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jilljoycearts · 3 years ago

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About the situation with the previously mentioned reposter, reposts in general, and the fandom. This is mostly about the russian part of the internet, the dark and fearsome place.

This post is very long, so I’m hiding it under the cut.

To sum it all up:

If you see drawings (fanarts) for the game Enderal and for the rest of the SureAI games on the russian social VK, published not by the authors of the drawings or not by their art groups, pages and communities, then they are placed against the will of these very authors.

About the rhetorics (mostly for the Russians that stumble upon this post): what people on VK call repost (share button) is an actual reblogging or retweet. In fact, a repost is re-uploading something not by its owner. Now let's start. The retelling is quite detailed. Also, a warning: although I can retell this whole thing in english from scratch, the post is translated from russian with the help of almighty google. I don't want to bother much with this and spend my energy on it. Most of the mistakes I still fix, but the sentence structure and phrasing might seem weird.

The man (hereinafter "character T"; we do not mention his name because he is only interested in your attention to his person) took under his wing a long-abandoned community (Enderal themed), asking to be a moderator. For several months he was posting stolen drawings (without permission and credits), until his vanity drove him into a trap: with a request of "reblog for reblog" (wanted to promote his own fan-creation) he messaged a small russian community of artists interested in the SureAI games. Naturally, seeing his reposting activities, everyone was utterly indignant. He was incredibly lucky that my drawing was the last one published on the dash of his community. Again, no credit. I left a comment urging him to remove the stolen things and explaining the common truths. To which no one answered, but suddenly a link to my tumblr appeared. I wrote another comment telling to delete again, and again no one answered me. When he had to start talking to me, Character T decided that it was a good idea to load a girl (who was so lucky to know both of us a bit) with the work of a negotiator. I leave it to you to judge the "honor and dignity" of this character and his decision. I scroll forward: he agrees to delete my work, while rolling out a post consisting of articles of the civil code, in which he puts the meaning “I reposted, am reposting and will continue that, because the law allows me”. At the same time, the negotiator girl gets tired of working as his secretary. I already intend to contact him personally, but I find myself in his blacklist. It would seem, "Well, calm down, hedeleted yours." But his intention to repost further stunned everyone. Naturally, the time has come to inform the foreign authors about this chronic stealing.

A new location was unlocked in our amusing adventure: a server of the game developers SureAI on Discord. There, one of the artists from whom he stole called him out, without mentioning the names (yes, the character T was active there, whilst annoying the local inhabitants). He responded after a while, again rolling out his cart of articles on the legality of reposts. He also managed to threaten me personally with something. In general, he was kicked from the server of the developers for lack of culture and propaganda of copyright infringement. Further, another foreign author tried to contact him personally, but in the same way received a cart of laws. In the meantime, the English-speaking part of the fandom artists decided to write an official letter of complaint, attaching all links to posts to be deleted, and listing the authors with whose content the character T is strictly prohibited from interacting in the future. This letter was tried to be sent by a German artist, who specially registered there, but she stumbled upon some tech difficulties. Firstly, she was blocked by the owner of the stealing community, where the character T was appointed as the moderator. Her page was empty, the name was not Russian - he thought it was a bot, I can understand that. She then dropped the complaint letter to the support of VK social itself. Even tried to message the stealing community specifically but another lag made it impossible. (and this was required according to the new "rules" of the character T, according to which it was decided to play. "So that your complaint was considered ..." and so on.)...

Sensing something is wrong, character T made an attempt to contact some Russian-speaking authors himself in the meantime. And they told him the same -- that he steals, and not “shares” for some “purpose”. And here comes an interesting thing: the phrases "well, something needs to be posted to fill the community" and "but I am not on their Facebooks, I found it on Yandex"(that's russian google). That is, our drawings turned out to be just a filler, because something needs to be posted. Searching by image is difficult, but he still has to post! Something. Anything. What for? I have an explanation and an answer to this, but since this is the purpose of the character T - to draw attention to his fan-creation, I will not mention it 👌🏻 Another of his phrases was that due to the increased attention to his community now he HAS to credit the authors 🤦🏻‍♀. In general, he banned the Russian-speaking artist, whom he contacted and received a well-scented bucket’s content on his head (and well-deserved of course).

Now let's return to the official letter of complaint from foreign artists, which never reached the stealing community, and after all it was sent by the Russian-speaking author L. This time the character T was able to read it, but as expected, he refused to remove reposts, said that the artists were arrogant, accused of gatekeeping and again expressed his intention to repost not only without permission, but also against the will of all these fandom authors (38 people). After all, he has a great goal - to popularize games and the universe in the ru-segment.

The same or the next day the owner of the stealing community contacted me (who had previously lost interest, abandoned it, and a year later gave it to the character T). The owner asked what was happening, I explained, and passed on the letter of complaint from foreign artists, which the German artist could not send because he blocked her. That I explained to him too and he unblocked her. No reaction to my explanations abot the character T followed, but we’ll come back to that later.

And now we decided it’s time for our last resort -- we contacted Nicolas (the main screenwriter, the owner of the rights to this universe and the main figure of the fandom as a whole). Here I will digress from the main line and note that interested people have dug out both the provisions of the Berne Convention and the laws of the Russian Federation, which the character T chose to ignore in his activities, hiding behind only those that are convenient for him. Now let's return to Nicolas, who had to take a break from vacation because of this circus. As it turned out, character T, sensing the smoke, came running to him first. But alas, Nicolas was on the side of the authors (who would have thought). As a result, we almost decided that hurray, it helped, because posts with pictures disappeared from the wall of the stealing community, and character T even disappeared from the list of moderators (I will return to the stage with the owner of the community: I assume it was his work). But it was clear that it was too early to celebrate the victory.

Change of location: again the server of the developers on Discord. After the kick of the character T, three days later, a brand-new account appears, which broadcasts about the character T in the third person using Google translate “ if he had not been pressed upon, he would repost peacefully in his community of a thousand subscribers. And now he will attract some audience of a dozen more groups and will repost there too”. Naturally, without direct evidence of the second coming, no one have kicked him yet.

On the same day, the VK support told me that the most effective weapon in our case is the DMCA form. This is inconvenient, but it works. Moreover, the stolen has already been removed from the stealing community.

Then people came across the news - the stealing community advertised a new community of the character T, which was shaped exclusively for reposting other people's drawings (and there were already several works, including mine). The adv post called to support the character T “and his work”. Naturally, in the comments, I and other people urged not to support this. We even managed to explain the situation to some random person. After that the post was deleted. We don't know who deleted the post (still the character T or the community owner).

At this point, I ask Nicolas to message the tharacter T again using the simplest words that reposts cannot be allowed without permission. At all. Even with links attached. Doesn't help because the main now-not-stealing community shares a new post of the new one stealing community again. That is, even the main copyright holder and owner of the entire thing is not a figure of authority for the character T. Summing up -- “I will “popularize” your fandom against your wishes. The laws allow me. "

But after a while, the reblog from the new community is removed from the main one.

And again, the change of location: to the discord of the developers, where the character T himself comes back and writes something (under the new name ofc as his old account is banned). He declares that he will now repost to some huge audience of 300k people (before that there were 200, and even before that 100, yeah), he is outraged by the complaint letter from the authors with the ban on reposting, he will deliberately not credit, and also he wants to reupload my fanfiction somewhere. After that, he was kicked again 🥾.

Naturally, the entire audience is shocked, the character T literally became famous and crowned himself with a clown wig in just a few days, and now the entire fandom and the informed ru-segment hates him. The retelling is over.

Almost. Now I thank google translate for the help above and I'm gonna retell even more without it as this information is rather new. He wrote his own “explanation post”, where he somehow found relevant addressing the sexuality of one of the authors who called him out, called Nico indifferent and passive regarding this situation, insulted literally everyone but him, the white knight, whom we all should be grateful to for his will of promoting our content. I facepalm very hard. And he reposts art to some small communities but no one gives a shit (surprisingly so, huh?). He adds the links to the authors. Now I don’t want to give him any attention anymore, I have some work to get done.

Here comes the part about the and for community itself (google translate helps me again):

For the artists:

For the people registered in VK there is a "Nemesis" algorithm (dropdown - report - copied content). It will want a link to the previously published content on the VK as a primary source. Its effectiveness is still in question, but if someone tried it, then share your experience. For the rest, there is a dmca form that wants passport data (the only one I know of that asks for it), which I personally do not want to share, but in general... It's up to you to decide. Advice: Include readable text with @ of your page, community or yourself in your watermarks. Thus, an adequate person will always see where to go for the primary source.

For the readers/viewers:

Fandom existence is based on respect for other people's work. This work is the reason fandoms exist. If you like the drawing, then praise the author, support them in accessible ways (like - comment - subscribe - send a link to a friend(reblog the thing) - give some moneyz). People will be pleased, honestly. And if you disagree with something or you go "Ew" for other reasons, then just walk by. This is, in fact, all that you can do. If you have ambitions, ideas and “I need to fill my dead community with something” (you are considering taking the author's drawing and placing it somewhere yourself), then you ask for permission and accept any answer. There is no other way. Otherwise it's a violation of the law.

Why reposts (= re-uploads) are harmful I think there's no need to mention, but still:

First of all, it drives away traffic from the authors. It doesn't matter if fanart can be monetized or not (spoiler alert: it can). Example: If a figurative reposter hadn't taken away figurative content, then a potential viewer interested in this content would go to search for it himself. And would have found it posted by the author. And then it is already possible to take a closer look at the other work as a whole, and even give the author money so that they draw something personalized for this viewer personally. That’s an example. It seems to be clear. Artists on the Internet care about their traffic, which is responsible for audience growth and all subsequent opportunities. This is the basics.

