated (high school, college and law school) in the great state of Massachusetts.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Father's Day Gift From the MCAD

2008-06-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

Just in time for Father's Day, and much to the apparent dismay of employers, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination recently gave a surprise gift to working fathers in this state. It seems the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination is now really getting serious about the issue of discrimination against men, and has abruptly decreed that the Massachusetts Maternity Leave Act applies to men. See Massachusetts Maternity Leave Act Applies to Men - Boston Employment Lawyer Blog and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly - Men now eligible for maternity benefits.

From these reports, it appears that men may only be getting this equitable treatment now because someone figured out that continuing to discriminate against men in general would require discriminating against gay men as couples. As MCAD commissioner Martin Ebel put it:

If two women are married and adopt a child, then they are both entitled to leave under the [MMLA], and yet if two men are married and adopt a child, they would be entitled to no leave under a strict reading of the statute. That result was troubling to us, and we didn’t think it was in keeping with our mandate by statute, which is to eliminate, eradicate and prevent discrimination in Massachusetts.

Now, I have to wonder, if "maternity leave" can so easily be transformed into "parental leave," what exactly will be next? Will we have a federal Violence Against Men and Women Act(VAMWA), to replace the Violence Against Women Act(VAWA), in long-overdue recognition of the fact that domestic violence goes in every direction, male on female, female on male, male on male, and female on female? At last, will there be equal rights for male victims of domestic violence? I'm not holding my breath. But maybe equality is contagious.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Divorcing, But Still Living Together, in a Bad Housing Market

2008-06-15T11:00:00.000-04:00

There's a great article in today's Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, by Lisa Prevost, about the effect of the declining housing market, and the credit squeeze, on divorcing couples, many of whom are now forced to stay together longer than they may have wanted or intended: Two Exes, One Roof - The Boston Globe ("Two Exes, One Roof - What happens when a divorcing couple meet a slow housing market? Usually, it's not pretty.") As you can see from the excerpt below, I am one of the attorneys quoted in the article.

"DESPERATE" IS AN APT DESCRIPTION FOR ANY NUMBER of homeowner scenarios these days, as declining home values and tighter credit continue to squeeze sellers. When it comes to divorcing couples, however, the steep drop-off in housing sales is making some bad situations truly awful. Dramas are playing out across the region as couples who no longer want to stay together, but can't afford to live apart, are winding up prisoners in their own homes. Either houserich and cash-poor, or simply overextended on all fronts, these couples are retreating to the far corners of their houses as they await the buyer who will free them.

Family law attorneys, mediators, and real estate professionals say that while this scenario isn't necessarily new, its rising incidence is very much a sign of the times. Divorcing couples who borrowed heavily against their homes when values were soaring several years back are now scratching for enough equity to cover their mortgage, lawyer bills, and a fresh start. The financial strain is forcing more of them to stay put until the house sells, a situation that is almost always very uncomfortable.

"In a number of my cases, couples are sharing houses but using separate bedrooms, and it remains to be seen what impact all of this will have on the children," says David A. Hoffman, an attorney, mediator, and founder of the Boston Law Collaborative.

....

Barbara Shapiro, a certified divorce financial analyst and vice president of HMS Financial Group in Dedham, agrees that the sliding market is forcing more divorcing couples to remain housemates. The cases she sees typically fall into one of two categories. "You have the couple that's already divorced and had decided they were going to split the house once it's sold. And they can't sell it, or it doesn't make sense to sell it. So they're scrambling to adjust," she says. "And then there are people who are saying, 'We can't get divorced - we can't afford it.'"

The latter sentiment turned up unexpectedly in a divorce case handled last year by Steven Ballard, a lawyer in Worcester and Wellesley. He was representing a woman in particularly bleak circumstances: She had a restraining order against her husband, who had moved back in with his mother. The wife worked but couldn't cover the mortgage payments and expenses on their house without her husband's income. Because they owed more than the house was worth, foreclosure loomed as a possibility. Still, Ballard didn't see taking the husband back as an option. Much to his dismay, his client did. The couple reconciled. "I'd seen financial problems lead to divorce," Ballard says, "but I hadn't seen it save a marriage."

