Family Law

Voters in North Carolina on Tuesday approved Amendment One, a fiercely debated and highly restrictive amendment to the state constitution that defines marriage as the legal union of a man and a woman. The amendment not only outlaws same-sex marriage - already illegal in the state - but bans civil unions and domestic partnerships for gay or straight couples. Family law experts say it will threaten domestic partnership health benefits for local government workers and strip unmarried couples, both gay and straight, of their rights to make financial or emergency medical decisions for an incapacitated partner.

Voters in North Carolina on Tuesday approved Amendment One, a fiercely debated and highly restrictive amendment to the state constitution that defines marriage as the legal union of a man and a woman. The amendment not only outlaws same-sex marriage - already illegal in the state - but bans civil unions and domestic partnerships for gay or straight couples. Family law experts say it will threaten domestic partnership health benefits for local government workers and strip unmarried couples, both gay and straight, of their rights to make financial or emergency medical decisions for an incapacitated partner.

In his article "Family Law" (Nov. 12), Adam Dawson wrote that a wildcat strike in Oakland at the turn of the century cost John Byrne his job--and the long unemployment turned him into a wastrel and drinking partner of author Jack London. In turn, Byrne's poverty created a fear of unemployment in the next generation and a family that headed for dependable public service jobs. To shed new light on this matter, young Jack London did have the opportunity of a lifetime job with the post office of the City of Oakland.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court commissioner who made "discourteous, undignified, gratuitous and denigrating remarks" during family law cases was publicly admonished Tuesday by a state agency overseeing judges' discipline. The Commission on Judicial Performance determined that Commissioner Alan H. Friedenthal should be "severely publicly admonished" for misconduct, including "humor at the expense of litigants," during five cases over which he presided from June 2007 to January 2009, according to an 18-page order made public Tuesday.

The Ventura County Commission for Women will hold its seventh annual Family Law Forum at Ventura College on May 18. Residents can get information on divorce, child support, child visitation and other family law issues at the free event. "Divorce can be very scary and can be something that many people have never gone through," said forum moderator Susan Witting, a private Thousand Oaks attorney who practices family law.

Emory University human rights scholar Abdullahi An-Na'im has received a $371,000 Ford Foundation grant to fund a global survey of Islamic family law. An-Na'im will lead up to 20 scholars in exploring how Muslims reconcile the teachings of their faiths with the needs of their communities. They will look at the cultural and political factors that affect Muslim families and the laws that affect Muslim marriage, divorce, women's rights and the custody of children.

Richard A. Ibanez, 97, a retired Los Angeles County Superior Court judge who specialized in family law and dependency court, died Nov. 30 of cardiac arrest and coronary artery disease at his home in Los Angeles, said his son Leon. The death was only recently reported. Ibanez, who had been an attorney in private practice since 1937, was appointed to the bench by Gov. Jerry Brown in 1975 and served through 1994. In 1968, he helped found the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and was a board member of the Latino advocacy group.

Thirty-four members of the Long Beach Bar Assn., family law section, recently received certificates of commendation from the County of Los Angeles for their service as volunteer mediators during the past three years. Presiding Judge Charles D. Sheldon and Family Law Commissioners Luther Callion and George Kalinski expressed their appreciation and stressed the continued need and importance of recognizing attorneys who volunteer their time.

Leonard Herman Smith, a retired attorney, died Monday at Ventura County Medical Center in Ventura. He was 67. He was born March 31, 1934, in St. Petersburg, Fla., the son of Edward Charles and Olga Mae Bleyle Smith. He grew up in New York and graduated from high school in Kenmore, N.Y. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Michigan State University in 1955. For the next two years, he worked in Army counterintelligence. On Aug.

E. Robert Lemkin, an Orange County attorney specializing in family law, has died after a long bout with cancer. He was 70. During his four decades in law, Lemkin focused on divorce and child custody cases and frequently lectured at family law seminars. He was the first attorney in California to get spousal support awarded to a husband, said his sister-in-law, Susan Lemkin of Laguna Hills. "He absolutely loved what he did," she said.

