Strategic Bargaining Over Child Support and Visitation

When parents divorce, child support and visitation must be determined. The 1988 Family Support Act requires all states to have child support guidelines for courts to use in determining child support obligations. However, many divorcing couples arrive at agreements without court intervention, or they simply fail to enforce the court decision ex post. Given that the guidelines provide a starting point for negotiations, couples may be able to find self-negotiated, Pareto-improving solutions. In this paper we model the bargaining process that divorcing couples engage in when coming to agreements on visitation and child support. The model suggests that individuals may arrive at agreements that are Pareto improvements for both parents but that the children's welfare may decline as a result of these self-negotiated settlements. Data from the Stanford Child Custody Study show that the changes made in child support and visitation agreements are consistent with our model in only 30 percent of the cases. Therefore, we consider alternative specifications of the model and show that both significant costs of enforcing the original agreement and alternative assumptions on parental preferences can explain these empirical results.     

One parent or two? The intertwining of American marriage and fertility patterns

Marriage and fertility in the United States have become less firmly entwined as more women bear children without marrying and more couples with children divorce. Today a sizeable number of children are expected to spend a portion of their childhood in one-parent households. Despite the trends in illegitimacy and divorce, the actual effect of out-of-wedlock childbearing on the living arrangements of children has not been fully explicated. Using the National Survey of Family Growth Cycle III, this paper estimates the probability that children aged 0–13 in 1982 are living in two-parent households, controlling for their mothers' marital statuses at their births. We find that marital status at birth is an important predictor of household structure at later ages for both white and black populations; however, the childhood environment is actually quite elastic as women marry, divorce, remarry, and redivorce.     

离婚审判中保护当事人探视子女权研究

保护离婚父母探视子女权利的法律制度在我国尚属空白。本文介绍了探视权的概念、特点并简要分析国外探视子女的法律规定及我国探视子女规定的历史和现状,并就设立探视制度、处理探视纠纷等提出具体立法建议     

论我国行政公诉的制度建构

行政公诉是由检察机关提起的行政诉讼,建立行政公诉制度既是监督行政机关依法行政、保护公共利益的有效途径之一,也是完善现行行政诉讼制度的客观需要。明确检察机关提起行政公诉的主体资格,界定检察机关提起行政公诉的范围,设立行政公诉的程序对于建构我国行政公诉制度具有重要意义。     

民国时期城市女性自由离婚的现实困境--以《大公报》为中心的考察

民国时期,在婚姻家庭变革思潮的影响下,一些不甘于承受不幸婚姻的城市女性开始逐渐冲破传统的“从一而终”的思想束缚,当婚姻无法维系时,尝试选择以离婚的方式还自己自由之身。但在民国当时的社会条件下,城市女性自由离婚之路却充满了荆棘和坎坷。女性自由离婚的实现还需要其自身和社会做长期的努力。     

Maternal union instability and childhood mortality risk in the Global South, 2010–14

Efforts to improve child survival in lower-income countries typically focus on fundamental factors such as economic resources and infrastructure provision, even though research from post-industrial countries confirms that family instability has important health consequences. We tested the association between maternal union instability and children’s mortality risk in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia using children’s actual experience of mortality (discrete-time probit hazard models) as well as their experience of untreated morbidity (probit regression). Children of divorced/separated mothers experience compromised survival chances, but children of mothers who have never been in a union generally do not. Among children of partnered women, those whose mothers have experienced prior union transitions have a higher mortality risk. Targeting children of mothers who have experienced union instability—regardless of current union status—may augment ongoing efforts to reduce childhood mortality, especially in Africa and Latin America where union transitions are common.     

Financial journeys of Australian parents after separation – transitions into and out of poverty

It is well established that relationship separation has greater negative economic consequences for mothers than for fathers in Australia and other developed countries. While research has shown that, at an aggregate level, such negative impacts tend to diminish with time, the rate of change is generally slower for mothers than fathers, and a higher proportion of mothers than fathers continue to experience entrenched financial difficulties. Less is known about the variability of economic journeys experienced by women and men, taken separately, and factors influencing diverse economic trajectories. Drawing on data from the Longitudinal Study of Separated Families (LSSF), which followed up a large sample parents at three post‐separation points, this article examines poverty rates across a 4‐year period, transitions into and out of poverty and factors affecting these pathways.     

北方农民专业合作组织发展的社会学考察

农民专业合作组织正在成为促进农业和农村经济发展、促进农民增收的新的组织形式。但农民专业合作组织发展的内、外部制度环境不健全,从总体上说还处在发展的初级阶段,存在着功能单一、组织形式驳杂、法律地位不明确等突出问题．组织的创新与发展尚面临诸多的障碍,变革与创新已成为组织实现进一步发展的现实选择。     

Parenting Disputes After Separation and Divorce: Who Needs a Family Lawyer?

Australia's family law system continues to be plagued by serious delays. This article acknowledges the need for legal interventions in post‐separation parenting disputes in which individuals may be at risk, or in cases of genuine emergency. The article next contrasts cases involving significant risk or urgency with the many ‘ordinary’ (even if sometimes complex) post‐separation disputes over parenting in which these circumstances are not present. I argue that in such cases, legal advice, legally informed dispute processes, and court hearings are remnants from earlier attitudes to separation and divorce. These interventions are expensive, frequently destructive of ongoing parental relationships, and at their heart, inappropriate for considering the needs of children. They also divert time and resources from the critical investigative and legal decision‐making processes needed in urgent or risk‐related cases. I propose that legal narratives in ‘ordinary’ post‐separation parenting disputes be replaced by narratives focused on the main drivers of these disputes, which are invariably expressed in terms of relationship difficulties. Such narratives are amenable to facilitative, therapeutic, and systemic interventions aimed at achieving self‐determined resolutions. They contrast markedly with narratives reflecting common law notion of normative resolutions derived from the application of legal precedent. Key issues in the first section of the article are then teased out via the reflections of an imaginary separated parent in an ‘ordinary,’ albeit difficult and emotionally intense, dispute about how to care for the children. In the final section, I offer brief clinical and systemic reflections on past practice and on future narratives focused on individual self‐determination.     

Reasons That Could Lead People to Divorce in an Evolutionary Perspective: Evidence from Cyprus

In the current research, we aimed to identify the reasons that could drive people to get a divorce. In Study 1, we employed qualitative research methods, and we identified 62 reasons that could potentially drive people to get a divorce. Using quantitative research methods, in Study 2 we classified these reasons into 7 broader factors. We found that being a harmful spouse was the most important factor for divorce, followed by incompatibility and in-law problems. We also found significant sex differences in several factors such as women indicating a higher willingness than men to divorce a harmful spouse. In addition, participants with children were less willing to divorce a harmful spouse than those who had no children. Finally, using second-order principal components analysis, we classified the 7 factors into 2 broader domains of reasons for getting a divorce.