By Correy Stephenson
The Daily Record Newswire
The economy continued to be the big story last year, with family lawyers trying to run as tight a financial ship as possible.
But other issues crowded the headlines, from technology’s increasing role, particularly in divorce cases to ongoing litigation over same-sex relationship issues nationwide.
Here is a look at some of the top news in 2010.
The role of technology expands
Although divorce practitioners reported a “surge” in evidence from social networking sites, family law attorneys continued to miss the boat, failing to discover a potential treasure trove of legal evidence.
Technology has offered clients another way to complicate their cases; one man was arrested in Florida after he allegedly violated a protective order by sending his estranged wife a “friend” request on Facebook, and in another case, a federal court in Virginia ruled that a wife could sue her husband for accessing her business e-mail for the purpose of reading communications with her divorce attorney.
But technology also proved to be helpful, with two divorce apps released by family law firms in 2010, and the use of technology to aid in a divorce proceeding, where a New York court ruled that a mother could relocate with her children to Florida if she paid for and provided access to Skype visitation between the children and their father.
State laws change
Across the country, states considered a variety of legislation relating to family law, from changes and limits on alimony to greater access to birth certificates for adoptees in Illinois to Tennessee’s bill that would mandate a presumption of equal custody between divorcing spouses. In New Jersey, lawmakers voted down gay marriage while New York joined the rest of the nation in adopting no-fault divorce.
Supreme Court weighs in
In a rare family law case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices determined that a British father had the right to challenge his child’s relocation to the U.S. from Chile under an international treaty governing child abduction in Abbott v. Abbott.
The court also heard oral argument in Flores-Villar v. U.S., considering the constitutionality of a law hat makes it easier for a child of unmarried parents to obtain citizenship if the mother is a U.S. citizen than if the father is.
The justices also weighed in — albeit tangentially — in the battle over same-sex marriage, when the court ruled that the public disclosure of the names and addresses of those who signed a referendum petition supporting a limit on same-sex couples’ rights did not violate the signers’ First Amendment rights.
Same-sex marriage
The controversy over same-sex relationship issues continued in 2010, with the federal trial i California over the state’s ballot measure, Proposition 8, hogging the headlines. U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled the measure unconstitutional in August, a decision the 9th Circuit heard oral argument on December. After a Massachusetts federal court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional in a pair of cases in July, more suits were filed in Connecticut and New York. The states waded in as well, with Hawaii and Illinois legalizing same-sex unions and state courts grappling with issues like same-sex adoption, custody and child support.
Family law news of the weird
Family law also had more than its fair share of unusual cases. In 2010, a divorcing couple in New York fought over 7,000 pictures, while in California, the parties agreed to flip a coin for their furniture. The Alaska Supreme Court ordered one father to pay for his child’s vitamins and a Texas appellate court ruled that a couple’s Chihuahua was the wife’s separate property, even though it was paid for with commingled funds.
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