When parents neglect or fail to provide even basic food, shelter, or medical care for their children, we would all agree that Children’s Services needs to step in and remove a child from their parent’s control. If a child’s immediate safety and well being are at risk, we would argue that such a situation must not be allowed to continue.
But what about parents who allow their children to become extremely obese over time…obese to the point that a child’s health, or even life, is in danger? If a child is experiencing medical problems because his or her parent allows them to eat to excess and maintain an inactive lifestyle, should Children’s Services remove a child from that environment? Doesn’t the situation amount to a form of child abuse that authorities should act upon? A recent commentary in one of the nation’s most distinguished medical journals, the Journal of the American Medical Association, argues “Yes!”, and it’s causing quite a debate across the country.
The commentary that has generated numerous news stories and blog articles was written by Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity specialist at Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital in Boston, and Lindsey Murtagh, a lawyer and researcher at Harvard’s School … Read More... “Extremely Obese Children…Should Their Parents Lose Custody?”
After years of intense pressure from the United States government and governments of the European Union, the government of Japan recently announced its intention to join the Hague Convention relative to child custody. At the present time, Japan is the only major industrialized country that has not signed the treaty. And, Japan is the only member of the Group of Seven (G-7) leading nations which is not a party to the treaty. The G-7 countries which have adopted the Hague Convention are France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
The concept of “paternity” refers to the process of going to court to establish a legal relationship between a father and his child. The process exists because society has created laws to make sure that children are supported by their own biological parents whenever possible. A paternity action will help determine who should be paying for that support and how much they should be paying. In Ohio, a paternity action will only apply to a mother and father who were never married because any child born during a marriage is presumed to be the husband’s legal child. Paternity actions between unmarried people are typically heard in a county’s juvenile court.
My wife and I have raised two (2) sons and we personally experienced the terror of a child becoming lost in a public place. Fortunately, ours ended like most of these situations with our son being located and returned safely. So, that being said, I want to thank Keith Kepler, the Vice President and General Manager at AlliedBarton Security Services, for sending the Ohio Family Law Blog these important tips about protecting our children from becoming lost or missing. I think that his advice is spot-on. Please take a moment and read his practical suggestions:
On February 6, 2010, I posted an article entitled, 
The topic for this Family Blog Article is one that is I like to use and one that I highly recommend to clients and to other practitioners. A four (4) way settlement conference is a meeting or conference attended by both parties (Husband and Wife) and their respective attorneys. The meeting generally takes place at one of the attorney’s offices but it could be held at an absolutely neutral location such as the Bar Association, a local library, or a church having meeting rooms available for the public. The meetings can take place during normal business hours but can also be held during evening or weekend hours as no one from the Court needs to be present and no one from the Court needs to oversee or supervise the conference. Therefore, the scheduling of settlement conferences can be done to accommodate each of the parties’ schedules and their respective attorneys’ schedules.