Posts in Divorce and Child Custody
The Storm of Domestic Violence: Divorce, Child Custody, Support, and Community Property

While the #MeToo movement has brought substantial attention in the USA to issues on sexual assault and domestic violence, such abuse continues to be a huge problem for women and men alike — men form nearly half of all domestic violence victims. Domestic violence of course can be terrorizing, life-altering, and even deadly, often involving repeated episodes of financial manipulation, verbal abuse, sexual assault and/or chronic sexual deprivation, and general emotional manipulation and subjugation, along with physical abuse ranging from pushing and biting to choking, punching, kicking, stabbing, and worse.

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"Heartbeat" Laws Take the Abortion Fight to the Next Level

Governor Kemp’s decision to effectively ban all abortions in Georgia is a regressive threat to the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of unknowing expectant mothers and a serious blow to the public welfare. Worse still, Georgia is not alone. Ohio, Mississippi, Kentucky, Iowa, and North Dakota have all enacted similar “heartbeat” laws. The ACLU and others are fighting such laws in court, but who knows what we can expect from this and other abortion related litigation now that the federal courts and the Supreme Court have more Republican appointees than Democratic ones. This is all the more reason to take seriously the 2020 election and to consider the abortion stance of each of the candidates.

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Sexism in Divorce Court: A Comparative Understanding of the Case of Sakineh Ashtiani in Iran and Child Custody Statistics in the USA

The problem of sexism in our understanding of parenthood is beyond a simple legal problem. In our culture, to "mother" a child has the connotation of "coddling" or "nurturing" a child; whereas to "father" a child means to "procreate", "spawn" or "sire" a child. The mainstream cultural vision of the typical breadwinner is male in our culture, and the mainstream cultural vision of a homemaker is female in our culture. We too suffer from a sexist family law system here in the United States.

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Extensive Research: Women Initiate Domestic Violence More than Men, Men Under-report It.

Out of all the respondents, a quarter of the women admitted to perpetrating the domestic violence and, when the violence was reciprocal, women were often the ones to have been the first to strike. In addition, an analytic view of 552 domestic violence studies published in the Psychological Bulletin found that 38% of the physical injuries suffered in domestic violence disputes were suffered by men.

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Male Victims of Sexual Harassment Double from 1992 to 2008

According to the EEOC, while the number of sexual harassment lawsuits as a whole has declined over the last decade, the number of sexual harassment lawsuits filed by male victims has increased in that time period. In fact, between 1992 and 2008, the number of sexual harassment lawsuits filed by men doubled from 8% to 16%. David Grinberg, an EEOC spokesman stated, "While some people may think sexual harassment of male employees is a joke, the issue is real [...] We are seeing more of it, and such conduct has serious legal consequences for employers." It is quite possible that the number of male victims of sexual harassment are far greater than the EEOC data represents, since there may likely be psychological factors such as peer pressure and gender identity issues that prevent male victims from coming forward to report being victims of sexual harassment and unwanted advances at work.

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The New Face of the Coyote: Fraudulent Use of The Violence Against Women Act and State Divorce and Custody Laws

As a few immigrants have realized in recent years, there is a federal law that, especially when combined with popular divorce and child custody statutes across the nation, allows them to relatively easily and quickly acquire permanent residency and even citizenship status in the United States whereas such would have been nearly impossible beforehand, use that immigration status to bring over loved ones from their homeland via family reunification visas, and if they play their cards right, receive spousal and even child support soon after arrival to cover their living and shopping expenses: alas, the American dream, all for the price of a broken heart and a ruined life - not their own, of course.

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Child Abductions, California Child Custody Law, and International Human Rights

The California Family Law System is deeply dysfunctional, and it is need of some serious positive changes. Though the problem of child abductions is connected to various international issues which shall be discussed later in this article, on the local level alone, it is often inextricably linked to the discussion of California Child Custody and Divorce laws regarding domestic violence.

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California Same Sex Marriage Federal Lawsuit Rumbles amidst a Backdrop of Centuries of Catholic Church and State Interference in Marriage Rights

The role of government and religion in the creation and regulation of the institution of marriage is hundreds of years old, specifically dating back to 1563 when the Council of Trento decreed that marriage is a lifelong sacrament meant only for one man and one woman. The dramatic backdrop to this pivotal decision is filled with anti-Jewish sentiment, xenophobia, political posturing, and military strategies.

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