....

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Massachusetts Alimony: Time for Reform?

2008-06-14T10:04:00.032-04:00

In yesterday's Boston Globe appeared an op-ed article by novelist Elizabeth Benedict, critical of the Massachusetts alimony law and application of that law by courts in this state: Elizabeth Benedict: Boston Globe Op-Ed: The chilling effect of state's divorce laws. I actually know Elizabeth Benedict, and as one of the lawyers she talked to before writing that article, I must say that I welcome her criticism, even though I believe she may be, as I have told her, exaggerating the extent of the problem she sees.

Her problem is mostly with lifetime alimony awards and with what she rightly sees as the inconsistent, unfair application of alimony law. Of course, I have no doubt that the cases she discusses are real, and it only takes one bad experience in family court for any one person to be turned off and disillusioned with the whole process.

The main point that should be taken away from her article, in my opinion, is that the law on alimony is so vague as to permit a huge divergence of results, from one case to another. I would add that these results often depend on factors that should not be important and determinative: they are factors primarily related to the quality and experience of the judge, rather than factors actually relating to the facts of the individual cases.

In my experience as an attorney, I have been able to end lifetime alimony awards, as lawyer for men in each case, in every case where it was justified and where my clients and I tried to do so. However, in those cases, my male clients did not even come to me to try to eliminate the alimony until their children were emancipated and their exwives were working fulltime and earning as much as, or more than, they were. In other words, we had very strong cases to end alimony. And yet, although the cases did not require trial, they were at first hotly litigated cases, and they were hardly the walks in the park that they should have been.

I am happy to see Elizabeth Benedict join other disgruntled second wives and girlfriends in trying to help men to right this wrong in Massachusetts family law, particularly by supporting the enactment of HR 1567, a relatively unambitious, but sensible bill that, as Benedict notes in her piece, has been given an unceremonious legislative death as the bill was quietly committed to further "study."

We have long needed better guidance and clearer laws on alimony - and in the related area of child support as well, I hasten to add - that cover the needs of today's divorcing and separating parents and spouses. The child support guidelines have numerous flaws and do not cover those with combined incomes of $135,000 or more, exactly the group of people, interestingly enough, who are most likely to hire lawyers for their court cases. Such a situation leads intelligent people like Elizabeth Benedict to understandable cynicism about the legal process, and about lawyers themselves. And so Elizabeth Benedict states as follows:

The Massachusetts and Boston Bar Associations have created a task force to study problems stemming from lifetime alimony, but it will be months before their recommendations, if any, will be made public. They may eventually support new guidelines for judges, not new legislation, which would clarify and simplify. They prefer ambiguity and case law, which produce more billable hours.

The crux of the problem is there is no agreement on a formula, or a uniform set of guidelines even, for alimony, and the law of alimony is essentially the same long list of statutory factors that are supposed to be taken into account in determining the division of assets upon divorce (M.G.L. ch.208, section 34). See the Massachusetts divorce statute here.

One former judge, Judge Ginsburg, formerly of the Middlesex Division of the Probate and Family Court, who in fact created his own alimony formula (called "the Ginsburg formula") which he, and some others, have used on an informal basis, especially back when he was still a judge, wrote an article, back in 1997, which is surprisingly still very relevant today: "The Place of Alimony in the Scheme of Things," Edward M. Ginsburg, Massachusetts Family Law Journal, Vol 14, No. 5 (January 1997). Sorry, but I can't find an online link to that article. In that article, then-Judge Ginsburg pointed out that there is precious little in the way of guidance in how to deal with different kinds of cases (short-term, mid-term, long-term marriages) and how to structure awards, both in terms of amount and duration. Well, not much has changed in the past eleven years, in statutory or case law, since Judge Ginsburg wrote his article, to alter this basic reality.