About monetizing fan content.

It depends solely on the developers / authors of games and books (original owners of all rights). Sometimes the ban on monetization hangs for some time after the release of the game (as was the case with Hades), sometimes you can sell keychains / posters / whatever with fanarts on them right away. And sometimes you can't, everything is individual here. Again, I think it is clear that if a viewer finds the original image posted by the author themselves, then this viewer has more chances to buy merch with this image. After all, the author will definitely add that the drawing is available as a merch. Reposter -- never. He does not know that, he found it on Yandex/Google.

Specifically about me and my community:

You know that my main audience are not russians. I have already abandoned my russian community once. Would I want to disappear from there again? So far, there is no such desire. People I have there are nice and friendly, despite the small number. How much do I really care about reposts of drawings on an objectively dying or already dead fandom? I'll leave it to you to decide. I have been here since the 2016-17, with me the fan activity started, and with me it will end. Everyone who is interested in SureAI games knows me. And although I have the permission from the devs to monetize fanart and fan content in general, it is obvious that $20 from posters and magnets every few months is not my motivation. I am here because I love the game universe and its characters. I make my own thing, quietly rejoicing, and I don't look around much. Reposts are evil on a different level, and not on this one. Does T's intention of re-uploading my fanfiction or even rewriting it somehow thrills me? I don’t care at all. Let him read a well edited and thought-through text for once. But I doubt it will help a little.

In general:

My subscribers / readers / followers know where to look for my updates. A thinking person that sees a repost will go and find the author themselves. Be it pictures that they see, text or something else. Those people who don't think are obviously not interesting for me as an audience. Other authors share this position.

Finally, end of this text. It has taken me 4 hours to write this all in russian, maybe another one to edit the google output and add more things AND almost one week of my time to deal with this all (and don’t forget other authors involved, they spent a shitload of time on it too). From now on my position is “time is money” and if the character T resurfaces he’ll have to pay me for the attention he seeks, lol

#enderal #sureai #art theft #reposters #5 pages on google docs #goddamnit #nehrim

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thebiasrekkers · 5 years ago

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Fragmentation 0.2 - PJM

Plot: How does one measure freedom? Are our choices truly our own, or are they part of a preset design outside of our control? We all have a question burning inside of us, though few speak it out. It is the question that drives us forward, seeking purpose in our lives. What is The Matrix?

Rating: NC-17 // NSFW

Pairing: N/A

Warnings: Strong language, allusions to suicide, extreme angst, graphic violence

Links: FAQ || BTS Masterlist || Admin E’s AO3 || [ REQUESTS ARE OPEN ]

Word Count: 3,068

AN: Alright guys, get ready for these to hit the timeline back to back! I hope you’re ready! I thoroughly enjoyed writing these and yes, because it’s The Matrix, we are going to get dark in this piece. As I stated before, all information in the universe can be found on the official Matrix Wiki so please use that as a reference guide if you ever get confused!

Tag List: @aroseforyoongi, @prisczero, @pinkpjmin, @btsaudge, @flowerwrites06, @unoriginal-username15432

© thebiasrekkers (Admin E). All rights reserved. Reposting/modifying our work is prohibited. Translations are not allowed. Plagiarism/stealing is not tolerated by any means. Legal action will be taken in instances of theft.

“Jimin! Aren’t you coming?”

Jimin casually glanced over his shoulder, readjusting the strap to his backpack in a more comfortable position. A few of his classmates waved to him, urging him to come along. They were finished with their studies for the day and didn’t have any after school activities that required their attention. Normally, they would head to the arcade to mindlessly spend the quarters weighing their pockets down.

He smiled, shaking his head and waving back at them. “No, you guys go on ahead. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

His friends pouted, canting their heads slightly before shrugging. They laughed as they turned to head down the street, all of them declaring loudly how they were going to beat the other into submission in a round of Street Fighter.

Sighing, Jimin pushed his way through the crowd to head to the local library. The internet was faster there and he could focus on what he wanted to work on in peace and quiet. Stopping at a vending machine on the way, he bought a few drinks and some snacks to tide him over until he was forced to stop working due to needing sleep.

It wasn’t like there was anyone waiting for him at home anyway.

Hopping up the stone steps, he entered through the front door and smiled at the library clerk. She was a pretty woman - at least pretty in terms of being an old lady. Late fifties to early sixties at best, he could guess. Jimin never told her his name, however, but she didn’t mind. She always referred to him as “Young Man” and he answered readily with a smile.

“Research again, Young Man?” she asked, holding out a book for him.

Jimin took the item from her, already knowing that she wanted him to put it back where it was supposed to go. He smiled. “Yes ma’am.” He eyed the cover. “Ching Dynasty in the History section, right?”

The old lady beamed at him. “Correct. You’re such a good lad.”

“I try,” he said with a laugh.

“Well, don’t work too hard. I know you’ve been focusing very hard on your project these last few weeks, but you’re young and shouldn’t strain your eyes so much.”

Jimin bowed his head slightly. “I won’t. Thank you.”

He quickly maneuvered around the library, locating the history section and replaced the book. He always had a knack of finding things and Jimin just knew when things were out of place. His teachers called it a “gift” but he had a feeling that it was something else entirely. He just couldn’t place it. Not yet, at least.

Making his way toward the back of the library, he reached a few taupe colored desks nestled in a small nook in the corner. He threw his backpack on top of the shelf portion, unzipping the top and rifling around inside. He pulled out two mini discs and one floppy disc. Reaching further into the pack, his fingers wrapped around the mini computer and the wires needed to make the device work. He wasted no time booting up the computer, setting up the small computer beside the motherboard and plugging things in.

It only took him a few minutes to go through various checks to make sure that his connection was secure. Then he pulled up a few console windows, his fingers typing swiftly over the keys.

???:

He couldn’t describe the wave of relief that hit him when he saw his chat partner beginning the conversation. Lately Jimin had to be the one to initiate the chat, hoping that he reached them.

Cobra:

Jimin felt a bead of sweat forming on the bridge of his nose. He knew that this could possibly chase them away. But there was a chance that it wouldn’t. And the information his friend gave him was too profound to ignore.

???:

Cobra:

???:

Cobra:

???:

It was now or never. Jimin felt like if he didn’t take advantage of this opportunity now, he would never get another one. His chance to obtain the answers to his questions would slip through his fingers like sand. He wouldn’t be able to recover it fast enough.

Cobra:

???:

Cobra:

???:

Blinking at the screen, Jimin reached under the desk and began patting around the surface beneath. His thumb brushed up against something. Curling his fingers around it, he pulled it free - the distinct sound of velcro separating shockingly loud in the quiet confines of his corner. Jimin inspected it, not sure what to make of the item his friend left for him. It was no bigger than a pack of cigarettes, but the container was made of metal.

When did they prepare this?

Though the more pressing question was how did they know he would be sitting at that particular desk on that particular day?

Just how close was his friend?

Jimin couldn’t stop the cold shiver from snaking up his back. He was nervous, but excited. Something was wrong with him.

Cobra:

???:

He watched his friend go offline, leaving him alone. He could sense that there wasn’t much time. Jimin quickly logged off, turned off the computer and haphazardly threw all of his things into his bag. Stuffing the small metal container into his inner jacket pocket, he slung the backpack over his shoulder and made his way to the entrance of the stairs.

The library building was tall - at least thirty stories. Jimin climbed them all. He wasn’t sure if it was nerves hammering around inside of his chest or the adrenaline of excitement rushing his footsteps, but he didn’t care. After months of secret conversations, he was finally going to learn something. He would release the pressure at the back of his brain, telling him that something was wrong with the world that he lived in.

Bursting through the rooftop access door, Jimin was greeted with a swift burst of cold air. The sun had long since set. He didn’t remember being in the library for very long. Was it already that late?

Jimin sensed a flash of movement from his right, his body reacting faster than his mind could process. Leaning back, he dodged a fist that was aimed for the side of his head. Pivoting on his heels, he spun out of reach just as another fist shot out - hoping to strike true.

“Hey!” he yelled, stumbling back a few paces. “What’s the big idea?!”

Standing in front of him was a man no taller than him - Asian in origin, though he could only guess that he was of Chinese descent based on his clothing choice. He wore an off white changsan, a black fitted shirt underneath, and long wide leg pants. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses - the lenses small and round. His hair was cut short - military-style buzz cut. The man was clearly skilled in martial arts.

Jimin watched him smile and this only caused his irritation to mount further. Hadn’t his friend told him that he could trust the person he was meeting on the roof? Was this all a setup?

The man lowered his stance, placing a palm over one fist and bowing his head. After a few seconds, Jimin bowed his head also, but maintained eye contact with him. The man continued to smile at him.

“You have very good reflexes for one so young,” he complimented.

Jimin shrugged. “I guess so.”

“You move like a cobra.” He lowered his arms down to his sides. “I am Seraph. I will guide you to The Oracle.”

“The Oracle?” Jimin couldn’t hide the confused expression on his face. He’d heard rumors online about someone with that moniker, but he figured it was just some myth circulating through the dark net. “I’m...meeting The Oracle.”

