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West Virginia Family Courts
West Virginia Family Courts handle cases involving divorce; annulment; separate maintenance; paternity; grandparent visitation; issues involving allocation of parental responsibility; and family support proceedings, except those incidental to child abuse and neglect proceedings. Family court judges also hold final hearings in domestic violence civil proceedings. The Family Court replaced a previous system of governor appointed "Family Law Masters" who made "recommended decisions" to the Circuit Judge, which proved unsatisfactory. This system was used from 1986 through 2001. Prior to 1986, each Circuit Judge handled divorce cases directly, often adopting local informal procedures, which varied from county to county, to deal with the caseload. There are currently forty-seven family court judges who serve twenty-seven family court circuits. Family court judges, are elected for a term of eight years. Prior to the 2016 elections, elections were on a partisan basis, but in 20 ...
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Divorce
Divorce (also known as dissolution of marriage) is the process of terminating a marriage or marital union. Divorce usually entails the canceling or reorganizing of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage, thus dissolving the bonds of matrimony between a married couple under the rule of law of the particular country or state. Divorce laws vary considerably around the world, but in most countries, divorce requires the sanction of a court or other authority in a legal process, which may involve issues of distribution of property, child custody, alimony (spousal support), child visitation / access, parenting time, child support, and division of debt. In most countries, monogamy is required by law, so divorce allows each former partner to marry another person. Divorce is different from annulment, which declares the marriage null and void, with legal separation or ''de jure'' separation (a legal process by which a married couple may formalize a ''de facto'' se ...
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Annulment
Annulment is a legal procedure within Law, secular and Religious law, religious legal systems for declaring a marriage Void (law), null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually ex post facto law, retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning almost as if it had never taken place (though some jurisdictions provide that the marriage is only void from the date of the annulment; for example, this is the case in section 12 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 in England and Wales). In legal terminology, an annulment makes a void marriage or a voidable marriage null.John L. Esposito (2002), Women in Muslim Family Law, Syracuse University Press, , pp. 33–34 Void vs voidable marriage A difference exists between a ''void marriage'' and a ''voidable marriage''. A void marriage is a marriage that was not legally valid under the laws of the jurisdiction where the marriage occurred, and is void (law), void ''ab initio''. Although the marriage i ...
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Paternity (law)
Paternity law refers to body of law underlying legal relationship between a father and his biological or adopted children and deals with the rights and obligations of both the father and the child to each other as well as to others. A child's paternity may be relevant in relation to issues of legitimacy, inheritance and rights to a putative father's title or surname, as well as the biological father's rights to child custody in the case of separation or divorce and obligations for child support. Under common law, a child born to a married woman is presumed to be the child of her husband by virtue of a "presumption of paternity" or presumption of legitimacy. In consideration of a possible non-paternity event (which may or may not include paternity fraud) these presumptions may be rebutted by evidence to the contrary, for example, in disputed child custody and child support cases during divorce, annulment or legal separation. In the case of a father not married to a child's mot ...
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Grandparent Visitation
Grandparent visitation is a legal right that grandparents in some jurisdictions may have to have court-ordered contact (or visitation) with their grandchildren. In no case is contact between grandparents and children considered an inalienable right. United States , all US states have statutes that permit non-parents to ask a court to grant them the legal right to maintain ongoing contact with a child. In many states, these statutes explicitly name grandparents and great-grandparents as potentially eligible people. These requests must be justifiable as being in the best interests of the child, and they may only apply under certain circumstances, such as after one parent dies or loses custody. The federal Supreme Court decision ''Troxel v. Granville'' in 2000 places limits on when states can grant visitation rights to third parties, including grandparents. State laws vary greatly, and no state guarantees that the grandparents will be able to obtain a court order granting them ...
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Family Support
Family support is the support of families with a member with a disability, which may include a child, an adult, or even the parent in the family. In the United States, family support includes "unpaid" or "informal" support by neighbors, families, and friends, "paid services" through specialist agencies providing an array of services termed "family support services", school or parent services for special needs such as respite care, specialized child care or peer companions, or cash subsidies, tax deductions or other financial subsidies. Family support has been extended to different population groups in the US and worldwide. Family support services are currently a "community services and funding" stream in New York and the US which has had variable "application" based on disability groups, administrating agencies, and even, regulatory and legislative intent. History The late 1970s and early 1980s are considered pivotal times for the development of respite and family support services, ...
