Corinne Robins

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I am hard-pressed to think of a family law case involving a transgender person with a fair or just outcome. And that is saying a lot. As the director of the Transgender Rights Project at Gay Lesbian Advocates Defenders (GLAD), a non-profit that works in the New England states on discrimination cases involving LGBTQ clients and those with HIV/AIDS, I hear from many transgender people facing discrimination in the formation, expansion, or dissolution of family relationships.

A recent case on which I worked is representative of the systemic problem of cultural and social bias against transgender people that is reflected in our family court systems. Anne (all names listed are pseudonyms) has been the primary caretaking parent of her 5-year-old child, Molly. She had Molly with an ex-partner, Tom. Although Tom saw Molly occasionally, Anne was the constant, stable presence in Mollys life. Tom never objected to that arrangement. Anne recently fell in love with and married Brian, a kind, loving, supportive partner. He is also transgender, a fact Tom learned by doing an Internet search on Brian. After learning of Annes marriage to Brian, Tom filed for sole legal and physical custody of Molly. Because Brian is a caring and competent stepfather and Anne has been a stable and loving parent for Molly her entire life, Tom was unable to attack Annes parenting rights directly. Instead, Tom threatened to bring into court the fact Brian is transgender and threatened to out Brian to his employer and community.

Its not a fair fight. In fact, it shouldnt be a fight at all. But transgender people caught up in domestic relations matters have much to lose and, sadly, few protections.

A new book, Transgender Family Law: A Guide to Effective Advocacy, which I co-edited with Elizabeth E. Monnin-Browder, is intended to improve the legal landscape for transgender people and our families. It is designed to be a roadmap for transgender clients and their attorneys navigating family court systems in an evolving area of law. Reversing bad precedent, establishing favorable outcomes, and changing public attitudes are the goals of this book.

In recent years GLAD has brought lawsuits that successfully challenged transgender bias in all types of settings: a middle schools mistreatment of a transgender student, a prison systems denial of essential health care for a transgender inmate, a government agencys denial of insurance coverage for a transgender persons medically necessary care, the federal governments unequal treatment of a transgender taxpayer, among others. Yet transgender family law cases with favorable outcomes remain elusive. In speaking with my colleagues about why that is so, I realized that one of the challenges in bringing family law impact cases on behalf of transgender clients is the dearth of knowledge among family law attorneys — even those deeply committed to advocating for transgender clients — about effective representation for our community. As a result, many transgender clients have been negotiating away family law protections out of fear, often well founded, that they will fare worse in the courts, which often share the widespread community and social bias against transgender people. Rather than risk draconian results, many people agree to negotiated agreements that unfairly and unjustly restrict their familial rights.

For instance, an attorney once told me about a client she represented some years ago, a transgender woman who, prior to her gender transition, was in a lawful different-sex marriage. The client was being divorced by her wife of many years but had a close, loving relationship with their daughter. However, the wife threatened that if her estranged spouse challenged the divorce in court, the transgender client would never see the child again. She quickly turned to poisoning the relationship between the parent and child. Although this sounds like a common family law scenario, the difference is that courts predictably side with the non-transgender spouse in imposing all kinds of unprincipled restrictions on transgender parents up to and including terminating a persons parental status. Understanding the risk she faced, the transgender client chose not to challenge the wifes legal custodial status, asking only that she be allowed to retain her parental status and a financial obligation of child support. The transgender parent, fearing the worst, wanted her child to know that regardless of what happened to their relationship, she would always provide for her.

Stories like this are common and heartbreaking. They cry out for advocacy and education to reverse the negative legal precedent, bias, and discrimination against transgender people that infuses our legal system. I hope publication of Transgender Family Law: A Guide to Effective Advocacy marks the beginning of the end of unfair and unjust outcomes for transgender people in family law matters.

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Siblings you love them, but you hate them. You know these people and you choose not to interact with them, but at things like family events and funerals, we have to.

Its a family dynamic many can relate to, said J CITY Theater Executive Producer Clay Cockrell. Tonight the Jersey City-based company will present the West End hit, The Memory of Water by Shelagh Stephenson, a comedy exploring strained family relationships.