Seraph nodded, fishing into his pocket as he approached the roof access door. “Yes. She has much to discuss with you. But we must hurry.” He pulled out a small ring of keys, sliding one of them into the lock. “We don’t have much time.”

Before Jimin could question Seraph’s sanity, he watched the man open the door. But instead of a set of stairs, he could see a back alley in its place. His lips parted, unable to properly fathom what he’d just seen. The moisture left his mouth and a throbbing pain began drilling into the back of his head. Seraph was instantly at his side, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“You have to remain calm. Take a few deep breaths.”

He felt like he was choking. “W-What is going on?”

“Breathe, Cobra. If your mental acuity spikes too much, they will be able to locate us.”

“T-They?”

“We need to go. Now.”

It was painful for him to nod, but Seraph helped him toward the door. Once inside the alley, he watched Seraph closing the door and locking it behind them. The street lights flickered sporadically, serving as a guide through the darkness. If Seraph was speaking to him, which he doubted, he didn’t think he would be able to hear him over the thunder of his own heartbeat.

Jimin didn’t remember seeing Seraph unlocking another door, or the two more after that, but he was jolted to a sudden halt when they stood in front of a bright red door. It looked like the kind of door that belonged to a quaint house in the suburbs. The kind of house a normal, loving family would have attached to their single family home.

Seraph motioned for Jimin to open it, as this door was not locked. Or, at least, he could only assume that it wasn’t since he hadn’t seen Seraph pulling out a key from his key ring. He grabbed for the brass handle and turned the knob, pushing the door open and stepping over the threshold.

There was a sweet aroma hovering in the air, making Jimin’s mouth water instantly. In all of the controlled chaos, he’d forgotten to eat. The soft tones of jazz came from a radio in the kitchen. He followed the sounds and stopped at the entrance.

Standing by the stove was a woman who looked to be in her mid to late fifties. She was a little heavier built, but her curves were defined and lovely in a sweet sort of way. Her back was to him, but through her dark curls he saw strands of gray peppered throughout. Smoke billowed from an ashtray nearby where an abandoned cigarette rested against one of the center notches.

“Um,” he finally managed, taking a step forward, “excuse me?”

“Just a minute,” said the woman, her voice hauntingly familiar, “they’re almost finished. You might want to have a seat.”

Jimin reigned his curiosity back as he watched the woman lean over to pull a tray of cookies out of the oven. Heat rushed through the kitchen from the stove, warming him from the inside out. She set the tray down on the counter, giving the pastries a chance to cool. As she wiped her hands on her apron, she turned to look at Jimin and he immediately lost his balance. He blindly reached for the nearest chair, collapsing into it.

“It...It’s you,” he stammered, looking at the woman he’d come to know as the kind library clerk, “but how?”

The woman smiled, reaching for her cigarette. She took a drag, exhaling smoke from her nostrils. “I told you to have a seat.”

His eyes shook, darting in every direction before landing back on her. None of this made any sense. Jimin’s gaze moved to the floor as he tried to calm his breathing, placing a hand on his chest in an almost vain attempt to settle his rattled nerves. He watched the woman’s shadow move closer to him until she, too, was sitting across from him. When he looked up, the older woman was holding out a plate to him - a single cookie placed in the center.

“Here. I know you’re probably hungry. This will tide you over until dinner is finished.”

He unconsciously took the cookie off the plate, but he was unsure of whether to eat it or not. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust it was safe to eat. He wasn’t sure he would be able to keep it down.

She set a glass of water in front of him. “Now listen to me, Cobra. We don’t have a whole lot of time. I’m sure you’re just as aware of that fact as I am.”

Jimin reached a trembling hand toward the glass. “Are you really The Oracle?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” The Oracle chuckled as she tapped a bit of ash off into the tray. “So many questions and yet I knew that would be the first one you’d ask.”

He drained half the glass in a single gulp. “Something is happening to me.”

“Yes, it is.” She pressed the cigarette to her lips. “It’s been happening for a while now.”

“Are you responsible for it?”

“No, Cobra.” The Oracle blew smoke out of her mouth. “You are.”

“What?”

“Did you bring the package with you?”

Jimin frowned. “If you’re The Oracle, shouldn’t you know that answer already?”

Again, she chuckled. “I do. I’m asking more for your sake than my own. You look ready to pop.”

His fingers moved from the glass and toward his pocket. He pulled out the small metal case and placed it on the table between them. Instead of reaching for it, however, The Oracle gestured toward him.

“Go on. Open it.”

Jimin opened the box, unsure of what he was actually looking at. Inside were what appeared to be two gel caplets. One red, the other blue. A bead of sweat slid down from his temple to his chin, dripping onto the top of his shoe. He slowly lifted his face to look at The Oracle who still had a calm expression painted over her features.

“Like I said earlier, Cobra, we don’t have a lot of time. I can only apologize for taking so long to close the distance between us. If I’d been faster, then we wouldn’t be rushing now.”

“Rushing for what?”

“To give you the answers you so desperately seek.” She crushed the ember of her cigarette out into the tray. “You have a choice to make. Right now. If you still want to know the truth about everything, about why you feel like the world around you doesn’t make sense, or why you feel so isolated in it, then take the red pill and seek the answers out for yourself.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?” Tears welled up at the corners of his eyes. “How am I supposed to do that alone?”

The Oracle reached out a hand to cup his cheek. Her touch was warm; comforting. It helped relax his already fraying nerves. Her thumb stroked over the corner of his eye, wiping the tear away. “Oh, honey, you won’t be alone.” She looked every bit like a mother comforting a scared child in that instant. “But I won’t lie to you, the truth is going to be hard to swallow. Harder than that pill. You’ll probably hate me after you find out the truth. If you feel you won’t be able to handle any of that, then take the blue pill. You’ll forget all about me and what you’ve seen the very minute you step out that door.”

She removed her hand from his cheek, making him very aware of how cold the world seemed at the absence of her touch. Jimin eyed the pills in the box. What did he have to lose by taking the red pill and finding out the truth? His life here was meaningless - just an endless sequence of purposeless days bleeding into purposeless weeks, meshing into equally purposeless months until years with no purpose marched on.

Plucking the red pill from the foam cushion in the box, he popped it into his mouth without hesitation. He grabbed the glass of water and gulped down what remained, swallowing it.

The Oracle suddenly grabbed Jimin’s hand just as he set the glass back down on the table. “Listen to me very carefully, Cobra. I need you to remember what I tell you when you wake up.”

“W-What do you mean?” Jimin’s vision began to swim momentarily. His auditory senses almost seemed heightened at that moment and he heard several heavy footsteps approaching from the living room.

“You are going to find The One. That is the path that you have chosen for yourself.” The Oracle pressed both of her hands on either side of his face. “Believe in that path. When you discover the truth, you will come to understand the meaning behind my words.”

“Oracle, please,” Jimin managed to choke out, “I don’t understand…”

He saw several shadows circling him and different voices began talking all at once.

“We’ve almost narrowed down his location,” said a man to his right, “we need just a few more seconds.”

Jimin gripped onto the woman’s arms in desperation. “I’m scared!”

“It’s okay to be scared. That’s normal, I promise.” The Oracle pressed a kiss to his forehead and he the distinct smell of cookies and cigarettes filled his nose. “Remember my words, Cobra. Know the path and walk the path you forge for yourself.”

“Got him!”

The world seemed to tunnel vision around him, causing his vision to grow darker by the second.

“Will I see you again?” he said through his tears.

“Yes, Young Man,” she replied with a smile he could barely see, “you will.”

And then everything flickered to black and green, the entire room transforming into strings of code. Jimin let out a scream before darkness completely overtook his sight.

“Welcome to the Real World.”

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comedicreliefonlyworkswhenfunny · 6 years ago

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Villain!Deku au; chapter eleven: Make New Friends, But Keep The Old

First

Waking up shivering, Midoriya decided that he needed a new blanket. He rounded up just enough cash to get what he needed, with some to spare of course, but not too much to where it was suspicious. He got dressed in his normal tacky shirt and pants attire, but with a hat for good measure. “Kurogiri, I’m going out,” he called as he tred through the bar. The nod was subtle and hard to see, Kurogiri was basically physical, colorful fire, but Kurogiri clearly nodded back to show his understanding. Midoriya slipped through the alleyways and to the main street. The hat atop his head kept anyone important from recognizing him, and thankfully he didn’t a background I.D. to get a train pass. He was going to buy groceries and a new blanket, but, to do that, he needed to go to a shopping district. A few stops in, he saw an ugly face. It was a member of one of the less loved gangs. He was known for being a pervert and a rapist. He would lure younger kids, usually teens to early twenties, by harassing them in the bus and following them when they get off. Midoriya gagged when he saw the thing practically on top of two high school boys.

Kirishima and Kiminari were going into town to meet up with their friends for lunch. It was a celebration to Bakugou, Todoroki, and Tokoyami for winning the Sports Festival, and for the fact that no one was hospitalized. The two boys wanted to do a bit of exploring before they met up with everyone for food, so they left early. Unfortunately, it would have been much safer to head with the group. The man towered behind them, hands way to close to things that mattered. Both boys were uncomfortable, but there was too many people on the train to make a scene. They tried ignoring it, but he was getting more bold by the minute. Kiminari suggested using their quirks to make him back up, but Kirishima shot it down. Even if it was a pervert, quirk usage was prohibited in public areas. They whispered solutions, desperately trying to pretend that the large, uncomfortable hands weren’t there. It seemed like a miracle when they left. The boys turned back to see a kid, who was around their age, pinning the brute to the floor.

