Michigan Military Divorce

Parental kidnapping | Risk factors Part 2

On July 29, 2008, I wrote about the risk factors that predispose  parents to kidnap their children. See Parental kidnapping | Risk Factors.

Today, the New York Daily News reported that, in fact, Clark Rockefeller had talked last Christmas to friends about kidnapping his daughter Reigh. According to this report, Rockefeller was "so crushed when his ex-wife moved overseas with his beloved 7-year-old daughter that he told pals last Christmas, 'I may have to kidnap her.' "

Massachusetts same-sex marriage bill passes senate

I wrote on July 15 to note that the Massachusetts Senate was considering a bill that, if passed, would allow same-sex couples from other states to marry in Massachusetts. Read Massachusetts to become destination for weddings here.

The Boston Globe announced today that this bill has passed the Senate and is headed to the desk of Governor Deval Patrick, who is expected to sign it into law.

You may read the Boston Globe alert here. A one-time registration may be required.

Parenting Time Planners – many options available

Family lawyers are often challenged to help clients work out parenting time plans that allocate time with the child or children between the parents.  Ten years ago, Stephen J. Harhai described the problem like this: "The fundamental problem in working out time-sharing issues is that it is hard to visualize or calculate the effect of a given plan without a lot of grunt work. We have spent untold hours marking calendars, counting days, writing explanations, and generally driving ourselves crazy getting a handle on complicated time-sharing arrangements." ["Tools of the Trade" column in the Family Advocate (Vol. 20, No. 3)]  Fortunately, significant technological advances are now available to help family lawyers help their clients plan and manage the schedules of separate households.

Various software programs can now help family lawyers create parenting plans based on agreed-upon or court-ordered visitation schedules. These programs calculate percentage splits. The most important feature of these programs is the calendar. Not only does the calendar display visitation schedules and activities (extra-curricular activities, birthdays, etc.) but also holiday and vacation schedules can be shown on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Reports can be generated of annual and monthly visitation. The latter feature is designed to be coordinated with the support calculation used by many states for “shared economic responsibility” based upon the number of overnights per year the noncustodial parent has with a child. These programs can be used to schedule parenting time, to record parenting time as it is used, to measure parental time, and also to schedule changes.

Family lawyers will find these programs helpful as they strive to create parenting plans for their clients. However, parents and mediators may also use the programs. Additionally, some programs have been designed specifically to encourage and facilitate collaboration between parents and caregivers. These can serve as a means of record keeping for changing or gaining custody.

Parenting Plan Software for parents: [listed in alphabetical order]:

Custody Keeper, formerly ChildShare: This program can be used by attorneys and also by parents and caregivers to facilitate collaboration in the parenting time planning process.  Custody Keeper allows the planner to set up a clear schedule facilitating joint or shared custody easy for everyone to understand. Custody Keeper allows users to track or plan time spent with children, as well as track expenses, events, incidents, support payments. Parents may log in daily comments on a journal. In essence, it’s the parenting time diary or log that all family lawyers encourage their clients to maintain. U.S., Canadian, and custom holidays are shown on the multi-year calendar. The program allows users to print calendars and reports (for yourself, your clients, or the court). Schedules and reports can be exported in PDF format, making it useful for family lawyers preparing exhibits for hearings or trials.

Custody X Change: This is a software package offers something a little different, and is used when a parent wants to compute and negotiate a parenting time plan that maximizes time with the child for one party (or the other). Calendars and reports can be printed out with the Custody X Change program. A free trial version may be downloaded from the website.

 

 

Kidmate: Created in 1996, this is one of the earlier computer programs for negotiating custody between separating parents. Kidmate was designed to meet the need for creating parenting time schedules and calculating percentage splits. The history of the timesharing/parenting time schedule, including compliance with prior orders, may be computed using the Record Keeper feature. Kidmate has some unique, patented features. One, in particular can be quite useful. The Percentages and Day Counter feature analyzes parenting time schedules four different ways (Overnights, Total Time, Quality Time, and Day Counter) and displays all results on the screen for comparison. Many states use the Day Counter, shows the cumulative number of days that children spend with each parent per year, for calculating child support based upon shared economic responsibility.

OurFamilyWizard: Parents may use this online calendar to coordinate schedules, share information, make adjustments to the parenting plan and track shared expenses. A detailed online calendar allows input of the children’s activities, events and other scheduled items, including drop-offs and pick-ups. Journals can be set as shared or private and are color-coded for each family member. An expense log can also be maintained as well as a message board and online access to important documents (My Files).

