Family Court Review最新文献

This article examines the legal and ethical status of agreements to waive paternity in cases of unintended pregnancies and contrasts them with legal regimes governing anonymous and known sperm donations. Although these scenarios often result in the same functional outcome—severance of the biological father's legal relationship with the child—they are treated inconsistently by legal systems. The article critiques prevailing approaches grounded in contract, the best interests of the child (BIRC), and the right to parenthood, and demonstrates their analytical and policy limitations. As an alternative, the article proposes a novel framework based on a social-institutional conception of parenthood. This framework emphasizes the ethics of parenting and the need to distinguish legally between “parents” and “donors” as separate institutional roles. It supports prohibiting paternity waivers while justifying sperm donation—under carefully regulated conditions—as a legitimate social institution. The article offers policy guidelines for regulating sperm donations, particularly those involving known donors, and calls for coherent legal categories aligned with ethical and institutional principles of parenting.

This article examines how legal actors—particularly legislators, judges, and attorneys—invoke chronological age to justify the application of legal rules to adolescents. In doing so, they often rely on comparisons to existing “age-gates,” treating these thresholds (such as ages 18 or 21) as self-justifying reference points. Age 18, marking the legal transition from childhood to adulthood, and age 21, the former age of majority and current sales age for certain controlled substances, serve as especially powerful rhetorical anchors in age-based legal reasoning. These anchor points shape how legal actors advocate for or against particular age thresholds, often substituting analogy for substantive justification. This article argues that the rhetorical force of anchor age-gates is difficult to avoid, and therefore age-gates in one area are likely to influence decisions about other age-gates in other areas. Legal actors should recognize the influence of benchmarking arguments and cannot avoid responsibility for the risk that their advocacy in one context will be misused in another. At the same time, legal actors should resist treating age-gates as inherently dispositive. Instead, decision-makers should supplement age-based comparisons with principled reasoning grounded in the purposes and effects of the legal rule at issue. The article concludes by exploring the status-transforming quality of legal marriage and its implications for determining the appropriate age of legal consent to marry.

Supervised parenting, commonly referred to as supervised visitation, is a growing service with limited research examining its impact on families. Compared with research on non-custodial parents, less is known about how custodial caregivers navigate this service to support their children both before and after supervised time with non-custodial parents. This is of particular importance given common histories of high conflict and often violence among those participating in these services. This qualitative study involved conducting individual semi-structured interviews with caregivers to understand their perspectives on the impact of supervised parenting time for both them and the children in their custody. The findings reveal the complexity of third-party supervised parenting arrangements, which require significant effort for custodial caregivers to manage. Custodians initially faced apprehensions and struggled to maintain stability and normalcy for their children amidst intrusive schedules and systemic frustrations. While some participants achieved peace of mind, others faced ongoing challenges due to inconsistent practices and communication from the service providers. Overall, the essence of participant experiences was one of simply making it work, driven by a steadfast commitment to their children's stability and normality. Implications include the need to establish research-supported best practices and guidelines that further acknowledge and incorporate family and community diversity.

Young children from military families often struggle to comprehend the changes occurring within their households due to parental training and deployment. This paper (a) presents children's understandings of their experiences in Australian military families in a study, and then (b) provides an example of how we used children's voices to co-create free psychosocial resources to better support this cohort, which can be employed by those working with these families. A participatory Mosaic Approach was employed to capture the voices of 19 young children. Inductive thematic analysis viewed through a socio-cultural lens revealed that children's understandings can be improved through educational activities using age-appropriate and culturally relevant resources, encouraging discussions and educational activities. These findings are significant as they capture and amplify the voices of young children in military families. This served as a catalyst for a co-creation project, resulting in a suite of psychosocial resources based on these findings and other lived experience narratives, relevant literature, and the insights of those who assist these families. These free online resources allow these children to thrive rather than merely survive. This will interest military family researchers, policymakers within military organizations, and those supporting these families.

This study aimed to develop a formal model of peer support for bereaved military families in the United Kingdom (UK) that is co-designed, inclusive, and integrated within the existing bereavement support system, without requiring affiliation with specific associations. The need for such a model was identified through a previous study (McGill et al., 2022), which examined the long-term impact of military bereavement and recommended the development of peer support tailored to the short, medium, and long-term needs of bereaved families. In response, the present research adopted an applied mixed-methods approach, incorporating a systematic narrative review, online survey, expert consultation, and co-production workshops. This iterative, multi-phase process ensured the resulting pilot framework was grounded in the lived experiences of those affected by sudden or traumatic military loss. The findings informed the co-production of an evidence-based peer support model intended to enhance, compliment, and extend the nature and reach of existing bereavement services.

When U.S. spouses receive marital distributions, some or all of their assets may be unreachable because they are held in the Caribbean. This note examines why U.S. marital distributions are not recognized and enforced in specific Caribbean nations. This note further explores the procedural difficulty of litigating in Caribbean courts. This note argues to amend the Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters in order to lift the ban on marital distributions. This note also addresses key counterarguments to this proposed amendment of the treaty–specifically the hesitancy of some Caribbean nations to sign on.

The Invictus Games are an international adaptive sports competition for wounded, injured, and/or ill military members and veterans. Essential to the Games are the families and friends of the competitors, who are involved from selection to post-game. Though families are integral, their experiences are underexplored. Little research to date has focused on the families, and even less research has been conducted using a family science lens. Work–family conflict theory provides a way to examine the stressors and support that underlie the family experience. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis with a work–family conflict lens, this project explores the family members' perspectives of being at the Invictus Games. Participants were past family and friends from Canada (n = 5), the UK (n = 1) and Australia (n = 1). The results display that the Invictus Games can be a very positive experience for both the individual family members as well as the family as a whole. The results challenge the existing idea that participating in sports automatically results in work–family conflict. This project highlights the importance of family inclusion within and throughout military and veteran adaptive sport competitions. As the Invictus Games continue to grow, it is important to be intentional about how families are supported.

Wrongful convictions and imprisonment are a natural consequence of our criminal justice system. New York is one of 35 states with wrongful conviction compensation statutes, offering some form of relief to individuals and their families. However, the incidence rate of suicide among these families calls for a solution when that wrongly convicted individual takes their life. This note advocates for an expanded form of relief under the New York State Court of Claims Act Section 8-b, creating a cause of action for surviving spouses to receive compensation in the wake of their partner's death.

During their careers, many Australian early childhood educators will teach children from military and veteran families; one in 20 households includes someone with military experience. Children from these families are impacted by the stressors of military family life, including frequent relocations, parental absences, and potential parental injuries. This mixed-methods study explored the perceptions of 27 educators about supporting young children (aged 2–5 years) from military families, their understanding of children's responses to unique stressors, and their confidence in providing support. Educators generally evaluated the social and emotional wellbeing of these children positively. However, approximately 25% reported some children struggled with adaptation to change, and 25.9% were only partially confident in understanding children's responses to military-specific stressors. Most educators (77.8%) received no relevant training, and 59.2% lacked access to quality, research-based Australian resources. Qualitative data provided further insights into children's responses to military family stressors. Findings highlight the need for targeted professional development and accessible resources for educators supporting children from military families. Despite positive overall assessments, significant gaps exist in educator training and confidence. Quality resources would enhance educators' capacity to support the unique needs of these children, especially in rural communities with limited services.