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Child Abuse
Child abuse (also called child endangerment or child maltreatment) is physical, sexual, and/or psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child or children, especially by a parent or a caregiver. Child abuse may include any act or failure to act by a parent or a caregiver that results in actual or potential harm to a child and can occur in a child's home, or in the organizations, schools, or communities the child interacts with. The terms ''child abuse'' and ''child maltreatment'' are often used interchangeably, although some researchers make a distinction between them, treating ''child maltreatment'' as an umbrella term to cover neglect, exploitation, and trafficking. Different jurisdictions have different requirements for mandatory reporting and have developed different definitions of what constitutes child abuse, and therefore have different criteria to remove children from their families or to prosecute a criminal charge. History As late as the 19th century, cruelty to c ...
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Child Neglect
A form of child abuse, child neglect is an act of caregivers (e.g., parents) that results in depriving a child of their basic needs, such as the failure to provide adequate supervision, health care, clothing, or housing, as well as other physical, emotional, social, educational, and safety needs. All societies have established that there are necessary behaviours a caregiver must provide for a child to develop physically, socially, and emotionally. Causes of neglect may result from several parenting problems including mental disorders, unplanned pregnancy, substance use disorder, unemployment, over employment, domestic violence, and, in special cases, poverty. Child neglect depends on how a child and society perceive the caregiver's behaviour; it is not how parents believe they are behaving toward their child. Parental failure to provide for a child, when options are available, is different from failure to provide when options are not available. Poverty and lack of resources are o ...
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Domestic Violence
Domestic violence (also known as domestic abuse or family violence) is violence or other abuse that occurs in a domestic setting, such as in a marriage or cohabitation. ''Domestic violence'' is often used as a synonym for ''intimate partner violence'', which is committed by one of the people in an intimate relationship against the other person, and can take place in relationships or between former spouses or partners. In its broadest sense, domestic violence also involves violence against children, parents, or the elderly. It can assume multiple forms, including physical, verbal, emotional, economic, religious, reproductive, or sexual abuse. It can range from subtle, coercive forms to marital rape and other violent physical abuse, such as choking, beating, female genital mutilation, and acid throwing that may result in disfigurement or death, and includes the use of technology to harass, control, monitor, stalk or hack. Domestic murder includes stoning, bride burning, ho ...
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Civil Proceeding
Civil may refer to: * Civic virtue, or civility *Civil action, or lawsuit * Civil affairs *Civil and political rights * Civil disobedience *Civil engineering * Civil (journalism), a platform for independent journalism *Civilian, someone not a member of armed forces * Civil law (other), multiple meanings * Civil liberties * Civil religion * Civil service *Civil society *Civil war A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ... * Civil (surname) {{disambiguation ...
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United States Courts Of Appeals
The United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal judiciary. The courts of appeals are divided into 11 numbered circuits that cover geographic areas of the United States and hear appeals from the U.S. district courts within their borders, the District of Columbia Circuit, which covers only Washington, D.C., and the Federal Circuit, which hears appeals from federal courts across the United States in cases involving certain specialized areas of law. The courts of appeals also hear appeals from some administrative agency decisions and rulemaking, with by far the largest share of these cases heard by the D.C. Circuit. Appeals from decisions of the courts of appeals can be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court. The United States courts of appeals are considered the most powerful and influential courts in the United States after the Supreme Court. Because of their ability to set legal precedent in regions that cover millions of Americ ...
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Non-partisan Election
Nonpartisan democracy (also no-party democracy) is a system of representative government or organization such that universal and periodic elections take place without reference to political parties. Sometimes electioneering and even speaking about candidates may be discouraged, so as not to prejudice others' decisions or create a contentious atmosphere. In many nations, the head of state is nonpartisan, even if the prime minister and parliament are chosen in partisan elections. Such heads of state are expected to remain neutral with regards to partisan politics. In a number of parliamentary or semi-presidential countries, some presidents are non-partisan, or receive cross-party support. Nonpartisan systems may be de jure, meaning political parties are either outlawed entirely or legally prevented from participating in elections at certain levels of government, or de facto if no such laws exist and yet there are no political parties. ''De facto'' nonpartisan systems are mostly ...
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