The show, directed by and featuring Cockrells wife Sandy, will be more prop- and costume-heavy than J CITYs other productions, Cockrell said, but will stand out for its story.

Its a real rich, funny story and focuses on three sisters who come back home for mothers funeral, said Cockrell, who also said things start heating up when the mother comes back as a ghost. Theyre dealing with a crazy mother who haunted them their whole lives, wasnt a really good mother, and trying to come to terms with it.

Read the full story from The Jersey Journal:
Sisters struggle to hold together in new J CITY production of The Memory of Water

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Contrary to Ministry of Health expectations throughout the war years children were growing taller and more robust
in the cities than they were in the country areas.

This situation did not make sense, either to ministers or child welfare officers. Country areas were considered to be healthy environments where children had access to fresh air and abundant fruit and vegetables.

The popular image of children helping to work the land and enjoying the fruits of their labour was also encouraged by ministers in an effort to justify evacuation schemes. But children defied all predictions in terms of child development.

The Ministry of Health concluded that children in the country moved around too much and therefore became too active to grow. They also surmised that city children sat and read comics, thereby reserving their energy for essential growth. ?All this was nonsense of course but it took some time to persuade officials otherwise,? says author Penny Starns, who has written a fascinating new book on the children who stayed behind.

Understandably the ministers who had introduced the evacuation policy were particularly keen to find evidence that children were healthier in the country because this would endorse the rationale behind their evacuation policy. The fact that children appeared to be healthier in the cities than in the countryside defied all apparent explanation.

Eventually it was a pioneering psychologist called Anna Freud ? daughter of Sigmund, the father of psychoa- nalysis ? who provided adequate explanations as to why city children, who were dwelling with family members, developed at a quicker rate than the evacuees.

She conducted extensive research into child development and children?s relationships throughout the war. In so doing she proved beyond doubt that the essential wellbeing of children was essential for their adequate physical and mental growth. Following her discoveries child welfare officers were for the first time educated about the emotional needs of children.

To many health care professionals Freud?s research findings were surprising to say the least. She dis- covered that city children who stayed with their families were emotionally more stable and far happier than those who had been evacuated. While the latter suffered from homesickness, depression and in a few cases suicidal tendencies, children who remained in cities thrived emotion- ally and even developed a well- balanced approach to bombing.

Freud discovered that even city children with bad parents coped better than those who had been forced by evacuation to sever their parental connections.

And she argued that not only were children not automatically afraid of air raids, in some cases war actually gave vent to a child?s natural aggressive instincts. Even those who admitted being nervous and fearful also expressed excitement and a greater sense of family intimacy during the air raids.

City children, who were virtually raised on bombsites, thus became the key to understanding family relationships and to what extent emotional ties dictated overall child development. Planning for evacuation had raised logistical issues but it was fair to say that emotional considerations had not entered into the process of policy formation in the slightest.

Much of the problem stemmed from the fact that most politicians and senior civil servants at this time came from upper-class back- grounds and as such they were accustomed to leaving home at the age of seven to attend boarding schools. MPs therefore found it difficult to identify with other sec- tions of society where this process was not considered to be the norm.

When all things were taken into account a mother living in an evacuation area had a basic dilemma. Was it better to keep her children with her and face the German bombers together? Or was it more sensible to entrust her children to the care of strangers?

Despite renewed calls for compulsory evacuation, almost a third of all mothers in evacuation areas decided to keep their children with them. It is likely that returning evacuees also influenced their decision, since many told stories of hostile host families and chaos in reception areas.

The way in which city children coped can be gleaned from the diaries their mothers kept. A mother of three confided to her diary: ?My children don?t seem to be taking much notice of the war. The eldest boy has come home with various songs ridiculing Hitler.?

Indeed there was even evidence that children were becoming used to the adrenaline rush that accompanied bombing raids and were thriving on the experience. One mother recorded: ?While we were playing Monopoly the children were laughing and chattering but I could hear thuds and explosions in the distance. This morning Dick said to me, ?I feel bored now on days when there is no warning?.?