PCGreeting. A family law legal assistant and a programmer designed the Parenting Time Calendar by PCGreeting. It is specifically designed to help lawyers generate parenting time schedules. Holiday schedules are provided for Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. There are three versions of the Parenting Time Calendar: Single Year Standard, Single Year Deluxe, and 2 Year Deluxe.  An interesting feature of the Single Year Deluxe is that it allows the user to define what is—to that parent—“quality time,” and to base parenting time schedules or calculations on that basis. The 2 Year Deluxe allows the creation of two-year parenting plans.

Shared Ground: This software is designed to help parents exercising joint physical custody to distribute time equitably between two primary caregivers. There is a default setting, but the program allows joint custodial parents to create a custom-designed parenting plan. For thigh-tech parents, the calendar can be synchronized with a Palm™-compatible PDA or exported to Microsoft Outlook. Using Shared Ground's Percentage Calculator, parents who may litigate custody (either pre- or post-judgment), this software makes it possible to show how much time children are with each parent. This data may be viewed monthly. A parent seeking to modify a parenting time plan (or his or her attorney) may generate an annual distribution report. Shared Ground provides users with sample parenting plans and defaults, but it also allows parents to customize those plans. Family law attorneys and others (mediators, for example) involved in developing parenting plans for clients may purchase the Shared Ground Enterprise License.

Parental Collaboration Tools

When the goal is to encourage collaborative parenting and promote parental communication and cooperation, certain of the parenting time programs discussed above offer advantages by enabling parents to develop their own parenting plans and visitation schedules. Research shows that parents who negotiate their own plans are usually more satisfied with the plans than they are with a court-imposed plan. Also courts are more likely to approve the plans when they are negotiated by the parents.

KidsFirst! is a web-based parenting time program designed to help parents develop parenting plans and visitation schedules. There are several ways to use KidsFirst! In high conflict cases, parents may create separate accounts and provide separate answers, which can be kept private from the other parent. If the parents are committed to working together to facilitate optimal parenting plans, they may share one account and answer the questions together. KidsFirst! Has a creative function that allows the program to compare the answers of both parents and shows them where they agree and problems that they need to resolve.

Shared Ground. This program providesa  license that allows co-parents to use one single software key and two copies of the software program that is downloaded from the website. Using the software, parents create, edit and manage their parenting plan on two separate computers.

Tracking Parenting Time Compliance

OPTIMAL™ This is an online Parenting Time Information Manager and Access Log. With this online tool, parents may track compliance with parenting time and custody orders. This is not really a program for designing parenting time plans. Rather, OPTIMAL is designed primarily for parental record keeping. Family lawyers frequently ask clients to keep detailed records to show whether the noncustodial parent is actually using scheduled parenting time. Using OPTIMAL , parents can track the actual time used, the visit type (regular, denied, late, missed), denied visitation, late pickups and returns, mileage and expenses. It also counts and displays overnights and provides time-stamps to use in court. Many other features are also included.

Professional editions:

Family lawyers may assist their clients in developing parenting time and shared custody plans using the following tools

Professional version of OurFamilyWizard. Case management features in the professional account allow family law practitioners to create parent accounts, manage client databases, store important client documents online (judgment and decree, court orders, etc.), enable communication with clients, create client to-do lists, and more. An OurFamilyWizard account provides the ability to review case status by linking information to parent accounts.

Custody X Change: This software package offers something a little different. It is wisely used when a lawyer or parent wants to compute and negotiate a parenting time plan that maximizes time with the child for one party (or the other). Custody X change was first designed for family lawyers who wanted a tool to negotiate more time for their clients without having to manually re-compute every option. It is now also available to parents. The Custody X Change program allows print-outs of calendars and reports A free trial version may be downloaded from the website.

Shared Ground: The data generated by this tool may be viewed monthly or, for the purposes of modification motions, an attorney or parent may generate an annual report showing what percentage of time the child(ren) has spent with Mom and with Dad. There is a Shared Ground Enterprise License available for purchase by family law attorneys and others involved in developing parenting plans for clients.

Custody Keeper, formerly ChildShare: This can be used by attorneys and also by parents and caregivers to facilitate collaboration in the parenting time planning process.  Custody Keeper allows the planner to set up a clear schedule facilitating joint or shared custody that is easy for everyone to understand. Custody Keeper allows users to track the following critical issues: time spent with children by each parent, expenses, events, incidents, support payments. Often family law attorneys ask parents to keep a journal of significant events; parents may log in daily comments on a journal feature. The multi-year calendar show U.S., Canadian, and custom holidays. Users may print calendars and reports (for yourself, your clients, or the court). Schedules and reports can be exported in PDF format, making it useful for family lawyers preparing exhibits for hearings or trials.