Midoriya didn’t hesitate to yank that bitch down where he stood. He crouched down to the body, one knee on the floor the other on the man’s chest. The look of fear in his eyes was more satisfaction than Midoriya could explain. He hissed just loud enough so that the thug beneath him would hear, but not so much so that it gave away either of their positions. “Get your disgusting self off of this train before I do something about you. This is not your territory. This is my domain and I will not have your slimy trail leading to my area, so here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get off of this train at the next stop, or I will fill you up with my liquid,” Deku flashed the thin needle of a syringe. The horror on the man’s face said it all. Midoriya stood up, allowing the other to escape. He stayed just within sight, making sure that Deku would see him get off at the next stop. The train pulled up and he bolted.

Kirishima and Kiminari were astounded. Whoever this kid was, he was someone to be feared. While they were shocked that this scrawny, dead eyed kid who was no older than them was terrifying enough to make a grown man, twice their size scared, the two swallowed their fear and went up to thank him. He did save them from embarrassment and possible rape. “Yo, bro! That was super cool and manly! How’d you do that?” Kirishima was the first to start up the conversation. He placed his hand on Midoriya’s shoulder in a friendly way as the doors closed and the train began takeoff again. Kiminari followed up with a cheerful smile and a, “Thanks a lot, that was awesome!” Midoriya froze like a deer in the headlights. He had learned from his past how to fulfill the role of a tormenter, and playing badass was a skill that he had picked up at the bar, but a normal conversation? He had no idea what to do. He gave a sheepish laugh before giving them a response, “It was actually pretty easy, since his center of gravity was off. He was leaning forward, but, since you guys were standing there, I couldn’t push him over. However, it’s just as easy to pull him backwards, once he puts his weight on his back foot, I kicked it from under him. Other than that, all you have to do is be vaguely threatening. They don’t know what you’re capable of. Exploit that,” the art of fight, a language he spoke quite fluently. In his experience, if you can’t carry on a normal conversation, don’t. Both boys were in awe at this kid.

The three sat down on the chairs that opened up after people got off of the train. Kirishima and Kiminari did most of he talking; Midoriya mostly sat between them and added input wherever he was able. The train ride was a decently long one, unlike Midoriya’s conversation, but it wasn’t too far into the ride that he drifted off to sleep. The train tracks sounded like static and that made student’s conversation seem like it was just a television show; it felt like he was watching a movie at midnight was his mom, just like he used to. His head fell to Kirishima’s shoulder as the world faded from existence.

Kirishima almost jumped when he felt hair brush his cheek and a head fell on his shoulder. “Dude,” he called to Kiminari, ignoring any previous commentary, “Dude, he fell asleep.” Kiminari leaned in, confirming what he saw. The green haired kid was dead out. A low voltage shock spanned the short distance as Kiminari poked the boy in his freckled face. “Where do you get off?” it was a very important question, one that thankfully was answered. A sleepy voice answered with the singular word, ‘shopping,’ but it was enough for the boys to know that all three of them were heading to the same place. Kirishima tried activating his quirk and hardening his shoulder, but Midoriya was even more of a rock than the pebbles in the cobblestone path beside the vehicle. Kirishima and Kiminari quite enjoyed the train ride; they bothered the sleeping boy to their hearts content. Kiminari took a picture of the other two before taking a picture with all three of them in it. They both shook the boy awake as they heard their stop being announced as next on the intercom. The boy reluctantly woke just at the right time. The doors opened and boys waved goodbye; Midoriya, who had a set destination, and the two UA students, who were trying to find cool shops near some good food, parted ways as the train left without them.

Midoriya felt a bit stupid for falling asleep so easily, and so heavily for that matter, but what was done was done. He wandered off to find the things on his mental list as time became lost to the oblivion. Afternoon faded to evening as he finished up his shopping. Looking back at the train, he saw a familiar face. Green eyes met red as Katsuki Bakugou blocked out Kirishima and Kiminari’s story. He kept out of his seat and began running towards the figure that saw. “Dude!” Kirishima called aimlessly, but Bakugou was already off the train. The two boys sat back down with everyone that was left and told everyone that he forgot something and would catch the next train. Probably. With heavy emphasis on the probably.

Turning a corner, Bakugou saw him. “Deku?” a breathless pant, almost a question as it left his mouth. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Months of being missing, only to find him in broad daylight. Part of him thought that he was wrong, the Deku he knew was lost, but he wasn’t quite wrong… Until he caught the boy, cornered in an alleyway. Green hair poking out of the expanses of a dull, gray hat; freckles went off like a bomb, spreading across his face; the same tacky clothing style that he wore: this was the ‘Deku’ he knew. The blackened abyss under his eyes; the subtle cuts and bruises from various bar fights; the hollow holes in his eyes where the light was shattered: this was the ‘Deku’ that he didn’t know. Bakugou didn’t even need to call out into the alleyway that he saw the boy turn in; Midoriya beat him to the call, “Hey, Kaachan.” Bakugou froze as if the ground fell from beneath him. Hopelessly sputtering, he tried to find the words to portray his thoughts, “D-Deku?” He became speaking before thinking, “What happened? Where have you been? Why are you here?” questions spitting at the speed of light. “Oh, so you care now?” Midoriya replied sarcastically, clearly taking the other male aback. The ‘Deku’ he knew didn’t talk back or use sarcasm, let alone both. “What happened to you?” the real question. Midoriya only smiled, looking sorrowfully off in the distance. The way he held himself changed drastically, but Bakugou had just now realized. “You just vanished one day! Everybody thinks you’re dead! My mom-” another quick questionnaire, but Midoriya cut him off, “Are you trying to convince me that you care?” his tone was deadpan and flat. Looking Bakugou dead in the eyes, now, he continued, “Mitsuki-san is kind: she would have adopted me, you know that, right? She’s not going to let her best friend’s kid go into the fucked up foster care system. Is that what you wanted? Could you even live if we were in the same house?” he hissed. Acid hot on his tongue, he didn’t give Bakugou even a moment to recover, “Anything would have been better than living with you, and I know I’m not the only one that thinks that. If you can look me dead in the eyes and say that you wanted me to stay, go ahead. I dare you,” he challenged, green eyes meet red and sparks flying. Bakugou opened his mouth, but words would come out. Did he want ‘Deku’ to stay? Wasn’t his goal to get him out of his life? His mind raced with contradictions, but, before anything could leave his mouth, he watched Midoriya smile sadly. Green eyes hit the ground, “I didn’t think so,” was uttered as he turned away. Bakugou could only stand, mouth agape; words wouldn’t make their way to his mouth, his body wouldn’t move, but his mind continued to race. As the boy disappeared from sight, Bakugou began walking back to the train station with more questions than answers. What happened to the Deku he once knew?

Master

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #villain!izuku #villain!deku #villain au #fanfiction #fanfic #canon divergence #canon parallel #izuku midoriya

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boythirteen · 4 years ago

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I think you dropped the thread for an unknown reason. Today I finished writing a long and thorough report for work that I am proud of. I don’t think it’s boring to read but I am biased.

SMART Food for Life: 2nd Year Report for the Stavros Niarchos Foundation

Report period: April 1, 2020 through March 31, 2021

SMART is pleased to offer our 2021 progress report on the 2nd year of funding for the Food for Life Project. The entirety of this report covers the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic and how we have met it. Understandably, the hands-on project delivery model detailed in our initial grant proposal has no longer been viable in a time of social distancing and remote learning, and so we are presenting our new, adaptive response to COVID-19 that has allowed us to fully engage our participants and maintain our SMART community. This report will illustrate our notable successes in meeting and surpassing our stated program objectives in the face of the immense restrictions imposed by COVID.

Project Objectives:

To recap our initial proposal, the specific objectives of the SMART Food for Life Project are:

• To enhance the quality of life, reduce isolation, and achieve optimum health status for a growing community of self-identified women living with/affected by HIV/AIDS and other chronic illnesses

• To further develop and expand a hands-on, culturally appropriate nutrition and cooking workshop series specifically designed to address the health and nutrition needs of our SMART community

• To nurture and grow a thriving team of SMART Ambassadors

• To increase residents’ access to fresh fruits and vegetables and affordable, healthy food, resulting in more nutritious meals prepared at home

SMART’s Response to COVID

SMART is located in NYC DOHMH’s East Harlem Neighborhood Health Action Center (Health Action Center), where all of our programs and activities are held. Due to COVID-19, the Health Action Center building has been closed since mid-March of 2020, and SMART staff has been working remotely. Our in-house client programs have been on hold and will continue to be so at least through the summer of 2021. Due to this circumstance, we have been challenged to devise innovative ways of delivering our programming and engaging our participants through online platforms and social media connections, as well as through traditional means such as phone calls and mailings.

Immediately upon the closure of our offices at the Health Action Center, we initiated a weekly practice (or daily, in some cases) of contacting our list of over 65 active participants by phone to assess their most basic needs and provide direct resources and support. Our Director of Operations, Sam Clare, and Program Director, Tara Pierce, divided this effort between them, together with our Mandarin Translator, Lydia Liu, who reached out to the Mandarin-speaking women. While all of us were shaken by the sudden loss of our in-person interactions and physical community, we began to find that the shared sense of emergency and frequent phone check-ins were strengthening our bonds with participants and giving us deeper, more specific insights into their needs, both immediate and long-term. We were also becoming more directly aware of their access to healthy food, or lack thereof, and so were inspired to begin a process of addressing food insecurity in increasingly expansive ways, as described throughout this report.