And what little new case law we do have has not remedied this problem. As pointed out by Massachusetts Attorney Peter Gossels in this Massachusetts Lawyers weekly article from February 5, 2007, the law as it still stands permits "predator spouses" to enter into short-term, childless marriages, and extract huge sums of money through alimony. See the Gossels article, both for another extreme example of how the vague alimony law can lead to an unfair result, and for a great discussion about some of the problems and limitations created by the case law on alimony.

However, as a practicing lawyer, I do believe there has been a positive change - despite the continuing existence of some rather unfair case results - in the way most judges are applying the broad, vague law. I believe judges over the past ten years have become far less likely to award alimony in cases where alimony is undeserved, they have been increasingly likely to expect former wives to work, or to go back to work, and they have become increasingly likely to apply the gender-neutral laws in a gender-neutral way. This positive change in the way that law has been applied, in fact, is one advantage, perhaps, of the law being as vague as it is. But all is not as it should be. Not yet. And I do believe there should be better guidance, and it should be statutory.

As long as judges have such wide discretion, with these vague laws in effect and in the absence of clear guidelines for different types of cases, judges will continue to be free to consider all the relevant statutory factors on a case by case basis. The question of whether we want the legislature to improve the law of alimony will then come down to whether we want to trust each individual judge to make the right decision when each one has such extremely wide discretion in making findings.

Although I trust most judges to try to do the right thing most of the time, I do believe they all need clearer laws and better guidance, for the sake of consistency and fairness.

Finally, Elizabeth Benedict's comments, both directly to me, and in this op-ed piece she wrote, give me hope for the future. I am encouraged to see such talented, intelligent, accomplished women recognizing the injustices often faced by men in family court. Benedict joins the ranks of another great writer, formerly a regular columnist at the Boston Globe, Cathy Young, about whom I have spoken favorably several times in this blog before.

Also, in this respect Benedict joins another acquaintance of mine, Iris Tanner, a cabaret singer, who long ago gave me a copy of her CD "Fresh Cut Iris" when I could not attend her appearance many years ago at Jimmy Tingle's Comedy Club, where she sang her original song Don't Get Married in Massachusetts (If You're Male).

It's a hilarious song by a woman who admitted in introducing the song on stage that she had been inspired to write it after having several boyfriends who had gone through divorce in Massachusetts. Even if you don't download the song (and you can do so - from my link above), the following sample of its lyrics should give you a laugh or two:

Matrimony may be great,
But there's a certain state,
Where a wedding's bad for your financial health,
Where if a marriage doesn't work,
The man will always be the jerk,
And lucky ladies gather in the wealth.

Where the judge's sacred duty
Is to give the wife her booty,
And do his best to drain the husband dry.
Though I know it's hard to swallow,
There are guidelines they must follow,
That will zap you if your chromosomes are Y.

If you're male,
Don't get married
In Massachusetts.
You'll only end up broke
And land in jail.
....

I should point out that, despite its women- and mother-friendly reputation and despite its sometimes-heard nickname "Planet Mommy," Massachusetts is hardly alone with this alimony problem. Other states are considering reforming their alimony laws to reflect the current economic and social realities. For a good discussion of this national trend, also mentioning the recent efforts in Massachusetts, see States Challenge Traditional Alimony, a February 15, 2008 article by Tresa Baldas in the National Law Journal.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

Habeas Corpus Survives

2008-06-13T14:20:00.010-04:00

A bit of good news for the endangered US Constitution: A majority (five of nine) on the US Supreme Court ruled to uphold the constitutional protection of habeas corpus, even for the unpopular alleged "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo. For this we have to thank Justice Kennedy, who wrote the majority decision, joined of course by all four of the justices who actually deserve to sit on the Court (Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Stevens). Although I cannot forgive Kennedy for Bush v. Gore and his other transgressions, I have to recognize that he at least did the right thing with this most recent decision. See the opinion here, and read more about it at the SCOTUS Blog.

