Parental Rights

Re "School Says State Owes It $80,000," Feb. 10. From allowing administrators to deny parental rights in selecting bilingual education for their children to punishing school districts for allowing parents to prevent their children from becoming caught up in the Stanford 9 English language litmus test, immigrant parents are being told that their rights are less than other people's rights. Parental involvement is a missing element in many schools. Yet when the involvement comes from a segment in which many cannot vote for political representatives, these rights are being denied by the same government that gives them.

A prominent San Diego attorney pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to being part of what U.S. Atty. Laura Duffy labeled a "baby-selling ring. " Theresa Erickson, a lawyer specializing in reproductive law, pleaded guilty to wire fraud for transmitting phony documents to deceive both the San Diego County Superior Court and couples seeking to become parents. Two other people in the ring have also pleaded guilty. According to court documents, Erickson hired women in San Diego to go to Ukraine to be implanted with embryos created from the sperm and eggs of donors.

Re "Not about notification," editorial, Oct. 23 The Times claims that Proposition 4 is really about turning "back the clock on abortion rights." What the proposition really does is restore parental rights. While The Times insinuates that supporters of Proposition 4 are attempting to mislead voters, what is clear is that the same social engineers who fought to make it legal for campus officials to excuse minors from school property to facilitate an abortion without so much as notifying parents (which present California law allows)

After months of controversy, the state Board of Education set out a clear road map Wednesday to allow parents unparalleled rights to force major changes at low-performing schools. The board approved regulations clarifying the "Parent Trigger" law — the first in the nation to give parents the right to petition for new staff, management and programs at their children's schools. Organizations representing parents, teachers, school districts and other parties overcame sharp differences to reach consensus on such contentious issues as how to draw up petitions, verify parent signatures and ensure public disclosure about the petition process.

Parents who starved a San Diego County child nearly to death are entitled by state law to take part in a program of attempted family reunification before the child is put up for adoption, a state appellate court ruled Friday. A law allowing the withdrawal of parental rights without reunification in cases of serious child abuse covers only acts of beating that cause injury, and does not apply to depriving a young child of food, said the 4th District Court of Appeal.

A judge has ruled in favor of a woman who sought parental rights to a boy and girl adopted by her former same-sex partner. Michelle Kulstad sought joint custody of the children adopted by Barbara Maniaci. "To discriminate further against Ms. Kulstad because of her sexual preference in this day and age is no different than telling a person to go to the back of the bus because of her skin color," District Judge Ed McLean ruled Monday. Attorneys for both sides have said the same-sex parental rights trial was a first for the state, whose voters in 2004 rejected same-sex marriage by about a 2-to-1 margin.

A prominent polygamist and his wife have surrendered their parental rights to two teenage daughters whose abuse allegations triggered a lengthy custody battle with the state. The girls, 17 and 14, are in foster care and have expressed a desire to be adopted. Their parents, John Daniel Kingston and Heidi Mattingly, signed orders relinquishing their rights to the teens. The couple has nine other children, all of whom are in Mattingly's custody.

The state Supreme Court ruled in Olympia that a woman who raised a child from birth while in a relationship with the girl's biological mother could seek rights as a "de facto parent," essentially creating a new class of parent in the state. "Today we hold that our common law recognizes the status of de facto parents and places them in parity with biological and adoptive parents in our state," the court, led by Justice Bobbe J. Bridge, wrote in the 7-2 decision.

An appeals court ruled Thursday that state authorities can terminate the parental rights of a gravely disabled person. The opinion by the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana clears the way for a Fountain Valley woman to proceed with the adoption of a boy whose mother is a psychiatric patient at a Norwalk mental health facility. The mother has fought the adoption, saying it would violate her rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

This letter is in response to Marcella Melendez's letter to Al Martinez (Times, Aug. 16). Melendez indicates that Hispanics "tenaciously hold on to the virtue of children respecting their parents" and makes it sound as if they are the only people who do. Well, let us inform her that the world (even Culver City) is made up of many kinds of people, many of whom are parents, and of those, many care about their children and tenaciously hold on to the virtue of respecting one's parents.