Boys would tear around school playgrounds with their arms out- stretched pretending to be war planes while girls waited for them to ?land? and pretended to nurse their injuries.

Quite a number of children also imbued the enemy with benevolent characteristics. For instance one young girl named Janet decided that the Germans must be quite kind because they did not drop a bomb on her house while she was in the air-raid shelter.

One gentleman recalled how ?not knowing any different? made it possible for him to thrive while living with his mother during the Blitz.

?To us it was normal. After one particularly heavy raid I remember looking at my mother and saying, ?What?s wrong?? because she looked more worried than usual. We had been sheltering under the stairs during the raid. She looked at me and replied very calmly, ?No need to worry, the house has just fallen down around us that?s all.?

?Well, as a seven-year-old boy you just accept it. Rescuers came and eventually got us out. They had to remove part of the wall brick by brick until there was enough space for us to crawl out of the rubble. We simply accepted things and people helped each other.?

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Family Involvement Improves Behavior and Academics in Children With ADHD

April 27th, 2012

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Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a mental health problem that significantly impairs a child’s academic performance. The behaviors of children with ADHD can also negatively affect social functioning and relationships with other family members. The most commonly used methods of treatment for children with ADHD are medication and behavioral therapy. Both approaches have proven to be effective in some areas, but neither has successfully addressed all the issues that families and children with ADHD struggle with. In recent years, professional educators and clinicians have devised new strategies that focus on behavior and family involvement. Some of these methods incorporate parent-teacher communication and include child report cards, homework monitoring, and other elements that increase parental involvement and child accountability.

One of these methods is the Family-School Success (FSS) program, a program created to increase the academic performance and family awareness of elementary-age children with ADHD. FSS integrates behavioral therapy, daily accountability through the use of report cards, and homework interventions. To test the effectiveness of FSS, Thomas J. Power of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania conducted a study of 199 elementary school students with ADHD, one-fourth of whom were taking medication. The students and their families were assigned to 12 weeks of FSS or a control treatment known as Coping with ADHD Through Relationships and Education (CARE).

At the end of the 12 weeks, Power discovered that the families and children in FSS had better outcomes than those in CARE. Specifically, the relationships between the schools and families were stronger for FSS participants, and there were improvements in homework completion and positive parenting. Previous research has shown that parental involvement and school and family relationships are essential to improving the academic performance and social skills of children with ADHD. Power said, “This study affirms the important role that parents can serve in improving variables related to student success in school.”

Reference:
Power, T. J., Mautone, J. A., Soffer, S. L., Clarke, A. T., Marshall, S. A., Sharman, J., et al. (2012). A family-school intervention for children with ADHD: Results of a randomized clinical trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0028188

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copy; Copyright 2012 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Long Beach Bureau – All Rights Reserved.

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BOSTON, MA, May 01, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) –
National Family Mortgage, America’s premier peer-to-peer lending
solution for home loans between relatives, today announced that it
has won a prestigious Communicator Award as judged by the
International Academy of Visual Arts (IAVA). National Family Mortgage
was selected from amongst over six thousand top creative
organizations from around the world and recognized with an award of
distinction.

“National Family Mortgage is disrupting the traditional banking
system to help families save money and reduce taxes,” said Timothy
Burke, National Family Mortgage’s CEO and Founder. “We look at family
finance from a new perspective and created an innovative solution
that builds family wealth. Our team is honored to be recognized by
the Communicator Awards and to join a select group of America’s most
trusted brands.”

National Family Mortgage helps families properly structure, document,
and register tax-deductible mortgage loans between relatives. From
down payment loans and home improvement loans, to one hundred percent
financing or refinancing, National Family Mortgage’s technology
eliminates the cost and complexity of the broken banking system to
provide Borrowers with lower interest rates and Lenders with solid
returns. Interest rates on mortgage loans through National Family
Mortgage average 3.50 percent, with an average term of twenty three
years. The company has surpassed $32 million in loan origination
while protecting family relationships, reducing IRS tax issues, and
keeping over $17 million of interest within families.