Traveling Without the Kids

2008-05-26T11:09:00.004-04:00

There's more good advice today from Leanna Hamill at the Massachusetts Estate Planning and Elder Law Blog, this time on what you should be sure to do if traveling without the kids this summer.

For information about Massachusetts divorce and family law, see the divorce and family law page of my law firm website.

The Alternative to CORI Reform: Let's Just Order Them to Re-Offend

2008-05-24T08:36:00.009-04:00

Thanks to John Monahan and the Worcester Telegram and Gazette for an excellent article yesterday about the fact that CORI reform is now unlikely. The CORI reform proposals, introduced and backed by Governor Patrick, and as discussed and strongly supported by me here at this blog,

have run aground in the House Judiciary Committee, and the chances of the law covering criminal records being reformed before the Legislature ends formal sessions for the year in July now seem remote.

The reason? According to the article:

Earlier this week, Rep. Eugene O’Flaherty, D-Boston, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, reported that the bill has run into a lot of “roadblocks” because of the many complicated issues involving reintegration of ex-convicts into communities and the interest of employers to job screen applicants. His comments gave little hope the bill could be acted on soon.

Right. So, in other words, the CORI reform effort, which is in fact the effort to help reintegrate past offenders into society, by giving them a chance to housing and a job, and that is by reducing the extremely overbroad access of employers to information - information about not just convictions, but even about long-ago charges that led to dismissals or acquittals - has been derailed because employers still want that information, and they have the power on Beacon Hill.

This will be great for these employers, as they will continue to be able easily to identify a special kind of underclass, one that they can either avoid hiring altogether or relegate to lower paying, less desirable employment due to its much diminished bargaining power in the labor market.

But the collateral consequences of failure to reform CORI are that taxpayers will have to pay more for social services to make up for the economic deficiencies, and also more for the criminal justice system - including for law enforcement, our overcrowded jails, and the criminal courts and probation departments - as that criminal justice system will continue to be busy, if not busier, as a result.

The big employers blocking change are at the top of the economic ladder. Basically this is just another way in which the most powerful, wealthy interests are asking the majority of us as taxpayers to pay more taxes to cover the collateral damage that inevitably results from a system designed and created more for the benefit of these most powerful, wealthy interests than for anyone else.

I'm not saying individuals are not responsible for their crimes. However, I am a realist, and I believe the evidence is overwhelming that good, sound economic policies reduce crime. The attempt to block CORI reform seems to me to be just another unsound economic policy (and it is assuredly an economic policy as much as it is a criminal policy) and it probably deserves a chapter in the ongoing, unwritten history of Class War.

I have heard fellow criminal defense attorneys complain, often after a judge in a criminal case gives a poor criminal defendant on probation a short period of time to come up with very stiff probation fees, or when a judge sets very onerous conditions on probation, that "the judge just set him up to fail" or even - and this is my personal favorite - that "the judge just ordered him to re-offend."

Sort of a cynical joke among lawyers, maybe, but this is no real joke for those who have been in the world of crime, and now can't get a job or housing because of it. There are certainly criminal defendants on probation who have committed new crimes in order to get the money to pay their probation, court fees, restitution, or other court-related expenses, as they often find it difficult, if not impossible, to find a legitimate job.

And if former criminals, just like those currently on probation, also can't get a legitimate job or housing, they are more likely both to become dependent upon government benefits of one kind or another, and also either to steal, or sell drugs, or commit other crimes, just in order to survive. This is the difficult, cold, hard reality of former criminal offenders.

So I must ask, in that same, lawyerly cynical spirit: Is our legislature, at the behest of employers, going to deny CORI reform and instead "order former criminals to re-offend"?

For information and links related to Massachusetts criminal law see the criminal defense page of my law firm website.