Family Law Newsletters

Adoption and Safe Families Act – Permanency Plans and Hearings

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) requires states to conduct a permanency hearing within 12 months of a child’s placement in foster care and at least every 12 months thereafter for as long as the child is in foster care. The date of the child’s placement in foster care is the earlier of the following two dates: the date of the first judicial finding that the child is abused or neglected, or 60 days after the removal of the child from his or her home.

Parental Duties and Rights

Parental Duties

* Support. A parent is legally required to provide food, clothing, shelter, and medical care for his or her child. A parent’s duty to support a child ends when the child is no longer a minor (at age 18 in most states), the child gets married, the child leaves the parent’s home and becomes self-sufficient, or the parent’s parental rights are legally terminated.

Raising Grandchildren

In this day and age there are a lot of grandparents raising their grandchildren for numerous different reasons. Sometimes the grandparent may seek custody of their grandchild due to the parents’ incapacity to raise the grandchild. Other times the grandparent may have no choice but to raise the grandchild due to the situation at hand.

School Discipline and Remedies

If it is established that a student was improperly subjected to school discipline there are various types of actions that the student may take.

Valuation of Noneconomic Contributions

The economic partnership concept that underlies equitable distribution recognizes the noneconomic contributions of a spouse to the acquisition of marital property. Equitable distribution recognizes that the homemaker’s noneconomic contributions can play a substantial role in the acquisition of property during marriage and entitle the homemaker to share in the fruits of the marital partnership when it ends.