SMART participants represent the most vulnerable populations affected by COVID, as most are living with one or more chronic conditions— HIV, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity—coupled with economic disadvantages that place them at higher risk of adverse outcomes if infected. Fortunately, none of our SMART women have experienced life-threatening conditions due to COVID, though some have had the virus, and, tragically, the husband of one of our women lost his life to it. More commonly, participants have faced issues of isolation and lack of reliable access to food. Our in-person programming had been providing healthy breakfasts and lunches on program days, in addition to the weekly pantry bags distributed in SMART Body cooking classes, and the loss of this supplemental food was pronounced. While local agencies were stepping up to offer emergency food, the lines to receive it were often many blocks long and proved prohibitive for those with mobility or other health challenges. And so, to fill this initial food vacuum, we began to personally deliver emergency food to our most vulnerable women. Two of our SMART staff members, Les LaRue and Frances Wood, live in the East Harlem neighborhood where most of our participants reside and were able to take on the task of picking up nutritious groceries and safely delivering them to the women’s residences, predominantly in NYCHA buildings. We were also able to connect participants to previously unknown food pantries both in and outside of the neighborhood, such as MCCNY Charities in Hell’s Kitchen who delivered groceries to their doors.

In these ways, we achieved a measure of stability within our SMART community in the early days of COVID, and so had more and more breathing room to consider our role as continuing providers of holistic education, however impossible this had first seemed. We began to broaden our perspectives and turn our attention to programming in addition to the emergency response. Our first effort at on-line learning was an initiative called SMART Tutorials which we began in late March of 2020.

SMART Tutorials

Designed to keep participants engaged in a supportive environment of learning, SMART Tutorials are short, instructive videos covering a wide range of nutrition, wellness, healing, art, and technology training topics that represent our holistic approach to health. Christina Rodriguez, our then Social Media Coordinator (now Communications & Social Media Director), quickly emerged as a highly capable video creator who took on the job of working with other SMART staff members to create videos directly related to their program areas. She set up a SMART YouTube Channel and began to build an extensive video library that now includes over 100 videos! (representing both the SMART Tutorial program and the SMART Live! series of real-time virtual classes).

SMART Live!

Having ventured into the virtual world with our SMART Tutorial offerings, it was a natural next step to use our increasing technical knowledge and reliance on social media to develop real-time, interactive programming to more directly engage our participants and provide the ongoing instruction and connection to supportive community that is SMART’s mission. One of our SMART staff members, Frances Wood, was also teaching as an adjunct professor at Columbia University at that time and had undergone training for conducting classes through Zoom. She was able to assist other staff members in navigating the Zoom platform, prompting us to initiate weekly Zoom staff meetings. As we had already begun to utilize Facebook more heavily as a means of disseminating information to our women, the combination of Zoom experience and Facebook familiarity provided a foundation upon which we could conceive of a virtual curriculum. The SMART Live! initiative, born of necessity and evolving experience, began in April of 2020 with SMART Live! Culinary Workshops—a virtual iteration of the SMART Body hands-on cooking classes that are the core of the SMART Food for Life Project.

A major impetus for launching the live Culinary Workshops was to ensure that we could fulfill our commitment to the Culinary Training Program—a workforce development initiative we had undertaken in collaboration with DOH—which engaged 12 SMART women as Culinary Trainees in an intensive 2-year training. The pandemic hit near the middle of year two of this training, and we were determined to complete its objectives regardless of COVID restrictions. Our first live-streamed cooking classes, intended as training sessions for the Culinary Trainees, were also learning opportunities for SMART staff in transitioning to a virtual class model and addressing the many challenges that surfaced, including bridging the digital divide (which we will discuss below). SMART Live! now includes three weekly live-streamed virtual class offerings which we are delivering via Facebook and Zoom: SMART Live! Culinary Workshops, SMART Tech Talks, and SMART Live! University.

SMART Live! Culinary Workshops (live-streamed on SMART’s Facebook page and open to all)

In keeping with our stated goals of nutrition education and increased access to fresh, healthy food, as well as decreased feelings of anxiety and isolation, we are exceedingly proud of our SMART Live! Culinary Workshop series. Every Thursday morning, SMART culinary instructors Juan Pablo Chavez and Sam Clare lead viewers in live, step-by-step healthy cooking and nutrition education demonstrations performed and filmed in their home kitchens and assisted behind the scenes by remote SMART tech staff (all of whom have acquired their videography/performance/tech skills in the “learn-by-doing” manner demanded by COVID). Utilizing seasonal ingredients with healthy nutritional benefits, the cooking demos focus on recipes that can help manage or mitigate the symptoms of a wide array of chronic illnesses that disproportionately affect our participants. The workshops are highly interactive, with participants using the comments section to ask questions and add observations, and instructors providing verbal answers and additional information in real time. The recorded SMART Live! classes are then posted on our Facebook page for further viewing, some of the posted videos having amassed more than 600 views to date! After a video editing process, each class is also posted to YouTube and on SMART’s website for even greater reach.

An important incentive provided to SMART participants who participate in the workshops is a $20 supermarket gift certificate to one of two “Shop Healthy” supermarkets located in East Harlem. SMART has used these supermarkets for over 6 years and was instrumental in facilitating their “Shop Healthy” designation, indicating a healthy improvement to the quality of their products. The grocery store gift certificates, coupled with healthy nutritional information provided in the workshops, help to ensure that our participants are able to keep nutritious food on their tables. The certificates are offered in lieu of the pantry bags we would normally distribute at our in-person SMART Body cooking classes.

SMART Live! Tech Talks (live-streamed on SMART’s Facebook page and open to all)

Among the many challenges posed by our transition to digital programming has been the deeply unjust technology gap our clients face in terms of both equipment and training. As we have proceeded to iron out many of the snags in the delivery of our virtual programs, the lack of reliable, affordable internet connectivity and dependable internet devices—as well as the gap in basic confidence and skill to navigate social media—has been a primary hurdle. We have addressed this issue in stages, beginning with one-on-one conversations with participants to assess their relationship with basic technology. Frances Wood, who had been the instructor for the in-person SMART Computer class and so was the natural contact for tech training, took on the new title of SMART Technical Director. During the late summer and early fall of 2020, she was able to conduct a series of in-person trainings with small groups of SMART participants in basic internet connection and social media skills. Trainings were held in front of the Health Action Center in accordance with social distancing and PPE guidelines. Based on the information collected in individual needs assessments, Frances worked with participants to ensure that they had reliable high-speed broadband internet access, or that they were able to connect with social media on their phones. Assistance included: helping participants set up home wi-fi service; loaning participants iPads for their use; and helping them utilize social media apps on their cell phones.

When COVID restrictions began to tighten anew in the fall, we halted all in-person meetings in front of the Health Action Center and turned our focus to virtual engagement. In October of 2020, we began providing technology training online, with Frances leading weekly livestreamed “Tech Talks,” following the SMART Live! Culinary Workshop format described above.

Tech Talk classes have become a popular, well-attended series offered every Monday on Facebook Live. Participants receive step-by-step guidance in creating email accounts, shopping safely online, and finding reliable digital sources for health information, among other useful internet topics. Videos of each class are then edited and posted to YouTube so that they may be accessed on demand. Frances is creating an evolving learning environment that aims to combat the isolation, health inequities, and barriers to information and resources that result from limited technology skills. As participants acquire the knowledge and equipment they need, they enjoy increasing access to SMART’s entire growing library of 100+ virtual learning resources—SMART Tutorials, SMART Live! healthy cooking demos, and SMART Live! University presentations. The online trainings also allow us to expand SMART’s services to anyone with an internet connection, thus broadening our own social reach. As testament to the effectiveness of this approach, we went from having 5 women in attendance at our first SMART Live! cooking demo to now reliably drawing an audience of 30-40 actively engaged participants at each of our virtual classes!

SMART Live! University (requires a Zoom link provided to SMART participants only)

SMART University is our signature treatment, prevention, and health education series that addresses the physical, psychological, and social needs of self-identified women living with or affected by HIV and/or other chronic illnesses that disparately affect under-served neighborhoods such as East Harlem. As with all of our other in-house offerings, SMART University classes had been put on hold due to COVID, though we were making great strides with the SMART Live! Culinary and Tech Talk virtual programming. By January of 2021, we felt confident enough in our ability to host virtual classes—as well as to connect with an engaged group of 30+ participants—to begin collaborating with other community partners in offering SMART Live! University presentations.

In its virtual iteration, SMART University offers live, timely presentations every Tuesday on maintaining health and wellness during COVID and beyond. As many of these classes often cover sensitive health and/or confidential social issues, the live Zoom classes have been limited to SMART women participants only, though the subsequent edited videos posted on our website and YouTube channels are available to all. We have been working with community partners such as CONNECT, Safe Horizon, and HHAP to present the weekly Zoom classes on health/mental health topics, social service resources such as SNAP benefits, tax preparation guidance, guarding against financial abuse, GYN care and more, including classes on nutrition topics led by chef Juan Pablo of SMART. On those weeks when SMART University classes cover health topics such as Diabetes or Recognizing Signs of Stroke, we are careful to align our Culinary Workshops with recipes that address the highlighted health concerns.

