Parents Rights

After Larry McLinden's girlfriend told him she was pregnant, the Canoga Park couple shopped for furniture for the baby's room, attended Lamaze training together and were the center of attention at the requisite baby showers and family gatherings. McLinden was in the delivery room with Karen Hamilton through 12 hours of labor before she gave birth to a healthy baby boy on July 1, 1987. The boy was baptized Larry McLinden Jr.

The Orange County Bar Assn. has criticized an attorney for surrogate mother Anna L. Johnson for making "improper personal attacks" on a judge after losing the highly publicized case. The attorney, Richard C. Gilbert, said Thursday that the bar association's action is an attempt to limit free speech. Gilbert also said he is considering filing a libel or defamation suit against several members of the bar.

There were plaudits all around last fall when a troubled teenager who spent 10 years in foster care was reunited with the father she had hardly known, thanks to what Los Angeles County supervisors described as a "groundbreaking effort" at family unification.

Nicholas Anderson spent most of his 19 years of life here, sharing a home with his mother. He was a funny kid with "the goofiest smile ever," a close friend recalls. He carried his sinewy, 6-foot-3-inch frame ramrod straight. He was a standout wrestler and a defensive lineman for his high school football team, the Bonanza Bengals. He loved Vegas; when he was half a world away in Iraq, he kept inviting his fellow Marines to come visit after the war.

Hugh McIsaac sat in his Downtown office late last week, talking with a Los Angeles couple about visitation rights for their sons. The family had seen McIsaac several times before: Their first visit was seven years ago when they divorced. "As their lives and needs change, and the children grow up, many people come back to revise a (custody) agreement," McIsaac explained. "They can come back any time." McIsaac is not a lawyer.

In a case that sparked a tug of war with Mexico, the California Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a San Diego court properly revoked the parental rights of a Mexican couple suspected of battering their child. The unanimous decision clears the way for an American couple to adopt 5-year-old Stephanie M., a Mexican citizen, who had been in their foster care for four years.

Restrictions on a homosexual father's right to visit his 9-year-old son were struck down by a state appellate court Thursday, breaking new legal ground in California. In a ruling that emphasized a child's welfare over a parent's sexual preference, the court ruled that a parent could not be barred from visiting his child in the presence of other homosexuals without evidence of harm to the child.

A judge in San Francisco on Monday blocked enforcement of a new state law requiring unwed minors to obtain parental consent or a court order before having an abortion. In a brief order, Superior Court Judge Morton Colvin granted the American Civil Liberties Union's request for a preliminary injunction preventing the hotly debated law from taking effect on Friday.

Four years ago, a state Supreme Court ruling in a bitterly contested custody case made California one of the easiest states in the nation for parents with primary custody to pack up the children and go. But only now are lawyers, judges and ex-spouses in Ventura County and across the state fully gauging the effects in family court. Divorcing parents are fighting more fiercely over custody agreements, drawing out the cost of litigation.

Michael Hirshensohn, a Santa Monica businessman, says he wants only the right to establish that he is the father of a baby born to the wife of another man. Edward McNamara, a divorced man from La Habra, says he merely wants the right to have custody of a child born out of wedlock and adopted in 1981 because he is her biological father. In appeals to the Supreme Court, both men are seeking to vindicate their "fathers' rights"--equality with women under the law.