Using The Law To Bring Families Together
I have been working with folks on adoption matters for some time now. One thing that I have learned that has benefited several of my clients is that gaining custody of a child that my clients are seeking to adopt is a more sound approach than attempting to adopt the child immediately.
One specific reason…
Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, a minor under the age of fourteen years, Birth Father, and the Cherokee Nation is a great view of how the South Carolina Supreme Court interprets ICWA and how ICWA meshes with South Carolina adoption law. Enjoy!
“In South Carolina, there is a common law presumption that a child born during lawful wedlock is a child of the marriage.” Fisher v. Tucker, 388 S.C. 388, 697 S.E.2d 548 (S.C. 2010).
“No judgment of divorce from the bonds of matrimony shall render illegitimate the child begotten of the marriage.” Section 20-3-200…
Dale Dove has been my mentor in adoption law and life for the past four years; he has taught me quite a bit about both. To get a small taste of Dale’s passion for both the law and life read about his quest to help the McClain family adopt Alyssa before Mr. McClain dies in A Dying Man’s Race…
In South Carolina, a petitioner may ask the court to terminate a parent’s rights if “[t]he child has lived outside the home of either parent for a period of six months, and during that time the parent has wilfully failed to support the child. Failure to support means that the parent has failed to make…
In Roe v. Reeves, the adoptive parents appeal a family court’s decision where the birth father claims his consent was necessary prior to another couple adopting his child. The family court agreed with the father; the Supreme Court reversed stating that the father did not undertake sufficient good faith effort to assume parental responsibility…
The below requirements apply to any civil action or proceeding, including any child custody proceeding, in which the Defendant does not make an appearance.
A Plaintiff is required to let the Court know via an affidavit whether or not the Defendant is in military service or not.
The consequence of a Defendant being in the…
The Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children(ICPC) is a compact between all 50 state, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. South Carolina’s ICPC statutes are in the Sections 63-9-2200 through 63-9-2290 of the South Carolina Code of Laws, as amended. The compact was instituted among the states to help ensure …
I think adoption can be a wonderful process in which a family is legally made. As most of us who have families are aware it take more than a piece of paper to make a family a family, and under the best of circumstances, raising children can be and in most instances is a challenge.
I hope that those of…
Section 63-7-40 of the South Carolina Code of Laws, as amend, provides distressed young women and men an opportunity to surrender a new born child without being prosecuted for abandoning the child.
The above section provides that a person who leaves an infant at a safe haven or directs another person to do so must not…