Learn to resolve problems divorcing couples often face, including disagreements over physical and legal custody, the primary residential schedule, child access and visitation, telephone contact, day care dilemmas, holidays and vacations, interacting with school officials, teachers, doctors and therapists as well as access to medical and educational records, sports involvement, participation in special events and extracurricular activities, financial woes and parent to parent communication difficulties. A uniquely informative, child focused, thought provoking, inspirational and lightly entertaining book full of sound and sensible legal, parental, practical and situational guidance. The author survived his own gut wrenching high-conflict child custody battle and shares his knowledge and wisdom to immediately and effectively assist you. The collaborative divorce model is introduced and many valuable resources, including sample parenting agreements and collaborative contracts, are included.

This is the second edition of The Private Investigator's Legal Manual, first published in 2005. The second edition includes expanded sections from the first edition, new sections, and analysis of numerous new laws and cases reflecting important changes and developments affecting California private investigators and the attorneys who hire and represent them. The Manual remains the only complete source for answers to the often tricky and difficult legal issues unique to California private investigators.

Debates about the future of fatherhood have been central to a range of conversations about changing family forms, parenting and society. Law has served an important, yet often neglected, role in these discussions, serving as an important focal point for broader political frustrations, playing a central role in mediating disputes, and operating as a significant, symbolic, state-sanctioned account of the scope of paternal rights and responsibilities. Fragmenting Fatherhood provides the first sustained engagement with the way that fatherhood has been understood, constructed and regulated within English law. Drawing on a range of disparate legal provisions and material from diverse disciplines, it sketches the major contours of the figure of the father as drawn in law and social policy, tracing shifts in legal and broader understandings of what it means to be a 'father'and what rights and obligations should accrue to that status. In thematically linked chapters cutting across substantive areas of law, the book locates fatherhood as a key site of contestation within broader political debates regarding the family and gender equality. Multiple visions of fatherhood, evolving unevenly over time across diverse areas of law, emerge from this analysis. Fatherhood is revealed as an essentially fragmented status and one which is intertwined in complex ways with the legal, cultural and political contexts in which discourses of parenthood are produced. Fragmenting Fatherhood provides an important and unique resource, speaking to debates about fatherhood across a range of fields including law and legal theory, sociology, gender studies, social policy, marriage and the family, women's studies and gender studies.

In a world where knowledge is power, this book is meant to empower all those in relationships or entering relationships about what to be aware of and prepared for in case they or someone they know is in need of a divorce. This book outlines what every spouse should be aware of in their marriage and takes the reader through the entire divorce process including how to pick the right attorney. A must read in this highly litigious society.

"The Private Investigator's Legal Manual" is written especially for California private investigators and the attorneys who hire and represent them. This is the first and only complete source for answers to the often tricky and difficult legal issues unique to California investigators.

The 300+ page Manual's ten Chapters cover more than 140 topics! It contains analysis of more than 150 court cases and 125 separate statutes and regulations of importance to California's private investigators and attorneys. The Manual also includes the full text of the most important California laws. And, it's fully indexed with nearly 900 entries for quick and easy referencing.

Relationships between adult partners following divorce or separation can be fragile, and the issues which have divided the parents are often hard to disentangle from the ongoing relationships between parents and children. Many have ongoing difficulty and need professional help and legal intervention to make arrangements for ongoing parenting. Parenting after Partnering brings together a wealth of new empirical research from the US, Europe, and Australia on the nature and importance of children's relationships with parents after parental separation, on the kinds of conflicts which develop, and on the range of professional interventions which support parents and children through these difficult times. (Series: Onati International Series in Law and Society)

Women are still discovering-the hard way-just how difficult and unpredictable child custody cases can be. The first and most comprehensive book of its kind, this is a complete insider's guide filled with crucial advice from judges, lawyers, therapists, and mothers who have experienced this challenging legal process. It is designed for women at every stage of divorce and covers a wide range of legal strategies, as well as financial and psychological issues. This updated edition describes how to use technology advantageously and pitfalls to avoid, as well as changes in interstate custody laws and essential topics such as:
- Choosing a lawyer
- What to expect before and in court
- Blended families
- Domestic violence risk factors for women
- What makes a custody agreement good or bad
- Dealing with your emotions
- Parental kidnapping cases
- An appendix of recommended reading