Question: My sister and her husband recently decided to end their marriage. He moved out of their apartment, which they had rented under a one-year lease, and filed for divorce. A few months later, he told my sister he couldn't afford his new place. He said that he was planning to move back into the apartment where she is still living. My sister doesn't want him back. Can she stop him? Answer: If both husband and wife were parties to the rental agreement for the apartment where they had lived together, they both remain legally responsible for the agreement.

Judge Scott Gordon interrupted the attorney. "You're from Texas?" Gordon asked. In baseball terms, this would be like asking Derek Jeter if he played for the New York Yankees. The attorney, Steve Susman, has been ranked as one of the top 10 trial lawyers in America. Susman had suggested to Gordon how exhibits should be numbered for trial. Susman had described his plan once, then twice, then tried for a third time. Gordon had listened patiently the first two times, then cut Susman off and asked whether he was from Texas.

Frank McCourt has added a star trial lawyer to his legal team, ensuring that a nationally prominent attorney will lead each side in the battle for ownership of the Dodgers. Stephen Susman, a Houston-based attorney ranked by several legal publications as one of the premier trial lawyers in the country, is the latest addition to the all-star teams representing McCourt and his estranged wife, Jamie, in divorce proceedings. "It's like having your best athletes take the field," said Loyola Law School professor and legal commentator Laurie Levenson.

Paul Gutman L.A. judge upheld race-based magnet admissions Paul Gutman, 78, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge who ruled that L.A. schools could continue using a race-based formula for magnet school admissions, died June 13. The cause was complications from spine surgery, according to his family. Appointed to the bench in 1993 by then-Gov. Pete Wilson, Gutman oversaw criminal cases before serving as a supervising judge of the Van Nuys-based Northwest District. In his 2007 ruling on magnet schools, Gutman wrote that the Los Angeles Unified School District had been ordered "quite clearly and beyond dispute" in 1981 "to employ race and ethnicity to ensure that the magnet schools would in fact be desegregated."

As the media frenzy enveloping Tiger Woods found new life Thursday with unidentified sources saying that his wife was poised to file for divorce, the Woods saga shifted to questions of how the couple would divide not only custody of their two young children but one of the biggest fortunes in professional sports. And the outcome likely would depend on several factors, including where the case is filed and the language of any prenuptial agreement between the world's No. 1 golfer and his wife, Elin Nordegren, experts in family law said.

SERIES Glee: As Quinn's secret unravels, the Glee club may not recover in time to compete for sectionals, and Will makes a potentially life-changing decision in this new episode (9 p.m. Fox). MythBusters: Adam and Jamie test an old gun-slinging myth (9 p.m. Discovery). Nostradamus Effect: In the new episode "Armageddon Battle Plan," researchers explore the writings contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which detail a future apocalyptic war that will end the world, and claim to find an amazing "coincidence" between events that are unfolding now and those foretold in the War Scroll (9 p.m. History)

Beatriz Guiterrez realized she couldn't do it all. After giving birth to her daughter, the 16-year-old high school student tried to juggle classes and work, in addition to caring for her child. "I started falling asleep between classes; I couldn't stay up," she said. "I thought to myself, 'I can't do this. I'd rather go to school than work.'

They are nine words buried in the fine print of a legal document that divides family assets between Frank McCourt and Jamie McCourt. They sit toward the end of a paragraph that lists properties belonging solely to Frank McCourt: "all assets of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team." Jamie McCourt insisted in her divorce filing this week that she is entitled to a share of ownership in the Dodgers. However, she faces an uphill battle in persuading a court to throw out the legal agreement that says otherwise, according to three family law experts surveyed Thursday by The Times.

A former Los Angeles County Superior Court family law commissioner was publicly censured Wednesday and barred from taking on future judicial assignments for failing to decide a number of cases within the time required by law. According to the state Commission on Judicial Performance, which investigates misconduct by judges, one litigant complained to court officials that commissioner Ann Dobbs delayed ruling on a case for nearly five years.