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Divorce,Custody,Support |
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Supervised Visitation Network The link above is to the web side of the Supervised Visitation Network, with links to variety of resources and tools for persons who deal with supervised visitation, child exchanges, and similar activities. On the website you will find a parent handbook, a professional’s handbook, a service provider directory, standards and guidelines for supervised visitation organizations, and training and conference activities. ++++++++++ Order Your Paternity Test on the Internet Home tests for paternity require genetic samples from the suspected father and the child. The kits come with buccal swabs, which look like oversized Q-tips. Parent and child each swirl a swab in the mouth to collect cells and put the samples in separate envelopes. The cost may vary from $175 to $500, depending upon the company, the test, and the lab’s credentials. Customers need not give their real names. ++++++++++ National Family Resiliency Center NFRC, formerly known as the Children of Separation and Divorce Center , provides parents with help in healing the effects of divorce; helps educate and train mental health and legal practitioners on the effects of divorce on children, and the use of NFRC’s child-focused decision-making model. You may want to check out this site’s library of articles, resources for professionals, and other services. ++++++++++ Family Court Self Help Center The center is a source of both in-person and on-line help and services to pro se litigants in Family Court in Reno , Nevada . Services include more than 70 packets of forms which can be used to obtain a divorce, seek an increase in child support, oppose an increase in child support and address most of the other situations which regularly get decided in family court. The packets are easy to understand and provide a guide to the rules of the court. ++++++++++ www.UpToParents.org UpToParents.org is a free, confidential, and interactive website for divorcing and divorced parents. The core of the site is an interactive tour of 100 Commitments parents can select to help them protect their children during and after divorce. A second site (www.ProudToParent.org) is for parents never married to each other and a third (www.WhileWeHeal.org) is for spouses intending to stay married, but remembering their children’s needs as they work through marital problems. Each parent visits the site separately. When both are finished, they receive a personalized list of Agreed Commitments – the commitments they both say will be important to their children and will guide their parenting. The websites build on this insight: Parents in conflict who agree about one specific thing will agree on everything, and that one thing is: “What do we want our children to look like when they are 25?” The site was recently chosen by the ABA Dispute Resolution Section for its Problem Solver of the Year Award. It looks like a good tool for many divorcing parents. ++++++++++ An Internet Tool for Visitation An internet web site now enables parents to coordinate schedules through color-coded calendars. It is catching the attention of judges, lawyers, and family mediators and some judges have ordered its use as a way to reduce potential hostility. Ourfamilywizard.com also features an expense log and a family message board. An information bank includes a record of vital statistics, school schedules, contact information for teachers and child care providers and clothing sizes. It was developed by an airline mechanic whose family was thrown into turmoil over one Christmas when he and his former wife got their schedules mixed up for their children’s holiday visit. Read about it in the Christian Science Monitor Click here to take a tour of the Ourfamilywizard site and to view movies about site features. Ourfamilywizard has free CDs for parents that explain the program and its benefits. It also has produced a Resource Kit for professionals which contains demonstration disks, a flip chart with screen shots, sample court orders, and other miscellaneous information. There is no charge for either of these products. For more information about either or both, send me an email and I’ll give you the details. ++++++++++ Indiana’s Parenting Time Guidelines Are Now in Spanish Thank you to the Brevity reader who sent me links to the Parenting Time Guidelines in South Bend , Indiana which now appear in both English and Spanish. Go to: http://users.michiana.org/probate . Scroll halfway down the page to the list of “Indiana Resources” where you will see an item marked “New.” Click there. The listing immediately above the guidelines in Spanish is the English version. ++++++++++  | Families Together Therapeutic Visitation – State of Rhode Island – This program is an innovative public-private partnerships between a children’s museum and a state child welfare system. It provides therapeutic visitation for court-separated families and training and guidance for child welfare workers. Designed specifically to address problems and opportunities related to visitation. |
++++++++++ Chicago Appleseed – Project and report on child support in Cook County , Illinois - A Call for Reform. This link will take you to to a 10 page Executive Summary containing concrete recommendations for reform of the collection of child support in Cook County and a full report. Both downloadable. ++++++++++ Me and My Dad: Strengthening Relationships between Dads & Kids The University of Iowa Extension Service website for its Creating Father Friendly Communities Initiative is living proof that an effective service can be delivered at a modest price. The website, which has been up since 2000, receives more than 1,500 hits a month. Launching and maintaining the website cost about $2,500. The website is the product of focus groups and surveys of fathers and grandfathers in rural and inner-cities communities in the late 1990s. That research found that men don’t like parenting training delivered through community-based seminars, but do like easy access to training. (Source: Children & Youth Funding Report, October 2, 2002 ) ++++++++++ US Supreme Court Declines to Hear Deadbeat Dad Case David W. Oakley fathered nine children with four women and amassed $25,000 in unpaid child support. In 1999 Judge Fred Hazlewood sentenced Oakley to three years in prison for failing to pay $25,000 in child support. He also stayed an eight-year prison sentence in favor of probation, but with the condition that Oakley not father any children during that time unless he could prove he could support all of them. The Supreme Court decision leaves in place a 2001 decision of the Wisconsin Supreme Court that upheld the judge’s order but raised fundamental questions about the right to procreate. Read more in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. ++++++++++ National Women’s Law Center Publications Many are free, most of them are downloadable. I was interested in their latest publication on the determination of child support for low-income families. It contains a set of policy recommendations. Dollars and Sense: Improving the Determination of Child Support Obligations for Low-Income Mothers, Fathers and Children is downloadable ++++++++++ The Importance of Child Support Enforcement: What Recent Social Science Research Tells Us (click on "Child Support Enforcement") This is a set of four CLASP Research Fact Sheets with useful information on child support enforcement. Each fact sheet is one to two pages in length, downloadable, very succinct, very handy to have tucked away somewhere. There are about 10 pages of Child Support-related materials at this location. +++++++++++ U.S. State Department Office of Children’s Issues Go to this site to find information on international child custody, adoption, child support, international child abductions. The site also references other sources of information useful for this subject matter. ++++++++++ The Uniform Child-Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act - 16 pages bulletin. This uniform state law is designed to deter interstate parental kidnapping and promote uniform jurisdiction and enforcement provisions in child-custody and visitation cases. Has been enacted by 25 States and the District of Columbia since its approval by the national Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in 1997. |
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