Termination of parental rights (TPR) is not only a matter of the family any more. Now, we face termination of parental rights as one of social institution on what should be guided for child rearing practice and why we should make a decision to intervene the State into the family. This study seeks to provide empirical evidence that examine why and to what extent children who have been exposed to child maltreatment and placed in foster care experience TPR and permanency outcome of adoption. The discussion of this study includes the deliberate discussion on the parentchild relationship and the primary principles of the State intervention into the family in cases of child abuse and neglect with a review on the legal standards/ grounds for the involuntary TPR for foster children according to the changes of child welfare policy goals in the American society. Since the ASFA of 1997 was enacted, in particular, it has been widely accepted that TPR proceedings for foster children who cannot be reunified with their natural parents should be pursued. Thus, it can be argued that the involuntary TPR becomes an alternative to family preservation/reunification and an essential mechanism to achieve the permanency outcome for children in foster care. This book is addressed to social workers and policy makers in the child welfare field as well as practitioners in family law. It is also directed towards researchers in social practice and policy, child welfare and family services.

The law places a high value on marriage and the family. That value is carried forward in defining marriage; setting conditions for the state to interfere with marriage; fixing the responsibilities of marriage and family; and detailing when a family may break up and setting ongoing responsibilities when that happens. But, there are limits to the law. For example, the religion of Luisa and Sam may require that they be married by a minister. It may also require that each make certain promises, one to the other. Whether Luisa and Sam do so, however, is a matter of conscience. The law will neither force them to have or stop them from having a religious wedding.

"Divorce and Family Law in California" provides a clear, concise, and complete guide to divorce and family law in California. Topics covered include: Marriage, Divorce, Annulment, Legal Separation, Property, Debts, Spousal Support, Unmarried Couples, Paternity, Custody & Visitation, Child Support, Guardianship, Adoption, Dependent Children, Children's Names, Restraining Orders.

A California attorney since 1978, Bob Pickus works for the Alameda County Employees' Retirement Association in Oakland, addressing primarily the impact of divorce on retirement benefits. He also volunteers for the Volunteer Legal Services Corporation in Oakland, providing weekly divorce and family law clinics and follow-up services for low-income persons.

Drawing on her extensive experience in counseling families and individuals with sexual problems, psychologist Margretta Dwyer delivers a timely look at some of the sexual issues facing us today in "Understand Offending."

Dwyer believes the emphasis on natural, healthy sexual development is imperative to creating an atmosphere conducive to debunking myths and false teachings on sexuality. Dwyer also focuses on those who commit sexual offences and explores the reasons behind their problems.

This detailed, practical guide explores issues facing children, teenagers, and adults in the often-confusing world of sexual behaviour. With a comprehensive glossary and an easy-to-understand format, "Understand Offending" unveils the misconceptions surrounding sexual offences and offers a clear path to healing through therapy.

"Readers of Dwyer's book will find a wealth of practical advice regarding the webs of sexual anguish."-Robert T. Francoeur, Ph.D., author, "The Continuum Complete International Encyclopaedia of Sexuality"

This book examines three core foci of interest of both practitioners as well as academics in the area of the protection of human rights of children. The first two are the international legal documents of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRe and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR). The third focal point consists of an investigation into a specific area of jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights regarding the protection of human rights of children: the phenomenon of the corporal punishment and abuse of children in the UK. The analysis concludes that both the CRC and the ECHR are characterised by various flaws and drawbacks in relation to the protection of children's human rights. The narrow textual scope of the ECHR and the significant weaknesses of the CRC regarding its implementation mechanism are two prominent examples. The paper suggests that in Europe, the trend of maximising the potential of the ECHR by combining the widely accepted, detailed standards on children's rights set out in the UN Convention with the highly successful system of individual petition and implementation should be strengthened further.

This book explores, through a children's rights-based perspective, the emergence of a safeguarding dystopia in child online protection that has emerged from a tension between an over-reliance in technical solutions and a lack of understanding around code and algorithm capabilities. The text argues that a safeguarding dystopia results in docile children, rather than safe ones, and that we should stop seeing technology as the sole solution to online safeguarding. The reader will, through reading this book, gain a deeper understanding of the current policy arena in online safeguarding, what causes children to beocme upset online, and the doomed nature of safeguarding solutions. The book also features a detailed analysis of issues surrounding content filtering, access monitoring, surveillance, image recognition, and tracking. This book is aimed at legal practitioners, law students, and those interested in child safeguarding and technology.

