Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘child support’

Child support, through age 23?

A bill introduced into the Virginia legislature would put payers of child support on the hook for older kids and indeed young adults so long as they are attending college. [Hans Bader, Examiner]

P.S. A reader writes: “We have this in Connecticut. It is a disaster. On paper, the CT court is to consider all factors as to whether it is reasonable to order a parent to pay child support. In reality, it is ordered whether or not the parent can afford to pay, whether or not the adult ‘child’ even speaks to the parent. So you have children who are basically giving their parent no respect or any sort of relationship who are given a free college ride. It is also used as a tool by vindictive parents against the other parent.” More: Alkon.

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Kid isn’t his, homeless man in jail for nonsupport anyway

Per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, both a special assistant state attorney general and a judge knew when sentencing Frank Hatley that he was not the biological father of the child born to an unmarried woman with whom he’d had a relationship. With the assistance of DNA results and a legal services lawyer Hatley had managed to get out from under future payments, but his arrearage on existing support (premised on his obligation to reimburse the state for its public assistance payouts on behalf of his supposed son) still left him in “deadbeat dad” status. “He’s dealing with a valid court order”, said one lawyer. So, as the paper notes, he’s “languished in a South Georgia debtor’s prison jail for more than a year”. More: Above the Law, Greenfield, CNN. Update Jul. 16: Hatley is freed.

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May 24 roundup

  • Souter’s middle-of-the-road views on litigation didn’t fit conventional patterns [Copland, PoL]
  • Champerty and maintenance watch: new fund invests in commercial litigation for a share of the payouts [Fortune mag via Zywicki]
  • Report: distributor of “Religulous” film “has served a written settlement proposal” to preacher depicted onscreen [OnPoint News, earlier]
  • U.K.: “Homeowner Suit May Stop Village Cricket” [Telegraph via Never Yet Melted]
  • Overlawyered sparks a discussion across usual lines on EMTALA, the federal law on emergency medicine [Kennerly]
  • Federal Circuit: think twice before proceeding with frivolous appeals [David Bennett, Law.com]
  • Father-son duo who have served as key expert witnesses in litigation alleging autism-vaccine link push risky and questionable therapy for the condition [Chicago Tribune and second article and PDF graphic via Orac; Kathleen Seidel]. Waste and harm that go on in the name of treating autism should give pause to many sides in health care debate [Tyler Cowen]
  • One “deadbeat dad’s” story [Amy Alkon]. Forthcoming Lifetime reality show sounds like it will showcase harassment of fathers in child support arrears [Fathers and Families via Instapundit]

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April 28 roundup

  • Forensics gone wrong: Alabama mom spends nine months in jail after medical examiner misdiagnoses stillbirth as murder [Patrick @ Popehat]
  • Bouncer shot outside bar going after owners individually to collect $1.5 million verdict [W.V. Record]
  • “Feds Seize Assets of Companies Suspected of Hiring Illegal Aliens” [Reisinger, Corporate Counsel]
  • Dealing with compulsive-hoarder tenants who fill apartment up to the ceiling with trash can be legally tricky [San Francisco Weekly]
  • NYC has paid more than a half billion dollars over past decade to settle police misconduct suits [NY Post]
  • Los Angeles schools taking aim at state laws that make it near impossible to fire teachers [L.A. Daily News via Kaus]
  • Another parent put through mistaken-identity child-support hell, this time in Pennsylvania [Harrisburg Patriot-News via Amy Alkon] For a similar case from California, see August 7-8, 2001;
  • Disabled man finds vehicle towed, wheels himself in cold to distant lot, catches pneumonia. Liability for tow company and parking lot owner? [John Hochfelder, who also hosts Blawg Review #209 this week on a theme of remembering his father, a veteran of the WWII battle of Iwo Jima]

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Microblog 2008-01-04

  • Must stores let in “social support” goats? Hot ADA issue we’ve often covered makes it into NYTimes mag [Rebecca Skloot] And Time mag tackles scandal of ADA-suit mass filing for $$, long familiar to our readers [Alison Stateman]

  • Can you guess mechanism by which snow globes turned out to cause fire hazard? (Then check link.) [K.C. Business Journal]

