The blog writes about a cool new web tool (no, not runpee.com, the site that tells you when you go pee during a movie). The gloriously simple idea of meetways.com is to let you find a convenient half-way point between two different places.
Although the easy, free site can be used for any meeting purpose, it is particularly useful for a high tension situation, such as sorting out where to hand over kids for visitation when neither parent wants to do more of the driving. Just plug in two addresses (or zip codes), then hit enter for a halfway point. You can even ask for a list of pizza or coffee or burger places between the two places. Plus there’s an iphone app.
Although meetways can help you coordinate a good meeting place between you and your ex – say a fast food restaurant - sadly, it cannot do the actual driving. So you may still have to wait for the ex to show up. For help with this, check out our article on how to prove a no-show.
On April 3, 2009, the Iowa Supreme Courtstruck down the state statute banning same-sex marriage- just the third state to allow gay marriage, after Connecticut and Massachusetts (sorry, fickle California – but soon after, Vermont made it four – and the first to do so legislatively). Most striking about the Iowa vote is that it was unanimous - as strong a statement as the landmark 9-0 US Supreme Court decision 54 years years ago in Brown vs. Board of Education.
As the Iowa Court summarized:
We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective. The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification. [emphasis added]
What strikes me in this measured passage is the mundane recognition that, however strongly some people may feel about this issue, there is simply no compelling reason for our government to take a stand to prevent two unrelated, unmarried adults from getting married to each other. It also reminds me just how clueless I am about homophobia. Not that I’m an expert on misogyny, racism and classism. I know these are layered, complex issues.
But I like to think I have at least a passing understanding of some of the systemic underpinnings of these misguided mechanisms of social control. These are after all all ways of 1) getting other people to do the things you don’t want to do by 2) controlling elements of society (including, with misogyny, intimate partners) for a variety of clear purposes – money, sex, subordination, and, as an added bonsus 3) feeling better about your own sorry self because you feel superior to a defined class of “others.”
But homophobia is not about feeling better because you are better than, for example, women, people of color, people who are less educated than you are. It is, rather, a means of social control to make people morelike you, not less than you. What I really wonder is why anybody cares. It seems obvious that what people do in their bedrooms behind closed doors has no effect on you, on your life, whatsoever. So what is, after all, the big deal? As Jerry Seinfeld might say, what’s it to you if some schlub “plays for the other team”?
Of course, it is a big deal. The consequences of homophobia remain very real. Violence against GLBT folks is alive and, well, virulent. And suicide attempts for gay teenagers are about three times higher (or is it six?) than heterosexual teenagers. So to me it’s not so much a moral or religious or even an emotional issue, but a public health issue. A pretty damn big one.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that while the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends towards justice. It’s my hope that the Iowa decision is an important step in this process because, perhaps ironically, it celebrates sameness, not difference:
Like most Iowans, [the plaintiffs] are responsible,caring, and productive individuals. They maintain important jobs, or are retired, and are contributing, benevolent members of their communities. They include a nurse, business manager, insurance analyst, bank agent, stay-at-home parent, church organist and piano teacher, museum director, federal employee, social worker, teacher, and two retired teachers. Like many Iowans, some have children and others hope to have children. [By the way, Julie Shapiro's most excellent blog discusses how this opinion relates to parenting issues.]
The last fifty years have seen the widespread acceptance of Hannah Arendt’s theories on the “banality of evil” in her descriptions of holocaust architect Adolph Eichmann, followed by the grudging acceptance of the banality of virtue, in the documentary Weapons of the Spirit (whose Resistance members are largely uneducated, unthinking, French peasant Huguenots, who appear to pretty much stumble upon immensely heroic actions).
In other words, we may be more akin to monsters and heroes alike than we would like to think.
I wonder – if we can accept that both evil and virtue may be banal, perhaps we can also come to accept that sexual orientation is not only mundane, but that it’s not even an issue of moral virtue at all.
Maybe, eventually, we straight folk will figure out that the question of someone’s sexual orientation isn’t even a very interesting question.
Abovethelaw.com is a self-proclaimed legal tabloid on the legal profession. It’s professionally designed, humorous and sometimes even informative. Mostly it’s just pithy, such as its take on big law firm schaudenfreude called “Skaddenfreude” after the mega-firm Skadden Arps.
There’s also a healthy dollop of family law snark:
ATL noted that some top Washington DC divorce lawyers actually put a provision in their contracts allowing their clients to give them a tipat the end of the case (no word on whether 15% was expected). ATL then quotes the Washingtonian as saying that:
Divorce law rarely attracts the best and brightest from America’s law schools. Many top schools ignore the specialty.
Ouch!
This past New Year’s, ATL quoted the TimesOnline‘s statistic that only 29% of men were happier after divorce compared to 49% of women, then offered the not-quite obligatory Gloria Gaynor reference:
I should have changed my stupid lock. I should have made you leave your key.
There’s also the magazine ad “Getting divorced means never having to talk to your mother-in-law again.”
Perhaps funniest of all, the ATL archives have an article on divorce lawyer to the almost-stars, Mark Kaplan. Kaplan apparently represented not only Kevin Federline (Britney Spears’ ex), but also Cris Judd (J.Lo’s ex). ATL wryly notes:
Family law practitioners in Hollywood tend to develop specialty niches. Some represent wealthy husbands, seeking to divorce their first wives with minimal financial pain. Some represent the jilted spouses, seeking to take their husbands for all they’re worth. Some defend paternity suits brought against promiscuous celebrities.
