Maryland Family Law Maryland family law opinions and commentary

Over the past few years a new issue has popped up in matrimonial law — companion animal custody. Parties may be as emotionally distraught over who is getting the family pet as those who are disputing custody of their children ...

LOS ANGELES — Angelina Jolie scored a major victory Friday in her divorce with Brad Pitt when a California appeals court agreed with her that the private judge deciding who gets custody of their children should be disqualified. The 2nd ...

PIERRE, S.D. — The South Dakota Supreme Court has ruled that a state judge and the Department of Social Services failed to consider improvements in a mother’s parenting skills and living conditions before terminating her rights to her child. The ...

ST. LOUIS, MO — The Missouri Supreme Court has reinstated the license of a St. Louis divorce attorney who was suspended in 2019 for violating a rule prohibiting lawyers from having sexual relations with clients. The court reinstated the license ...

Britney Spears pleaded with a Los Angeles Superior Court judge in June to end a long-running conservatorship run by her father, James P. Spears, the latest in a contentious battle to dissolve a powerful legal tool that has dominated the ...

An adult intimately involved in a child’s upbringing cannot be regarded as a “de facto parent” with a claim to visitation or a share of custody unless both of the youngster’s legal parents consented to and fostered the child’s parent-like ...

LINCOLN, Neb. — Former state Rep. Ernie Chambers is known for seeking the censure of Nebraska judges he believes have acted outside the bounds of fairness. Now, Chambers is targeting a judge in the state’s northeastern corner who saw the ...

YORK, Pa. — When a 4-year-old girl drowned in her swimming pool near Pittsburgh on an August day in 2019, the family was already known to child welfare. Reports of “lack of supervision” in the home had been called into Allegheny ...

FARMINGTON, Conn. — The lawyers for Fotis Dulos, the Connecticut man accused of murder after his estranged wife Jennifer Dulos disappeared, will be banned from discussing the case for 40 years, according to probate court settlements. They must also return ...

BELFAST, Maine — A Maine Department of Health and Human Services official confirmed that the agency is investigating its actions prior to several recent child deaths. “Action is being taken without delay,” Todd Landry, director of DHHS Office of Child ...