The Premise Dr. Nicole Allgood (Annette Bening) and her partner, Jules (Julianne Moore), have taken a non-traditional route to family life. The couple met in the ER when Nic, who is now an attending gynecologist, was a resident at UCLA and Jules was a patient with facial numbness. They became lovers, and when they decided to have children they went to a sperm bank, and each gave birth to a child using the same sperm donor. Flash forward several years, and their son, Laser (Josh Hutcherson)

I wouldn't blame this weekend's UCLA graduates if they're less than delirious with glee at their accomplishments. They entered college when the country's job growth had just barely begun to slow. They are exiting into one of the toughest labor markets the nation has seen in more than a quarter-century. Sure they're armed with diplomas from one of the country's most respected schools. But they're also carrying in their heads a long list of things they can't do and jobs they can't get. I could feel the angst in the room when I served on a panel on writing careers at UCLA's Career Week this spring.

Reporting from Bogota, Colombia, and Sao Paulo, Brazil -- A 9-year-old boy who spent more than half his life as the object of an international custody battle that strained U.S.-Brazil relations was returned to his American father Thursday. Sean Goldman was reunited with his father, David, at the U.S. Consulate in Rio de Janeiro after Brazil's Supreme Court ordered the boy's stepfather to turn him over. Father and son then boarded a jet reportedly chartered by NBC News and headed home to New Jersey.

Michael Jackson's mother was granted permanent custody of the singer's three children Monday, ending one of the court battles that had been brewing since the pop star's death. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff approved the agreement reached last week by attorneys for Katherine Jackson and Debbie Rowe, mother of the two older children, in which the children will be raised by their grandmother and Rowe keeps visitation and legal parental rights.

Eight years ago, Debbie Rowe, the mother of Michael Jackson's two older children, told a Los Angeles court she wanted to give them up. "These are his children . . . ," she testified. "I had the children for him. They wouldn't be on this planet if it wasn't for my love for him. I did it for him to become a father, not for me to become a mother. You earn the title 'parent.' I have done absolutely nothing to earn that title."

Michael Jackson's ex-wife and the mother of his two older children is in line to obtain custody of them, even if the pop star designated another person as their guardian after his death, legal experts said Friday. Although UC Berkeley law professor Herma Hill Kay said it was "not a slam dunk" that ex-wife Debbie Rowe would win custody, four other experts in family law said she would have the advantage if there is a custody battle.

Even as children represent our best hopes for the future, they arrive in a world that today is traumatized by violence and shaken by social instability. For those additionally caught up in wrenching custody disputes between biological and adoptive parents, the obstacles to getting a fair shake at the outset of life are even more daunting.

A state judge awarded full custody of Baby M to her father Tuesday, stripping the surrogate mother of all legal parental rights in the emotional landmark custody case. Ruling that the surrogacy contract was "valid and enforceable," Superior Court Judge Harvey R. Sorkow arranged for the father's wife immediately to adopt the healthy, blue-eyed, 1-year-old infant in his chambers.

Police and state corrections officials searched Sunday for an inmate who walked away from a Pomona social services facility with her newborn baby boy while attending a mandated parenting program. Daphne Delorah Miner, 35, might have been headed to Los Angeles or Long Beach with her son, Sean Garner, who is less than 2 weeks old, according to the California Department of Corrections. Miner does not have parental rights to her child and is considered a fugitive, corrections officials said.

Re "Not about notification," editorial, Oct. 23 The Times claims that Proposition 4 is really about turning "back the clock on abortion rights." What the proposition really does is restore parental rights. While The Times insinuates that supporters of Proposition 4 are attempting to mislead voters, what is clear is that the same social engineers who fought to make it legal for campus officials to excuse minors from school property to facilitate an abortion without so much as notifying parents (which present California law allows)