“The pool of entries we received for this year’s Communicator Awards
serves as a true testament to the innovative ideas and capabilities
of communications and marketing professionals around the world,” said
Linda Day, executive director of the IAVA. “On behalf of the entire
Academy, we congratulate this year’s Communicator Award Winners for
their passion and dedication. We are humbled to be given the
opportunity to recognize such amazing work.”

The Communicator Awards is the leading international creative awards
program honoring creative excellence for communication professionals.
The Communicator Awards are judged and overseen by the International
Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA). The IAVA is an invitation-only
member-based organization of leading professionals from various
disciplines of the visual arts dedicated to embracing progress and
the evolving nature of traditional and interactive media. Current
membership represents an acclaimed group of media, advertising, and
marketing firms including: Time, Inc., Wired, Disney, Lockheed
Martin, Yahoo!, and more.

About National Family Mortgage
National Family Mortgage is an online
peer-to-peer lending company committed to offering consumers
alternatives to traditional and costlier forms of home financing.
National Family Mortgage has developed a safe and easy way for
families to structure real estate loans with their relatives –
thereby helping people arrange affordable loans, while reducing tax
issues, protecting relationships, and keeping money in the family.
With interest rates that are typically lower than rates charged by a
bank, National Family Mortgage allows consumers to take major steps
toward achieving their dreams with help from family, while saving
thousands of dollars.

National Family Mortgage Press Contact:
Jeanne Kleinberg
781.269.5478
Email Contact

http://www.twitter.com/FamilyMortgage

SOURCE: National Family Mortgage, LLC

http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=ABA6BAB9CE7AE097

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Financial Glossary

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For even the best-run family business, its lifetime can be fleeting. It may begin with great vision and vigor. But, at some point, a transition will have to be made to the next generations of leadership. It’s possible that the transition reinvigorates the business. More often than not, however, it weakens it, putting it on a journey to extinction.

It’s estimated that nearly 70 percent of businesses don’t make it through a second generation of leadership, and only 5 percent make it to a third generation. Economic calamities and poor business decisions can certainly ruin a business, but family dynamics tend to doom succession.

Think about it. When a business starts, an entrepreneur has smaller family issues, but sons and daughters add complexities, sometimes through their spouses. Divorce, not only for the entrepreneur, but children, can create ugly outcomes. Grandchildren, siblings and extended families make it even more complex. And, all have the potential to introduce issues with their aggressive creditors.

For more than three decades, I’ve seen my share of family issues that ruin a business. In most cases, the entrepreneur failed to appreciate that succession planning can be a five-year or more process and take one or two decades to manage. Entrepreneurs need to take emotion out of the decision. That’s extremely hard to do.

Who succeeds

Sons and daughters are to be treasured, but proficient business skills are not determined by genetics. Countless business owners have heard the pitch from their children: “I know the family business.” Knowing the business and knowing how to run a business are completely different things. Running a business effectively requires skills in accounting, marketing, reading financial statements, reviewing legal issues, managing payroll, developing banking relationships and making personnel decisions, including hiring and firing.

In making succession decisions, entrepreneurs should rely on their intimate knowledge of the business and family. It is rare that I encounter a business owner who is in complete denial about the skills of family members to assume leadership in the company. Indeed, sons or daughters may already be engaged in the business. They’ve been introduced in incremental ways to decision making. The business owner has observed and cultivated their people skills, noting how they interact with employees, customers and business partners.

But, in turning over a successful enterprise, a trial run is often the best way to work out the kinks and, in some cases, avoid the demise of the business. Some business owners set up wholly owned subsidiaries and put one of their adult children at the helm. Set up properly, the subsidiary allows the son or daughter to learn the nitty-gritty of business decision making without exposing the larger company to significant risks.

Fairness

If there is one thing that will doom a succession plan from the start, it’s trying to be fair by selecting a management by committee of offspring. Somebody has to lead the business. Somebody needs to be in control. Splitting that responsibility among two or more siblings could predictably lead to chaos and fracture family relationships. The business will crater, and sons and daughters won’t talk to each other for years.