It should be noted that SMART University was our premiere program founded in 1998 to provide treatment and prevention education about HIV/AIDS for low-income women of color. This model remains solid and is especially relevant now in providing vital COVID-19 information. Among our most well-attended offerings have been a series of classes on COVID and the COVID vaccine presented by a highly regarded infectious disease specialist—Dr. Samuel Merrick, Medical Director, CSS/New York Presbyterian Hospital. These classes have had a direct, measurable impact on the lives of our participants, particularly regarding the COVID vaccine. Despite being among a population most vulnerable to the adverse effects of COVID, many of our women expressed an initial distrust of the vaccine and unwillingness to take it. But after having voiced their concerns and acquired new knowledge in the question-and-answer sessions with the doctor, they have been able to make responsible decisions based on accurate information shared by a trusted source. We can now report that almost all of our active SMART women have been vaccinated.

SMART Art

To complement our holistic approach to health, an additional offering during COVID has been the preparation of “art kits” for women to work on at home. Our SMART Art instructor, Les LaRue, designs projects that require cutting, sewing, gluing, and careful, meditative time to help our women deal with stress and issues of isolation by engaging in creative activity. Les prepares packets of necessary materials, patterns, and step-by-step instruction sheets which are hand-delivered or mailed to interested women participants, who then share photos of their completed creations on social media. The list of participants has grown to over 30 creative women! The instruction “slides” are also turned into SMART Tutorials, with links to the patterns on our SMART website. As with all of our online offerings, we are thereby able to offer the art projects to a wider audience.

Partnerships

For a brief time (July-October 2020) when transmission rates of COVID-19 were low/declining, we were able to meet with participants in person outside of the Health Action Center. We were greatly excited to connect with the Sally Cooper CSA through our long association with ACT UP (where SMART’s roots are found). Every Wednesday afternoon throughout the late summer months, a Sally Cooper CSA van loaded with fresh farm produce arrived in front of the Health Action Center building where we set up tables and filled pantry bags for the women who had participated in our SMART Live! Culinary Workshop class the previous week. Adhering to social distancing and PPE guidelines, the women gathered to pick up their food bags (with extra masks inside) and $20 supermarket gift certificates, and to reconnect and share a welcome time of in-person community. The produce of the week was then incorporated into the Culinary Workshop recipes presented in class the following day!

This in-person time was a valuable opportunity to instill and reinforce COVID-19 safety precautions for clients by practicing social distancing and mask-wearing, as well as to provide PPE (disposable masks and hand sanitizer). It also allowed us to distribute other materials such as the SMART Art packets, and to engage with the wider East Harlem Community and share information about our programs. We were able to enlist several new SMART participants through this outreach, as well as being able to share whatever was left of the bountiful produce with other community residents after our participants had received their bags. Our SMART Ambassadors (stipend workers) assisted us with the outdoor activities, allowing them to earn small stipend payments. We also used the safe/socially distanced outdoor environment to conduct intake interviews with new SMART clients and hold the one-on-one in-person technology sessions.

Additionally, we were able to secure NYCDOH “Health Bucks” for our women to purchase “Healthy Food Boxes” from Grow NYC, whose distribution tent was located right around the corner.

As evidence of our online reach, our SMART Live! series caught the attention of GMHC, with whom we presented a special SMART Live! Culinary Workshop for GMHC members in November of 2020.

Our most recent partnership is with an initiative called “Community Impact” at Columbia University—specifically a subset of this initiative called “CAFE Prep,” a culinary workforce program very similar to the pilot Culinary Training Program we just completed with DOH. A Development Associate from Community Impact, having happened across SMART’s website and been greatly impressed by our holistic approach, contacted our Founding Director, Susan Rodriguez, in late January of 2021 to discuss a possible collaboration. This has led to weekly Zoom meetings and all manner of brain-storming as to ways in which our programs might complement each other and move forward toward common goals. As we are uncertain of DOH’s intention regarding construction of a teaching kitchen at the Health Action Center (or pursuing culinary workforce training in general), we are excited to find an enthusiastic partner with experience in this work with whom we can explore possibilities for the future.

Post-COVID Plans

As to the future, we are forging ahead with our full roster of virtual programs and are in close communication with the administration of the Health Action Center building to be at-the-ready whenever a partial re-opening is scheduled to occur, hopefully in September. In anticipation of a new normalcy post COVID, we have developed a hybrid program model wherein limited-capacity classes will be led by an instructor in a “studio” setting inside the Health Action Center and simultaneously live streamed through Zoom to a wider, online audience. We are tentatively calling this the SMART Studio Project. While we are presently in a “holding pattern” regarding our SMART Ambassador program, we anticipate having an increased need for Ambassador involvement when we are able to begin hybrid programming.

In closing, it is heartening to note that having our mode of operation completely turned upside down has had unexpectedly positive consequences. Our increased online presence has been noted by long-time participants who may have fallen out of touch over the years, but who now have resurfaced and are renewing old ties and making new ones through virtual connections. We are also attracting brand new engagement with our livestreaming productions and recorded videos. We have been able to assist almost 40 women in connecting to social media and virtual learning platforms, thereby widening their horizons and inching their seats closer to the table. Regarding our growth as SMART staff, we are all monumentally more tech savvy and adaptable to sudden change. We are also realizing the almost limitless possibilities for future SMART Live! University classes, as presenters can be located anywhere across the globe. Moving into virtual programming has been a long-term goal of SMART, and necessity has certainly been the mother of invention for us over these surreal months. We are deeply grateful for the continued support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and look forward to our 3rd year, however strange and unexpected it may prove to be.

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jonjost · 6 years ago

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It happened as much of life does, rather by accident. My friend Jonathan Rosenbaum was in Tehran for some film conference, posting on Facebook, and I saw it and popped him a note asking he stick a foot in the door for me there. I’d for decades wanted to see Persian architecture, having once studied architecture and seeing many photos of the wonderful mosques and such in that part of the world. As it happened he’d already returned to Chicago, but the day of his arrival home he’d received a note from his hosts in Iran, inquiring who might be good to invite for a conference on digital filmmaking. Bingo. He in turn suggested me, and not inclined to wait, I wrote the party and made my case. I was invited.

This all occurred in the midst of other changes in my life. My wife Marcella and I are going separate ways, amicably – though that is a dubious word here. There is nothing “wrong” about our relationship, except that I am 75 and she is 42, and she needs and deserves things I cannot offer. A younger companion, and not to be be caught at 45 or 55 suddenly single because I have properly slipped the planet. With my encouragement and prompt to keep her eyes open for someone, and, also by accident she did: Ryan Air put us in separate seats on a flight from Berlin to Belfast and her seat mate was a nice fellow she talked to and… . One thing led to the next, all with my nod, and she’s now with a nice man of her age, things are going well for them, and it is time for me to leave go. I do so with a touch of anxiety but with love for Marcella. It is mutual. Though at 75, and a kind of blank canvas lies ahead, a little of a challenge – though my life has been like this all along. Used to it. So I jumped into this journey, clearly but the first step in a longer one.

Sorted out the visa, which I had to pick up in the Iranian Embassy in Dublin, and on the first leg got snagged by travel snafus. Out on the tarmac in a Turkish Airline plane we wheeled to take off point, waited as usual, hit the accelerator. Whoosh, pushed back in the seat and then, not normal, the plane suddenly decelerated, braked and trundled off to some other area of the tarmac. Take-off aborted said the captain a bit later, with no explanation why. We sat a few hours with no further word until he announced the reason for the non-take-off was “operational problems”. I saw no vehicles come to do some fix, and surely along with the other passengers, pondered “wassup?” About an hour later, with no explication, we taxied and took off, the air slightly weighted with unexplained nervousness. I assume a computer programming glitch or perhaps air traffic control something.

Needless to say the long delay resulted in missing the next connection and a near sleepless night during the long early a.m. layover in Istanbul. Airport slumbers not the best. The wages of the present state of jet-setting. No party.

Arriving in Iran it was straight to my hotel through a bedraggled landscape leading into Tehran from airport: empty rusting billboards looming over desiccated sands, occasional cars wheezed out, intermittently parked their last time on the roadside, a few hitchhikers looking for a lift into the urban vortex. A weirdly placed golden domed mosque, for a not long ago immam, former head of the government, like a flying saucer dumped on the far edges of town, not much around it. And then into the southern flank of the city, reminding of the desolate zones east of LA, Hockney’s Pear Blossom Highway world.

The highway choked with dinged up cars, denser and denser as one approached the city center, the driving style Italianate in ignoring the marked traffic lanes, un-Italian in the lack of honking and cursing from the windows – a sign of resignation to the daily jam-up?

Checked into hotel, and a brief hello from Amir, my host from the National Film School. Shortly abandoned, I took an instant nap to try to make up for lost in-transit sleep. Outside rain blocked any view, which in the next days would prove to be a vast “modern city” array of vertical towers, here in uniform sand color, residences and office blocks receding endlessly into the distance, reminding me a touch of Seoul with its mountainous backdrops.

The conference for which I’d come, titled International Conference on Cinema in the Digital Age, under the wing of the Iranian National School of Cinema, commenced the next morning. A grab bag of figures, “international,” populated the list of speakers – myself (on the opening page as if I were “someone”), another American, Nicholas Rombes – an academic with a handful of books to his credit including one on the Ramones, along with “Cinema in the Digital Age,” several French game and virtual reality experts, Romain Bonnin and Bruno Massi; Ira Bhaskar, a woman from India, dean of a School of Arts & Aesthetics in Delhi; and Monica Manganelli, a woman from Italy – an art director whose credits include Cloud Atlas, and finally a Iranian American academic, Mehdi Semati, from Illinois rounded out the foreigner list. The balance of the participants were Iranians, both academics and film makers, producers and technicians from the media world.