The legal status, responsibilities and rights of men who are fathers - married or unmarried, cohabiting or separated, biological or social in nature - is a topic with a long and well-documented history. Yet recent developments in a number of countries suggest a growing politicisation of the relationship between law and fatherhood. In some countries, an increasingly vocal, visible and well-organised fathers' rights movement has been credited with influencing perceptions of the politics of family justice. Fathers, it is argued, have become the new victims of family law justice systems that have swung 'too far' in favour of mothers. Armed with such claims, fathers' rights activists have set out to achieve a range of legal reforms, most notably in the areas of child support law and contact and residence rights following separation. This book presents an attempt to understand these developments. Bringing together leading international commentators it provides a careful, critical and comparative analysis of the work of fathers' rights activists, the role law has played in their campaigning, their legal strategies, their success (or otherwise) in achieving legal reform, similarities and divergences with the women's movement, and the relationship between fathers' rights movements and the societies that frame them. In addition to Collier and Sheldon, contributors include: Susan B Boyd (University of British Columbia, Canada), Jocelyn Crowley (Rutgers University, USA), Maria Eriksson (Goteborg University, Sweden), Keith Pringle (Aalborg University, Denmark), Helen Rhoades (Melbourne University, Australia), and Carol Smart (Manchester University, UK).

More than 1.1 million women are actively involved in divorce each year and all need solid financial advice to help make this transition less painful. In FAIR SHARE DIVORCE FOR WOMEN, Second Edition, Certified Financial Planner Kathleen Miller has created a comprehensive guide to help you completely integrate all the financial aspects of your divorce into a personalized and sound financial plan.
This completely revised and expanded second edition includes updated statistics, recent case studies that reflect modern marriages, complete indexing, and a comprehensive appendix of resources. Kathleen Miller has added new topics and chapters, including:
current economic impacts on retirement and benefits planningdealing with a disparity of earnings post-divorce career planning and maintenance strategiesbusiness valuation and successionlong-term care and other insurance provisionschild support and parenting planspre-and post-nuptial and cohabitation agreements
Grounded in the experiences of her more than 3,000 clients, Kathleen Miller's advice is clear and concise. FAIR SHARE DIVORCE FOR WOMEN, Second Edition will offer you the guidance and support you need to safeguard your marital assets, and will empower you to take control of your divorce and financial future.

Child Welfare and the Law provides an overview of the child welfare and judicial systems in the USA. It examines the federal and state legislative and judicial foundations of modern child welfare practice; court decisions and their impact on the rights of birthparents, foster parents, and children; class action suits and their impact on child welfare; and the role of child welfare workers in the legal process. Appendices provide detailed instruction on conducting legal research and excerpts from a consent decree. The fully-updated third edition includes new chapters on adoption law and professional liability. The author has also expanded his original chapters on the rights of birth parents and foster parents and legal research strategies.

Written by one of the UK's leading scholars of welfare law, this book analyses the current child support legislation in its broader historical and social context, synthesising both doctrinal and socio-legal approaches to legal research and scholarship. The book draws on the historical and legal literature on the Poor Law and the development of both the public and private law obligation of child maintenance. Modern child support law must also be considered in the context of both social and demographic changes and in the light of popular norms about child maintenance liabilities. The main part of the book is devoted to an analysis of the modern child support scheme, and the key issues are addressed: the distinction between applications in 'private' and 'benefit' cases and the extent to which the courts retain a role in child maintenance matters; the basis for, and the justification for, the exception from the obligation for parents with care on benefit to co-operate with the Child Support Agency where they fear 'undue harm or distress'; the assessment of income for the purposes of the formula and the evidential difficulties this entails; the tension between the formula, which ignores the parent with care's income, and the demands of distributive justice; the further conflict between the formula, under which liability is capped only for the very wealthy, and the traditional approach of private law, which is premised on children being entitled to maintenance rather than a share in family wealth; the treatment of special cases under the formula by way of 'variations' (formerly 'departures'); the nature of decision-making and the scope for appeals; and the efficacy of the provisions relating to collection and enforcement. This book has been shortlisted for the 2007 SLSA Book Prize.

