JRL-S LEGAL UPDATE is an occasional newsletter reviewing recent developments in family law and civil procedure. For June 2006, topics include open adoption and surrogacy agreements, support modification issues, and the constitutionality of Utah's prohibition on plural marriage.
The Court of Appeals held in Fast v. Moore that Oregon's 1993 open-adoption statute, ORS 109.305, carved out an exception to the common-law unenforceability of such agreements. An agreement that did not comply with the statute--because the court had not approved it at the time of the adoption--was held not to be enforceable.
In Byers v. Ovitt, the Alaska Supreme Court held that child support could be set under the child support guidelines using the father's monthly expenses as a proxy for his income. The father "actively obstructed the fact-finding process" by submitting incomplete and inconsistent income information to the court. The court's result is analogous the Oregon Court of Appeals' rejection of changed circumstances in the 1992 case of Hogue and Hogue.
In Richardson v. Richardson, a divorced husband claims that his ex-wife attempted to hire someone to murder him. A divided panel of the Missouri Court of Appeals held that the husband's allegations stated a claim for modification of spousal support. The Missouri Supreme Court will review the case under a local procedure that allows the court of appeals to order the case transferred to the supreme court for final decision.
The Superior Court of Pennsylvania has reversed a trial court decision holding that a surrogacy agreement was void as against public policy and awarding custody to the gestational carrier. The appellate court found in J.F. v. D.B. that the gestational carrier had no standing to pursue either a claim for custody against the father or a claim for termination of parental rights against the egg donor.
The Utah Supreme Court has upheld that state's bigamy statute--which includes polyamorous cohabitation by a married person as well as plural marriage--against a constitutional challenge based on the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas. Lawrence struck down all state sodomy statutes on the grounds that they violated the due process rights of gays and lesbians. The defendant in the Utah case, State v. Holm, legally married one person and then purported to marry two more, one of whom was a minor. The ruling drew a spirited dissent from Chief Justice Christine Durham.
JRL-S LEGAL UPDATE is authored by Mark Johnson, a shareholder and appeals attorney at Johnson & Lechman-Su PC in Portland, Oregon. Mark also provides attorneys with legal ethics advice as well as coaching, consulting, and collaboration on a wide range of family law issues. He is available to act as a reference judge in Oregon family law cases.
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