As usual for such affairs the opening words were formalities, thanks and welcome and a string of speakers saying so. And then, in a rather crammed fashion, a few talks were given, simultaneously translated into English for those in need, and shortly it was my turn. I’d had a slight glimpse at what the other speakers were going to say, and tried to direct my talk towards the kind of aesthetics which Leighton Pierce and Scott Barley, myself and a few others took with digital tools. Curiously the fellow who’d written the book on digital cinema had never heard of these, or, I suspect, of me. (See my talk at the bottom).

I opened with a kind of apology for America’s dubious politics relative to Iran – since forever it seems, from 1952 overthrowing an elected socialist govt and installing “our Shah” and on to the current newly imposed sanctions and Trump’s abandonment of the nuclear treaty. I made clear I have not supported the US government in any of this and noted many other Americans share my view. This begot the loudest applause I heard during the conference.

Mirrored mosque interior located beside the Tehran bazaar

During my talk I screened a handful of clips from my own work, little pieces which showed some of the variety of things possible in digital which are not “film-like”. One of these clips was a split- screen bit from 6 Easy Pieces, with a woman on the right shooting with a high-tech rifle, an Olympic competitive sport thing; and on the left a Portuguese dancer and performance artist, Vera Mantero, doing a piece in a body stocking, slightly see-through, but obscured by multiple out-of-phase layers. On the next clip, a painterly abstract thing of water the projection stopped, and I went to computer desk to see what had gone wrong. The clip was running on the computer, so it wasn’t that and I figured some projector problem. As a technician came up to me to check or something, he inquired if there were any nudity coming in next clips. Ah, I got it. I answered nope, no more neked girls, and learned a bit about current Iranian social realities.

Roof of bath complex in Kashan

I attended some of the talks, but being academic or about things I am not much interested in, I skipped out on a good bit of it – perhaps bad form, but I don’t feel obliged out of courtesy to pretend I am interested when I am not. Instead I asked to be taken to some museums and to see the city a bit.

Tina, on the right

My stay in Tehran was accompanied by a young woman of 21, Tina, whose English was virtually flawless. She was studying film and volunteering for the conference, and had read up on me. She said she was anxious about meeting me, that I’d be, oh…, some kind of demanding prima donna sort, and she’d practiced her introductory talk for meeting me. I think that got dispelled in a matter of minutes and we hit it off very nicely. She asked if I found her accent in English off, and I said she didn’t seem to have one, and except for the occasional word with maybe a misplaced accent I would figure she was American from the mid-west. She was very surprised at that and I asked how she learned the language and was her teacher an American native speaker. She said she never studied and learned it all from watching movies since she was 14 ! Mostly American movies. I was amazed to hear this. We had some nice long talks, about personal things, which gave me a nice insight into Iranian culture. Tina had some visible tats, and was by the standards there, rather the rebel. A kindred spirit.

One of the museums Tina took me to was the calligraphy museum. I had long been interested and curious about Arabic and Persian calligraphy as I had noted the varying styles and qualities, but knew nothing about it at all except that I found it beautiful. So being curious I asked the person who was there about it – and found that, no, my assumption that the long lines in some did not tell you how to pronounce it or change the meaning, as, for example, in some Asian languages a dot, or squiggle will change the intonation and meaning. I learned that it is read right to left, and that all the stylistic changes – in my Western sense of it, varying fonts – had to do with a kind of artistic boredom. Islam prohibiting “graven images” artists were confined to writing texts of the Koran or prayers, or, for other work, concocting beautiful geometries and somewhat organic patterns. With the texts, different regions would come up with differing modes of writing, and then the local governmental heads would act as curators and request that the text be written in this or that mode. I suspect there is more to it than I was told, and imagine that as the society became more decadent, the calligraphy fell further and further into abstraction, with the Islamic text becoming more or less unreadable. In some other life-time perhaps I will research this and write a thesis!

Towards the end of the conference, when I had skipped out, apparently all the guests were asked (if they would like) to go to the Holy War Museum, and a few balked, and being absent I had dodged it by absentia. However Tina was there and at some juncture asked whoever was prodding the visitors to go just why he had to inject (Islamist) ideology into everything. This begot an apparently heated discussion in which Tina accused the man of being a fascist, and she was summarily fired. I talked to her after this, and got the story and said I’d try to talk to whomever, but she demurred, though later, without my intervention, she was reinstated. More lessons on the culture.

Rabeahe, Hori, Uday and Ira

Wrapping up in Tehran, of which I saw little owing to rain each day, and the conference taking most the time, I and the Indian couple were taken first to Kashan for a short tourist stop at a famed garden, and then an old bath complex, and then on to Isfahan. This part of the trip was accompanied by another young woman, Rebeahe, whose English was not as good as Tina’s, but quite workable. She though had relatives who lived in Isfahan, and so knew the city well. This proved a nice virtue.

Put up in a rather luxurious once-upon-a-time palatial residence, gutted and converted into some kind of non-hotel, there were a few days to explore the city. And what a gorgeous city at its center it was, well justifying its reputation. And as well the famed “friendliness” of its citizens was similarly warranted, as we were stopped on the street for photos, for small and not so small talks. It was wonderful. As was the architecture, which had cast its spell on me 50 years ago.

With Rebeahe I was taken to the old part of the city, with its many stunning bridges (though these days they are not over troubled water, but no water), and a huge central plaza in which one could stick five Piazza Navona’s! It was flanked with an endless bazaar and several huge and stunning mosques.

From one of these mosques, in process of being restored, I was drawn by wonderful singing which echoed off the domed ceiling. Entering I saw a young man standing in the center of the dome, his voice beautiful, and enchanting. He finished and a small cluster of people applauded, though shortly afterwards an official-looking man approached and seemed to berate him, and from that ensued a 20 minute or more argument. I later asked what the story was and was told that one of the songs was from the Persian poet Hafez, and the other was from the Koran. Apparently the official had found the secular song offensive, despite the reality that at least for now the place was not being used as a mosque with the religious aspects involved. More cultural lessons.

The young man who sang Hafez

Reflecting pool in Meidan Emam, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Ubiquitous, these images everywhere.

Under the press of the United States sanctions, the Iranian rial is in terms of international currencies, extremely weak. Which, for an American with a few dollars, makes it very cheap. I went to a pharmacy to get an over-the-counter antibiotic for an infection in my eye and for a tube that would have been $7 or so in the USA, the price was…… ten cents. While not so exaggerated as that, food and most things in Iran, were, using the exchange rate (which changed hourly) absurdly cheap. Nice for a tourist; not so wonderful for Iranians.

One of the 500 year old bridges, a kind of minimalist Persian architecture.

My time in Iran only whetted my appetite, and on leaving I offered up the thought of returning to teach at the National Film School, or to do some workshops. Back in Belfast I reiterated that in an email, and the response was positive. Hoping it will all work out and I can return in the late winter/spring of 2019, and stay for some months.

Talk given at conference, Tehran.

Hello and thank you for the invitation to be here. I know it is a time of heightened tension thanks to the belligerent but utterly customary behavior of the government of my country – the usual American practice of economic blackmail backed up with military threats. I do not and haven’t supported the American government for more or less my whole life. I hope you will accept my regrets for my society’s deep illnesses which tend to be inflicted on others – including you, ever since the early 1950’s (and actually before then). I don’t ask you to forgive, but understand there are many in America who do not approve the government and its policies at all. I am one of those.

And so to place my talk in perspective I’d like to offer a bit of biographical information so you can understand the context.

I have been a filmmaker since 1963 – 55 years. I’m self-taught, and have always worked far from the “industry” – I make films that make no money, either in the process of making them or afterwards. What I do covers a broad range which gets described variously as “new narrative” “avant garde” “experimental” “documentary essay” “indie” and many other such labels.

To me they are just “films” or “videos” – the way I happen to make them. Here and there I’ve been told what I do is worthwhile in some form or another – I regularly am invited to festivals, have received grants and honorary awards. In 1991 I had a full retrospective at MoMA in NYC, with 12 celluloid films; other institutions in America and Europe replicated this as well. After those I made a few more celluloid films – 35mm Panavision – but then in 1996, rather by accident, I got a DV camera and instantly decided I would never work in celluloid film again. And I haven’t. Since then I’ve made 25 long form films and many many shorts, and a few installations, all in digital video.

My reasons for shifting were mixed. It meant I could almost completely leave the film world behind – never have to talk to anyone about money, or have the pressure to make my work fit a formula that would make money once done. This was all because DV once one had access to a camera and computer was almost cost-free. And thus very liberating. The other major reason was because, even in the early phases, when critics described digital films as “gritty” or “ugly” and other such negative things, I found the beauty and aesthetic potential of digital media to be entirely enticing, and in my very first digital films I aggressively used the media for what it could do. At the same time the digital world was swamped with efforts to make it “film-like” with software and technical adaptations attempting to make DV and HD “look like film.”

Personally I was tired to death of the limitations which film imposed, which I think was very visible in my last celluloid works. I was though very excited and happy with the elasticity which digital media offered – in the camera, and on the editing time-line. The two aspects together opened a broad new field of aesthetic possibilities simply not possible in film. I jumped on it like a child. Few others shared this view – most sought that holy “film-look”. To me that was a fool’s errand – as if to make water colors look like oil paintings, as if the characteristics of each media was not itself of interest.