  • “Do Not Track” legislation could torpedo online-advertising models [ReadWriteWeb h/t @lilyhill]

  • What if plea-bargaining defendants could give D.A.s eBay-style feedback? [Greenfield]

  • UK cabinet minister wants govt to regulate Net with aim of child safety, Brit blogger says – hell, no! [Perry de Havilland, Samizdata]

  • As lawyer-driven mummeries go, which is worse, coffee machine overwarning or medical “informed consent”? [Happy Hospitalist]

  • Bogus memoirs nowadays spawn real lawsuits, as we remember from James Frey case [Elefant]

  • Is health care prohibition in our future? [KevinMD]

  • Massachusetts child support guidelines said to be highly onerous for dads already and getting worse [Bader, CEI]

  • Kid gloves from some local media for Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd & his magic mortgages [Christopher Fountain and again]

  • Had Robertson v. Princeton donor-intent suit gone to trial, lawyers might have billed $120 million hourly fees. How’d the number get that high? [Kennerly, Litigation & Trial and again]

  • A reminder: these microblog posts are based on a selection of my contributions to Twitter, which you can “follow” here.

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September 15 roundup

  • Saying fashion model broke his very fancy umbrella, N.Y. restaurant owner Nello Balan sues her for $1 million, but instead gets fined $500 for wasting court’s time [AP/FoxNews.com, NY Times]
  • Spokesman for Chesapeake, Va. schools says its OK for high school marching band to perform at Disney World, so long as they don’t ride any rides [Virginian-Pilot]
  • More on Chicago parking tickets: revenue-hungry Mayor Daley rebuffed in plan to boot cars after only two tickets [Sun-Times, Tribune]
  • Too old, in their 50s, to be raising kids? [Houston Chronicle via ABA Journal].
  • Britain’s stringent libel laws and welcome mat for “libel tourism” draw criticism from the U.N. (of all places) [Guardian]
  • Beaumont, Tex.: “Parents sue other driver, bar for daughter’s DUI death” [SE Texas Record, more, more]
  • “Three pony rule”: $600,000 a year is needlessly high for child support, even if mom has costly tastes [N.J.L.J., Unfiltered Minds]
  • Advocacy groups push to require health insurers and taxpayers to pay for kids’ weight-loss camps [NY Times]
  • Lester Brickman: those fraud-rife mass screening operations may account for 90 percent of mass tort claims [PoL]

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August 22 roundup

  • “Law school is not such a leap” for licensed Nevada prostitute’s next career move — hey, we didn’t say that, Robert Ambrogi at Law.com did [Legal Blog Watch, Bitter Lawyer]
  • Today’s representative class-action plaintiff: “For five years, her diet consisted almost exclusively of Chicken-of-the-Sea tuna…” [PoL]
  • Prolific California disabled-access filer Jarek Molski ordered to pay fees for “scorched-earth” tactics in one case, but wins a second [Metropolitan News-Enterprise via Bashman]
  • Another sperm donor surprised by legal obligation to pay child support [Santa Fe, N.M. Reporter; earlier]
  • “Lawyer Fees Jumped 50% After Bankruptcy Law Change” [ABA Journal]
  • “Whatever it takes to win a case”, and checking out jurors’ Facebook profiles is the least of it [NLJ]
  • High-profile U.K. attorney Nick Freeman registers his nickname “Mr. Loophole” [Times Online a while back]
  • When can a plaintiff claiming sexual assault sue anonymously? Courts will apply mushy balancing test [NYLJ]
  • Hold on to your hats, looks like Geoffrey Fieger is online [Fieger Time]

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“Judge awards Heather Mills £24.3 million in divorce ruling”

Indicating perhaps that divorcing Paul McCartney is an only slightly less remunerative affair than being Bear Stearns, even if she didn’t get the claimed £125 million. (David Byers, Times Online, Mar. 17). Reader Jim T. sends along this video of Mills’s press statement and describes as “hilarious” the “references of how it is ‘very, very sad’ that her daughter was only awarded enough travel expenses to travel ‘B class’ even though Heather Mills was just awarded $50 million dollars.” (& welcome Above the Law readers).

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