FACT: There are no fill-in-the-blank forms to submit to the court for grandparent visitation rights!
I repeat: THERE ARE NO OFFICIAL FORMS, NO UNOFFICIAL FORMS, and NO FILL-in-the-BLANK FORMS for petitioning the court for third-party or grandparent visitation rights.
If you don’t want to believe me, read the 2012 Legal Guide for Grandparents, which also says there are no fill-in-the-blank-forms.
“A Broken Heart Still Beats: After Your Child Dies,” by Anne McCracken and Mary Semel, 1998.
Two women who lost their children turned to literature when self-help, memoir, and other sources of solace didn’t fill void.
This is a heartbreaking, but beautiful collection of writings, annotated by the editors, including this one by William Wordsworth, whose daughter Catherine died at age 4:
A Law dot com news feed article: “Skadden Associate, Herself a Rape Victim, Dives into Akin Fray,” by Brian Baxter, Am Law Daily, 8/22/12, got me wondering about Oregon’s law:
“…. Prewitt says that 31 states have not yet adopted special laws that restrict the ability of rapists to assert their custodian and visitation rights to a child born through rape. The other 19 states—Delaware, Oregon, and Pennsylvania have added protections since the publication of Prewitt’s law review article in 2010—have laws that restrict the access of rapists to the children they fathered….” [Link to full Law dot com article.]
If you search the ORS (Oregon Revised Statutes) Index, under Sex Offenses-Rape, you will be referred to these sections, which today read as follows, but please, talk to an attorney if you need legal advice!
The “Resource Guide for Grandparents and Other Relatives Raising Children” has a 2012 update.
To obtain a copy of the “Legal Guide for Grandparents and Other Relatives Raising Children,” please contact AARP Oregon toll-free at (866) 554-5360, or download from the OSU Extension Service Family and Community Health website. (You can also search for it by title using a search engine of choice.)
Legal Research for Parents of Adult Children with Disabilities
Questions from parents about adult children with disabilities can cover a very wide range of legal issues. The following resources (and our new Disability Law Legal Research Guide) cover a few popular topics.
Special Needs Trusts:
1) The Arc of Oregon has a website on the Oregon Special Needs Trust. The Oregon Special Needs Trust is a “pooled trust” fund that provides supplemental needs to disabled individuals.
2) The National Special Needs Network offers answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Supplemental Needs Trusts.
State and county resources:
1) The Oregon Department of Human Services has a list of County Developmental Disabilities Programs and a Support Services Brokerages List by county/region.
2) The Washington County Developmental Disability Program offers a number of useful agency links on their website.
3) Lifespan Respite, from the Oregon DHS, provides information for families and providers about caring for a child or adult with special needs.
Thursday, March 10, 2011 program:
Sponsored by: Health & Human Services Department, Commission on Children & Families Division:
Washington County’s Children of Incarcerated Parents Committee (CIPC) will present a report to the community about its four years of progress to improve the lives of children whose parents are incarcerated. The free program will take place at the Hillsboro Civic Center, 150 E. Main Street in Hillsboro, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Thursday, March 10.
In addition to Laura’s most recent post on leaving children home alone, June 15, 2009, and our newly updated Kids Home Alone in Oregon legal research guide, here are a few websites with information and resources on leaving children home alone and child care:
1) “Babysitting Basics” class from the Oregon Red Cross:
“Designed for youth ages 8 to 11, this two-and-a-half-hour Red Cross course prepares children to respond safely to a variety of situations when direct parent supervision is unavailable”
As if parents didn’t have enough to worry about:
A beSpacific post: WSJ Investigates Extensive Web Tracking of Children Online:
September 17, 2010, Children Face Intensive Tracking, by Steve Stecklow:
Can Someone Use My Picture Without My Permission?
Public law librarians hear this question quite frequently and while we don’t really want to make our responses more complicated than is necessary, sometimes questions like these can be about as difficult to answer as you can imagine, especially in the abstract (such as on a blog rather than with a live person in the law library or on the telephone).
In part this is because, as with most questions in life and law, answers depend on context and specific facts unique to the person asking the question.
Some of the most difficult cases for lawyers, and social workers and judges, to resolve involve juvenile sex offenders, i.e. sex offenders who are under the age of 18 and very often under the age of 16. Work with juvenile offenders (and juvenile witnesses) is difficult under any circumstances, but sex offense criminal charges add another dimension to the complex equation.
I’ve been working on a juvenile sex-offender bibliography and thought I’d post here what I’ve found so far. I’m sure there are many other resources. These are, of course, in addition to case law and legal treatise resources.
ARTICLES and WEBSITES
· Bibliographies, Young offenders, Updated February 2010: This bibliography of recent research has been compiled from the library collection of the Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Oregon Legal Research Blog