U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Supreme Court Same-Sex Custody Case Decision
The U.S. Supreme Court declined on February 22, 2018, to hear an appeal of a case where the Arizona Supreme Court found that a lesbian woman should be recognized as the legal parent of the child she and her former wife conceived through artificial insemination during their marriage.
The case, stems from a custody dispute between Kimberly McLaughlin and Suzan McLaughlin. The couple was legally married in California in 2008, and chose to have a child via artificial insemination and an anonymous sperm donor. In 2011, Kimberly gave birth to the couple’s son. Two years later, she left with the child and cut off all communication between Suzan and their son. Upon filing for divorce, Suzan sought parenting time based upon an Arizona law regarding the presumption of parentage. Specifically, the law states that a child born to a woman within 10 months of her marriage is presumed to be biologically related to the father. However, Kimberly claimed that she cannot be required to share custody of her biological child because this presumption clearly states that it only applies when the other spouse is a man.
Kentucky took a step closer on April 12, 2017 to making shared parenting in instances of divorce the norm in the state. 
There have been many laws and treaties put in place in recent years to assist in the prevention of international abduction. However, I have been seeing a new complacency in the family court system that has begun to ignore the need for strong prevention, thus further thwarting a parent’s ability to be involved with their child. Judges in many jurisdictions have been ordering that the objecting parent cooperate in obtaining passports for their children so the foreign national parent can remove the child from the country, often to non-Hague signatory countries. Even though these issues have been addressed, the laws strengthened, and the public made increasingly aware of the dangers of allowing a child to … 
If you are looking to modify your divorce decree, one of the first major obstacles you will face is determining whether or not you have met the standard for a “change of circumstances” which is required before any modification can occur. There are a few resources we can look to that provide insight as to what this amounts to, including case law and statutes.
There are several issues that you need to address if you have decided that you need to modify your original custody order. The first is whether your case meets the necessary criteria for modification – the primary of which is a “change of circumstance”. One thing you must understand is that this does NOT include the myth that at a certain age the child can make a choice – this is not supported by law. A child’s wishes