Parental kidnapping | Risk factors

There must be something in the water. I've successfully assisted 6 parents whose children have been kidnapped in the past 12 months, with most children being in protective custody within a matter of hours. Yesterday I fielded two inquiries about parental kidnappings. Today, the Boston Globe described an unusual parental kidnapping involving a child who, after a bitter divorce, resides in  London with her mother. Reigh Storrow Boss was kidnapped by her father, Clark Rockefeller during the first of scheduled supervised visitations in Boston. He had not seen her since last December. Parental kidnappings are a risk where, as in Rockefeller's divorce case, one parent has been deprived of custody by a court and has been deprived of visitation for long periods of time.

Child support liens | When can they NOT be imposed?

A Michigan statute allows the Friend of the Court to attach a lien to property the FOC locates that belongs to a person with child support arrearages. In Walters v Leech, Michigan's court of appeals held on July 21, 2008 that such a lien cannot be imposed against property held by the child support debtor and his or her spouse, where the property is held in a tenancy by the entireties.

How can a parent modify a prior custody order?

Non-custodial parents want to know what the courts will consider as sufficient evidence to warrant modifying an existing custody order. It’s well-established that the court will not re-visit a previous custody determination unless the party requesting the custody modification can prove that there has been a change in circumstances or good cause arising since the most recent custody order.

Parents ask: What does that mean? It’s become well-established that it means this:

Massachusetts to become destination for weddings?

The Boston Globe reports today that the Massachusetts Senate will vote on an act to repeal  a 1913 state law that prevents gay and lesbian couples from most other states from marrying in Massachusetts. It seems that the repeal could spark an economic boom for Massachusetts, pumping more than a $100 million into that state's economy within the new few years. I wonder if Massachusetts would then see all kinds of wedding chapels springing up around the countryside.

Posthumous reproduction and today’s military

On the heels of yesterday's serendipitous discovery of Professor Charles Kindrefan, Jr.'s article about assisted reproduction comes this article written by a JAG lawyer, titled "To Be Continued: A Look at Posthumous Reproduction As It Relates to Today’s Military," by Major Maria Doucettperry of the JAG Corps. [Judge Advocate, U.S. Army. Presently assigned as Deputy Chief, Military and Civil Law Division, Office of the Judge Advocate, U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army]

Major Doucettperry writes: "Permitting families of recently deceased Soldiers to collect semen from the Soldier for the purpose of artificial insemination implicates many moral, ethical, and legal issues. This practice should therefore be limited to cases where the servicemember has voluntarily surrendered a specimen prior to death and has clearly indicated the intended disposition of such specimen in the event of his death or incapacity.

Additionally, military benefit eligibility criteria should be redefined to encompass any children conceived from this process within a specified period from the servicemember’s death. The following Sergeant (SGT) Smith and First Lieutenant (1LT) Perry hypotheticals demonstrate the perplexities raised by unanswered moral and legal questions surrounding sperm cryopreservation as they may be presented in the military arena."

Major Doucettperry cites two specific and factually different hypotheticals. The implications - social, moral, ethical, and economic - are substantial.

The drugging of America's children: Part 2

In an earlier blog article, I criticized the use of psychotropic medications that are not approved by the FDA for use with children. Congress continues to investigate the cozy relationships between manufacturers of these powerful drugs and the doctors, recipients of enormous stipends from the drug makers, who prescribe the drugs and who perform research paid for with Big Pharma monies.

The New York Times reported on July 12, 2008 that U.S. Senator Grassley is investigating lucrative arrangements between manufacturers of psychotropic medications and psychiatrists.  Grassley reported to Congress in June that a renowned child psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, and a colleague, had disclosed to university officials that consulting fees from drug makers were several hundred thousand dollars each between 2000 and 2007. Grassley reported that, in fact, they’d been paid at least $1.6 million each.

Family lawyer's duty to warn of threats of harm

Some time ago, the State Bar of Michigan Listserv discussed whether lawyers who receive information from a client that communicates a credible threat of danger to an identifiable third party have a duty to communicate the threat to the third party and/or to law enforcement agencies. That common law duty to warn arose in Tarasoff v Regents of Univ of California, 17 Cal 3d 425; 551 P2d 334 (1976) and it was in that context that we discussed it.

A new Michigan Court of Appeals case makes a lawyer’s concern about common law duties to third parties even more compelling.