Articles Posted in Children

Statistics show seat belts help save lives in accidents and that message seems to have made an impact. Reports state a majority of people – 87% nationally and 87.6% in New Jersey – use seat belts for their protection. But how do you protect young children?

Seat belts offer insufficient protection for infants and toddlers so the law requires the use of car seats and/or booster seats. Unfortunately, about two-thirds of parents use car seats incorrectly, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The AAP offers guidelines for switching children from rear-facing car seats to front-facing seats and from car seats to booster seats but only about 23% of parents nationally follow these guidelines. State laws and car seat manufacturers offer their own guidelines which, in some cases, conflict with those offered by the AAP. This conflict can result in confusion, causing the incorrect use.

Last month, New Jersey lawmakers took steps to alleviate this confusion by adopting a new car seat law that includes age and height requirements more closely in line with AAP guidelines. To learn how to properly use car seats and booster seats under New Jersey’s new law, read “The Big Changes to the NJ Car Seat Law: What You Need to Know.”

A recent Woman’s Day magazine article discussed “grandfamilies” or households in which grandparents fill the role of parent for their grandchildren and how these situations are becoming more common. The article cited a number of factors contributing to the need for this arrangement, including a rise in drug use between 2002 and 2012; a 25% jump in the number of young parents imprisoned between the years 1997 and 2007, and a recent recession which left many people without work. Whatever the reason, there are more grandparents parenting their grandchildren than one may think.⁽¹⁾

The 2010 Census showed that one out of every ten children in this country lives with a grandparent. That Census also disclosed that in the U.S.

• 7 million grandparents have at least one grandchild under the age of 18 living with them;
• Of those grandparents, 2.7 million were caregivers, meaning they were in charge of providing the basic needs for their grandchildren;
• A little more than half of the caregiving grandparents – 1.7 million – were still actively employed;
• About 670,000 of those caregiving grandparents had a disability.⁽²⁾

Custodial grandparents come from all walks of life representing all socio-economic strata and ethnicities. And, while stepping up to fulfill a need in a child’s life may be admirable, it does not come without risks.

Oftentimes these arrangements occur when parents face some type of tragedy – loss of job, imprisonment, addiction – and, when these troubles are resolved, they look to regain custody of their children, sometimes leading to contentious or strained relationships between parent, child and grandparent. In order to preserve their relationships with their grandchildren, custodial grandparents are often urged to legalize these relationships.⁽³⁾ Continue reading ›

President Barack Obama last week signed into law the Sean and David Goldman International Child Abduction Prevention and Return Act providing more governmental support to American parents who are embroiled in international legal battles to regain custody of children who had been abducted by their ex-spouses and taken to a foreign land. The bill was inspired by the highly-publicized, five-and-a-half year fight by New Jersey resident David Goldman to regain custody of his son Sean.⁽¹⁾

Mr. Goldman’s battle began in 2004 when his then-wife took the couple’s son to visit family in her native country of Brazil. While there, the former Mrs. Goldman filed for divorce from her husband, sparking the beginning of the couple’s international custody battle. Eventually, the former Mrs. Goldman remarried but died shortly thereafter from complications suffered during childbirth. Rather than resolve the custody issue, her death complicated matters as her parents and then-husband continued her fight to retain custody of the Goldman’s son. Mr. Goldman continued his fight for custody, going so far as to enlist help from the U.S. State Department, before a Brazilian court eventually ordered the child returned to his father’s home in the States.⁽²⁾

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A Hunterdon County woman lost her appeal of a New Jersey judge’s ruling preventing her from mentioning her ex-husband or children in any of her online posts. That ban was imposed as part of the woman’s probation for a custody agreement violation. ⁽¹⁾

This case highlights the seriousness with which New Jersey courts view infringement of child custody arrangements. According to reports, the woman was charged with violating the custody agreement between her and her ex-husband and with attempted kidnapping of her children after taking them from New Jersey to New York, with the intention of eventually taking them across the border into Canada. She pleaded guilty to the custody agreement violation and, in return, the kidnapping charges were dropped. In response to the woman’s guilty plea, she received five years’ probation, the terms of which included a prohibition against writing anything online about her family. She was also prohibited from having contact with her children and her ex’s family. ⁽¹⁾

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It took more than 30 years, but New Jersey lawmakers may have finally reached a compromise that satisfies both adoptees’ right to know and their birth parents’ right to privacy. That compromise is the basis for a bill which, last week, won conditional approval from Gov. Chris Christie, and now awaits final approval by both the State Senate and Assembly next week. ⁽¹⁾

Gov. Christie announced he would sign the bill provided it allowed a “suitable” period of transition for parents of birth children adopted before August 1, 2015 to decide if and how they would like to be contacted. He recommended that the law not take effect until after December 31, 2016 in order to accommodate this. Usually laws take effect six months after being signed. ⁽¹⁾

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