But, perceived fairness can be accomplished by giving children voting and non-voting stock. The person running the firm gets the voting stock, but the siblings still have a stake in the company with non-voting stock. You can set up a board of directors with several siblings as members to provide guidance, but ultimate decision making for the firm rests in the one person selected to run the company. But, bear in mind, the entrepreneur as the largest shareholder controls who is on the board. Longer term, other shareholders will ultimately be making that decision when the business owner passes away or sells his or her shares.

A son or daughter running the company can also buy out their siblings’ shares. This typically occurs when only one child has joined the founder in the business. If the other children have never expressed an interest in the business, they may be open to a cash buyout.

Going outside the family

One of the hardest decisions for an entrepreneur can be the realization that none of the children, despite their feelings to the contrary, should take the helm. The business owner can consult with the company’s attorney and accountant to thoroughly vet issues, but this ultimately is a very personal decision. It can be an extremely challenging parent-child conversation, especially in cases when the child is working in the company with expectations of one day leading it.

Sometimes, the solution is found in establishing a board of directors on which one or more of the children serve. This should not be purely an appeasement measure. A board functions best if it is populated with members who have some business acumen.

In many cases, especially when there are no descendents, the employees themselves are considered family and the owner opts to transition the business to an employee-owned company. The employees buy the company through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). Typically, organizations that have long-tenured employees and minimal turnover are well suited for this succession route. The business owner often stays on in some kind of managerial capacity to shepherd the new leadership selected by the shareholders of the ESOP.

The real killer for business succession is decision avoidance or a succession plan not put to paper and merely a vague concept in the entrepreneur’s mind. That’s a sure sign it hasn’t been effectively communicated to family members. For businesses to endure beyond one generation, a business owner will inevitably have to turn an estate planning strategy into a business succession strategy.

GARRETT REUTER is a CPA and attorney currently practicing law as an officer in the corporate practice group Greensfelder, Hemker amp; Gale, PC in Belleville and is a member of its board of directors. His practice serves individual, corporate, partnership and exempt organizations with a concentration in corporate law, trust and estate planning.

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More siblings are moving in together because of hardships like job loss or divorce. This phenomenon could put a strain on family relationships if boundaries arent set.

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The highest court in Colombia has controversially ruled that the word family is not longer to be used only to address ones own kin or marriage, and the decision is causing serious backlash among pro-family groups like the Catholic church.

On April 20, Colombias Constitutional Court declared that given the varied living situations of couples today, a new definition of family needed to be produced.

The family bond is achieved through the reality of diverse situations, among them the free will to form a family, apart from the sex or orientation of its members, ruled judges.

Therefore, it is clear that heterosexuality or differences of sex within the couple, and even the existence of one, is not a definitive aspect of the family, much less a requirement for its constitutional recognition, the judges continued.

The judges decision is creating a backlash from pro-family organizations in the country who feel the judges are overstepping their bounds and legal right in order to change the definition of family in the countrys constitution.

The Court is taking steps like a cascade, in which one step brings another and [the judges] are doing what they want, the Catholic bishop of the city of Fontiboacute;n said, according to the Christian Telegraph.

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In the courts ruling they cited the increasing number of single-parent families, as a result of divorce or out-of-wedlock sexual relations, as a defense for the courts inclusion of homosexual unions in the definition of family.

The extent of superior protection of family relationships are circumscribed by different options of biological or social formation of the same, within which monoparental or biparental models are incorporated, or simply that which is derived from simple relationships of childrearing.

Therefore, insofar as the existence of a couple isnt consubstantial with the institution of the family, neither can the sexual orientation of its member be so.

For the judges, the traditional idea of family is not solely required to define family, but Catholic bishops feel differently.

From one moment to the next the Court pulled out an ace from its sleeve and by magic it is saying that it changed the concept of family, Fontibons bishop told the Christian Telegraph.

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Attending clinicians would also be protected from liability, but assistance would not be compulsory and there would be some clinicians who would never touch this with a barge pole because of their own religious convictions or ethics, she said.

Protecting family members from liability was probably the most different aspect of the bill compared with those which had gone before.

