LAW 6061 :
Children Parents & the Law

The seminar will cover a variety of topics that relate to legal issues that affect children and parents. The topics that are the subject of class discussion will necessarily vary from year to year, although students enrolled in the seminar will be free to select any approved topic as the subject of their seminar paper. It is anticipated that class discussions will, on occasion, be enriched by the participation of lawyers who have particular knowledge and expertise regarding the topic under discussion. <P>Topics that may be discussed include the following: assisted reproduction and surrogacy; adoption; determination of parentage (e.g., issues that arise when the husband of a married woman is proven not to be the father of a child born during the marriage); custody and visitation rights of nonparents; role of psychologists in custody proceedings; scope and application of dependency and abuse statutes; child placement issues in dependency and abuse proceedings; selected issues in child custody proceedings (e.g., the relevance of religious beliefs and conduct justified by religious belief, relevance of sexual conduct or orientation); right to determine specific aspects of child's upbringing (e.g., circumcision, religious instruction, schooling choices including home schooling, medical decision making); ethical rights and responsibilities of lawyer for parent of child; ethical rights and responsibilities of lawyer for child in custody and dependency proceedings; interstate custody issues (UCCJEA and relocation of a parent); international custody issues (relocation of a parent to a foreign country and abduction of a child to or from a foreign country); alternatives to litigation as a dispute settlement mechanism in custody cases.