"The best resolution to most family conflict is found within the family itself, not in the courts " . WHY MEDIATION IS NOW THE PREFERRED WAY TO SEPARATION AND DIVORCE . everything you need to know about 730 custody evaluations . How to choose a competent lawyer . How to reach an out of court settlement in family mediation And much, much more... This book is a wake up call for anyone considering separation or divorce. Generally, parents file court papers prematurely. This locks the entire family into a profit seeking institution with judges able to micromanage the lives of the entire family, including grandparents, until the children are of legal age. Family problems are rarely solved in family court. At best, and after considerable expense, family court merely provides guidelines to resolve domestic disputes. Laws cannot change how people interact. Solutions are reached when parents change their attitudes and behavior to better navigate the treacherous waters of family court to arrive at the best possible outcome for the entire family. The goal is to maintain the option of making choices for your family and not relinquish control to the family court.

This book is the fifth in the Cambridge Socio-Legal Group series and it concerns the evolving notions and practices of kinship in contemporary Britain and the interrelationship of kinship, law and social policy. Assembling contributions from scholars in a range of disciplines, it examines social, legal, cultural and psychological questions related to kinship. Rising rates of divorce and of alternative modes of partnership have raised questions about the care and well-being of children, while increasing longevity and mobility, together with lower birth rates and changes in our economic circumstances, have led to a reconsideration of duties and responsibilities towards the care of elderly people. In addition, globalisation trends and international flows of migrants and refugees have confronted us with alternative constructions of kinship and with the challenges of maintaining kinship ties transnationally. Finally, new developments in genetics research and the growing use of assisted reproductive technologies may raise questions about our notions of kinship and of kin rights and responsibilities. The book explores these changes from various perspectives and draws on theoretical and empirical data to describe practices of kinship in contemporary Britain.

Opponents of same-sex marriage in the United States claim that allowing gays and lesbians to marry would undermine the institution of marriage, weaken family structures, and cause harm to children. Drawing from 17 years of data and experience with same-sex marriage in Scandinavia (in the form of registered partnerships), Gay Marriage: For Better or for Worse? is the first book to present empirical evidence about the effects of same-sex marriage on society. Spedale and Eskridge find that the evidence refutes conservative defense-of-marriage arguments and, in fact, demonstrates that the institution of marriage may indeed benefit from the legalization of gay marriage. If we look at the proof from abroad, the authors show, we must conclude that the sanctioning of gay marriage in the United States would neither undermine marriage as an institution, nor harm the wellbeing of our nation's children. "A very interesting book that people should read." --Bill O'Reilly, Host, The O'Reilly Factor "Whatever your views are now on same-sex marriage, this is the book to read to be informed about why same sex couples want legal recognition and what legal union means to them and to the larger community. Spedale and Eskridge give detailed accounts of the effects of registered partnerships in Scandinavia--and along the way, offer fascinating and engaging pictures of many people's lives." --Martha Minow, Jeremiah Smith Jr. Professor, Harvard Law School "Spedale and Eskridge illuminate with remarkable even-handedness a debate that tends to generate more heat than light. They provide a cogent analysis of conservative arguments that same-sex matrimony threatens conventional marriage, and argue persuasively that enabling same-sex partners to marry may actually strengthen that beleaguered institution." --John Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress "An important and timely contribution. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the future of families in America." --Martha Albertson Fineman, Robert W. Woodruff Professor, Emory Law School

In this volume, Brownson sheds new light on Palestinian Muslim women's agency in shari'a courts from the British Mandate period to the present. Her extensive archival research on wife-initiated maintenance claims, divorce, and child custody cases deepens our understanding of women's position in the courts, demonstrating that Muslim women were and are active participants in their legal affairs. Using court registers and interviews, Brownson uncovers a variety of ways women have manipulated the system to their benefit despite its patriarchal bias. She also finds that few reforms were implemented during the Mandate period. The British were uninterested in improving colonized women's legal status and sought to avoid further antagonizing Palestinians. At the same time, Palestinians wished to uphold the one indigenous institution they still controlled while both British rule and Zionism threatened their nationalist aspirations. Although Palestinian women have had few alternatives to using this male privileged system to redress grievances with their husbands and in-laws, they continue to resist its injustices every day. Brownson finds that women's understanding of family law fundamentals has enabled some to deftly navigate the system; however, a unified, reformed law reflecting society's current needs is required so women can have full access to their rights.