If youve got a degenerative disorder, like motor neuron disease when you cant lift your hand to your mouth and the brain is still fully functioning … it may be that you need to ask somebody close to you to do the unthinkable, and family members who do that need protection from liability because this is the last thing a family member wants to do in general.

Ms Street said she believed views in society had changed.

There had been a number of cases recently which had elicited sympathy from the public, such as Nelson residents Bob (Desmond) Jackson, 88, and his wife Betty, 84, who ended their lives together at home last August, and Sean Davison who last November was sentenced to five months home detention for helping his mother die in Dunedin, she said.

This would be a conscience vote, rather than down party lines, she said.

Catholic Nelson GP Joseph Hassan said there was a clear difference between euthanasia, the deliberate ending of life, and stopping treatment, which may hasten the end of the patients life, by doctors when this was a burden on the patient, he said.

Legalising euthanasia could also have a detrimental affect on the quality of palliative care, the breadth and width of which was improving all the time thanks to the good work done by the hospice movement, he said.

As a physician he would certainly not want to be involved in taking someones life deliberately.

Its a slippery slope in many ways … [with] potential implications of things like undisclosed conflicts of interest.

He said family and society needed to be protected from that burden of responsibility.

Theres a lot of potential for guilt [for family members] at a later date.

Theres also the potential in the rare situation where theres not harmonious family relationships that there could be a vested interest in someones life ending. Its a can of worms.

Some things should be protected, and that should be the sanctity of life.

The bill will have to be chosen by a ballot system before it reaches the debating chamber.

American Yvonne Shaw, administrative director of Compassion and Choices of Oregon, will talk about how to change the law in New Zealand with end-of-life choices at a public meeting at 2.30pm on Sunday at Melrose House.

AT A GLANCE

The 1995 Death with Dignity Bill, led by Michael Laws, was the first formal attempt to promote legalised euthanasia in New Zealand. The bill was defeated by 61 votes to 29, with many abstentions. Another private members bill was introduced in May 2003 by NZ First MP Peter Brown. This was narrowly defeated by 60 votes to 58 with one MP abstaining and one not voting. Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Oregon and Washington in the United States. In 1996, Australias Northern Territory introduced a voluntary euthanasia law. Four people used the law to die by injection administered using a computer, before the Australian Government in Canberra overturned the legislation in 1997.

– copy; Fairfax NZ News

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Retribution and Trial: A Love Story by Dr. Jill M. Parris shows how compulsive, passionate love can quickly turn into an addictive, abusive relationship

Family drama Retribution and Trial: A Love Story (ISBN 1468158457) takes readers through the whirlwind romance of country girl Shelly and the charming Paul. Author Dr. Jill M. Parris creates a love story that is as passionate as it is troubling while revealing the dark truth behind many compulsive relationships.

When Shelly meets Paul, she is won over by his charismatic personality and all that he has to offer. He woos the young girl from the country, enveloping her in his world. Before her life is consumed by her new romantic interest, Shelly attempts to take control of her life again and fails.
Parris takes readers through the honest and heartbreaking portrayal of a relationship fueled by obsession, compulsion and addiction. From marriage to children to an inevitable separation, she depicts the many dynamics of romantic relationships while inviting readers to explore their own attitudes toward abuse.
Parris believes Retribution and Trial will strike a chord with readers who may have dealt with abusive relationships of their own or who have seen their loved ones go through their physical, emotional and mental trauma. She hopes her novel with its themes of family relationships, psychological trauma and drama will inspire the reader to think about their own relationships and the impact tragedy has on their loved ones.
Retribution and Trial: A Love Story is available for sale online at Amazon.com and other channels.
About the Author: Jill M. Parris, PhD, works at the Ecumenical Migration Centre, where she focuses on the family relationships of recently arrived humanitarian entrants. She previously managed counseling and welfare service at Relationships Australia and the Wesley Mission. She migrated from her native Africa to Australia over three decades ago. She has written and self-published two books recently and is working on a third about a man who escaped Uganda. Parris has been married for 43 years and has two adult children.

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