On a somewhat lighter note, Worrall writes that former NFL running back Travis Henry recently tried, unsuccessfully, to have his child support lowered from $3000 a month for his four-year old son. But that’s the least of Travis’ child support problems – he has eight other children by eight other mothers. Henry owes about $170,000 a year in child support. Plus he’s broke, or so he says.
But would you believe that all these child support problems really aren’t his fault? According to The New York Times:
“I did use protection at first,” [Henry] said. “Then they’d be saying they’d be on the pill. I was an idiot to trust them….
In four instances, he attested, “I was trapped.”
But love is in the air, again, for the 30-year old Henry: His fiancee is waiting for him in Denver, where he used to play for the Broncos. And, as the Times cheerily reports:
One other subject they agree on: Neither wants children.
Julie Shapiro is a Seattle University Law Professor who writes like a human being. In her blog, Related Topics, she discusses issues around the nation, including, for example, the proposed ban against adoptions by unwed couples in Kentucky and anti-fertility drug legislation in Georgia (in reaction to the recent Octuplet outrage).
This week Professor Shapiro discusses how marriage creates a presumption of fatherhood:
Here’s the story: A woman is getting married. She is pregnant. The baby is (as she puts it) “not the groom’s.” He knows this, as do all their close friends and family. The concern expressed … is what and how to tell others about the parentage of the child.
Now, I’ll admit that my first question is … why on earth one would feel compelled to tell anyone anything. The answer to this seems to be that the bride is afraid that people will make assumptions; that is, people will assume the the groom is the father of the child.
Well, here’s the beauty of the law: the groom actually is the father, or will be once the child is born. [Washington law presumes that the husband is the father of the child, whether biologically true or not.] Isn’t that tidy? There’s no need to say anything because there is actually nothing to say. The child’s parents will be just who everyone at that wedding will think they are.
Professor Shapiro’s wide-ranging blog is more pensive than practical. As she explains:
I hope to create a forum for intelligent and sustained discussion of some of the more compelling family law issues. I have started here with questions of parentage–who are the parents of a child. It’s not as simple as it seems. But it is a terribly important one. By building slowly, case by case, story by story, I hope to slowly develop a rich and layered understanding of what it means to be a parent, one that perhaps, some day, the law can learn from.
to cause to become separated, disconnected, or divergent; uncouple.
to absorb the shock of (a nuclear explosion): a surrounding mass of earth and rock can decouple a nuclear blast.
to separate or diverge from an existing connection; uncouple.
Origin: 1595–1605; de- + couple
What about Decoupling Blog?
Decoupling offers a simple guide to common court forms, survival tips, news, humor, pop quizzes on recent cases, and answers to general family law questions.
Family law is difficult, messy terrain. We love it, however, for one simple reason – it matters. Family law deals with the toughest stuff of life – protecting your house, your pension, your entire future, and most importantly, your children.
Decoupling, whether from a marriage or a domestic partnership, is nearly always a traumatic event that no one plans for any more than they do a car accident. Surviving the process is, for most people, decoupling’s foremost challenge. And for us lawyer folk, helping to clear the path so that you can thrive again is the craft of decoupling.
I decided to create the Decoupling Blog for two main reasons:
First, I want to simplify the forms and rules regarding family law actions in King County. Sometimes the forms and rules are so complex that even us lawyers routinely screw them up. One Court Commissioner recently told me that he was astounded that pro se‘s (folks without lawyers) ever successfully navigate their own divorces at all. I recently became Chair of the Local Rules sub-committee of the Family Law Section of the King County Bar Association (try to say that three times fast!), so that I could help make our county court rules more logical, more intuitive, and more simple. Eventually, this should help both lawyers and non-lawyers navigate this area of law. It’s a big job, however, and in the end, the judges make the rules, not me. In the mean time, I want to help people understand not only what forms they need but also what these forms do.
Unfortunately, many lawyers actually like complex rules. Sometimes, I am afraid that this is true because lawyers believe that complex rules give them job security. However, people ought to hire family law attorneys for our insight, experience, pragmatism, and willingness to fight for a fair result – not because of byzantine court procedures.
Second, while family law is very serious business, I want to encourage clients and attorneys to stay positive and light-hearted. Cases seem to flow much smoothly when neither the clients nor their attorneys take themselves seriously. Plus, clients who keep their sense of humor throughout the decoupling process usually land on their feet, ready to move on to the next chapter of their life. Much of the divorce-related humor I see, however, tends to be cynical, mean-spirited, and worst of all, not funny. It’s my goal to inject some levity into this difficult subject, while still being respectful to all involved.
This blog is a service of Rao & Pierce PLLC. I thank my partners Tom Bao Pierce and Katy Banahan for their support, for showing me every day how to be a better lawyer, and for never taking themselves too seriously.
Decoupling seeks, above all, to be useful and insightful. Let us know how we’re doing, and please let us know if you find any expired links or information that you think is incorrect.
Decoupling offers a simple guide to common court forms, survival tips, news, humor, pop quizzes on recent cases, and answers to general family law questions.