Technological changes – not only in media, but in any realm – always incur changes in society, and in how society expresses itself. To take an example in Europe: much of early visual two dimensional imagery was done either in frescoes, or if desiring something more permanent, mosaics. Mosaics, by their nature are somewhat rigid, we might even say a bit digital. The imagery derived from them tends to express the reality of what it is made of – little bits of colored stone or ceramics. Fresco is a bit clumsy, but still more fluid than mosaic, and this technological difference expresses itself with another mode of imagery. And then, as oil painting was developed, imagery shifted still more, giving birth to the Baroque era, and flamboyantly curved and shaded imagery which simply was not possible in mosaics. Later painting exploited this fluid nature such that the medium itself became the “content” of the painting.

I cite these examples from one of the arts, to point to the technological shift which digital image making brought to “cinema.”

While celluloid cinema offers a very broad range of possible aesthetics which we can see in normal commercial/theatrical productions from Hollywood to Bollywood, and then in so-called “art house” films and on through experimental filmmaking, it remains bound to the limits of celluloid. Digital introduces other elements, rooted in technological aspects of the medium. So I’d like to go through these, and make the connections of those basic elements to what they have provoked in the media.

Economics. The first, and perhaps most drastic shift which digital technology has brought – as it has to many other realms – is a very radical change in the economics of making a film/video. These days an iPhone or Samsung will secure you imagery and sound that not long ago would have cost a fair amount of money. Just for the price of a phone and a simple cheap computer for editing. As well most any digital still camera or consumer level video camera will produce excellent imagery and sound for the cost of what, say, a 10 minute roll of 35mm film and processing would have cost 15 years ago. In sum, digital media has driven the costs so low that it is almost negligible. This in turn has impacted what is made. Now frankly most of what is made is of little aesthetic value, and literal mountains of shots, films, long and short, have been made which are only of interest from a sociological standpoint. One could write a long essay discussing why so many people spend their time making such vast amounts of pure garbage – survey YouTube and Vimeo, or just your Facebook feed to see what I am talking about. It is a plague of mental trash which unfortunately has real world consequences: it covers up and hides the occasional gems which are also made. The beautiful and wonderful things which are possible are buried in the volumes of junk.

So from this basic factor – the minimal costs of digital work – the production of material has exploded beyond real comprehension, for better and worse. Mountains of garbage, and then the infrequent magical work that otherwise might not have been made at all had the earlier celluloid financial hurdles remained.

Inside this bracket of low costs, some aesthetic matters have shifted.

One is that as shooting has minimal fiscal costs, new cinematic “movements” have emerged. In the USA one early one was so-called “mumble-core” which by and large involves rather conventional cinematic language and forms, and content, but in which improvisation plays a large part since it costs nothing to shoot and shoot and shoot. For me these films are mostly unwatchable. In Europe something similar occurred with the Dogme movement triggered by Lars von Trier and friends – again the works involved much improvisation and bare-bones technique, and though willfully a bit more provocative in intent, and more skillfully done, they still were basically conventional-theatrical works in filmic terms. Aside from the costs being shrunk to virtually nothing, the balance of these were traditional old-fashioned low-budget film-making, perhaps a bit looser owing to the low costs and the inexperience of many of the filmmakers involved.

Linked to this came another movement, also built on the low-costs, but harnessed to an aesthetic that embraced a specific technological change which digital brought with it. In celluloid, as a rule of thumb, one could do shots of a maximum of ten minutes before the film runs out. Digital has no such constraint – one can do a shot of 20 minutes or if you really want, 20 hours. Or even more.

A little tale: a good friend of mine, James Benning, when working in 16mm, had made a number of films in which the 10 minute limit on shots became part of his aesthetic: a static shot would last 10 minutes, and then the next and so on. For a decade I urged James to switch to digital for cost reasons but he resisted – he had more or less good reason as DV is a bit low resolution for landscapes and wide-shots, which were dominant in his work. On the arrival of reasonably priced HD however, he shifted to it. On his switch I found myself wondering what changes this would bring in his style and approach. On seeing his first digital film, a formalist kind of documentary on the German industrial area of the Ruhr – also the title of his film – the first hour of the film had maybe 8 or so static shots of various urban landscapes and things, the lengths of the shots not being rigidly fixed. The second hour of the film consisted of one static camera shot of a steel making industrial structure, one used to make coke. The structure is a 10 story block under which industrial sized train cars loaded with red-hot coal are pulled and then tons of water are then dropped on it, producing a massive steam cloud. On a cycle of once every ten minutes. I was transfixed by this shot (others left or fell asleep), and when the film was over I was rather irritated with myself in not having guessed that one of the changes digital media would bring to his style was that he would do even longer shots than 10 minutes – much longer shots. Since that film he has made many other films using really long shots.

So this long-take capacity of digital in turn gave birth to a movement called “slow film” in which long takes are one of the aesthetics given. Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark might be cited as the first of such films, it being a single moving take inside the Hermitage in St Peterburg – though I would argue it isn’t really a slow film in its sense of tempo. Just as the Oscar winning Birdman, a seeming single take film, also doesn’t really fit into the “slow film” category.

Lav Diaz of the Philippines is a better example of this – he makes films 8 or more hours in length, and inside them are many extremely long shots and indeed, the sense of pacing is glacial. He calls it Malay time. It can be argued that this kind of film existed before in Bela Tarr’s work, but digital media has allowed it to flourish and develop its own strategies and qualities. Though once again, most of these are still well-encased in more or less traditional cinematic forms, and remain essentially theatrical. Like most of cinema.

What I have touched on thus far – the economic shift and its consequences, and on one of the changes technologically – shot duration – and how it has altered film styles in the hands of some makers (including a handful of Iranian filmmakers I am aware of), for myself these remain somewhat marginal matters, and are but modest alterations on traditional cinema – just variations on the historical record, nothing genuinely radical.

So I would like now to shift and discuss what can be done, cinematically, with digital technology, something which is not just a modest extension of what was, but is potentially a genuinely radical change.

As noted earlier, when relatively low cost consumer digital video cameras came out in the mid-1990’s, there seemed an urgent insistence in the filmmaking community to figure out how to make the images look more like film. Algorithms, and filters and such were devised in this attempt. In short order video cameras were produced that shot at 24 fps as if there were some sacrosanct cinematic holy grail to be found in that number. At the same time many of the early cameras had an array of settings which were purely electronic – one could shift the shutter speed to 1/3rd or 1/4 of a second, or conversely a 10,000th of a second. Or use an electronic solarizing setting, or break the image into clearly discreet digital clumps by shooting in “mosaic”. Or one could do an in-camera setting, usually called strobe, that functioned as a real-time live-shooting optical printer. There were many settings, and frankly used directly they were rather stupid, and clearly the idea of an electronics guy as camera designer and not a filmmaker. But they were there, and in fact, in the hands of a curious artist, beautiful things could be done with them, and by a handful of people they were. I was one of those people. Unfortunately in my view, 10 years later, in the name of “professionalization” those choices no longer exist, and one must fight with the camera to get anything but a very clean slick “professional” digital TV image. The charms of earlier DV have been stripped away in the name of a kind of conformity. So I’d like to show a few clips of some of those early films of mine shot in older lower resolution digital video, as well of a few recent ones done in HD format.

(Clips of various DV and HDV films.)

If we can I will let Muri Romani carry on as I continue and finish:

I hope those give a hint of some of the qualities which I was speaking of. At the conclusion of this I’d like to show a few clips of works I think carry this much further.

The remaining aspect which digital media has radically altered is that of distribution and exhibition, which again, can change the nature of cinema. I have with me a hard-disk, a small portable one, and on it are files of almost my entire life’s work: 40 long films, many of my shorts, a few installation works. 20 years ago to have brought all this would have required a small truck. In the form on this disk – digital files – this work can be sent across the globe in a handful of minutes, or, as I already have it all uploaded onto my Vimeo VOD site, they can be streamed or downloaded now. Those 2 decades ago one would have had to seek out some esoteric festival or exhibitor, to have a one-time chance to see them.

To say courtesy of digital media in all its facets, works such as mine are now readily accessible rather than hidden far away. Of course the same problem still exists as does on the production side: one must compete with the tsunami of junk equally available. But at least there is a space for work to be seen. And that is a radical change from the past. And again, that does impact the possibilities of what cinema can and will be.

Travels Notes: Iran It happened as much of life does, rather by accident. My friend Jonathan Rosenbaum was in Tehran for some film conference, posting on Facebook, and I saw it and popped him a note asking he stick a foot in the door for me there.

#Iran #Iranian National Film School #Istanbul #Jonathan Rosenbaum #Leighton Pierce #Meidan Emam #Pear Blossom Highway #Scott Barley #Tehran

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aretia · 5 years ago

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Divorce Lawyer Magna Utah

Divorce has an inevitable fallout. It causes profound disruption—both internally and externally in almost all areas of life. With divorce come pervasive losses, an overload of major and minor life changes, a seemingly endless array of unfamiliar practical problems, and intense and wildly fluctuating emotions. Divorce demands the restructuring of relationships with former partners, with friends, and even with children, as a single parent. It necessitates the forging of a new identity and the building of a new lifestyle, and it motivates self-exploration and reappraisal. Divorce is synonymous with disruption, change, readjustment, and reorganization—and consequently with stress. Stress is generally worse for spouses who are left, particularly if they are unprepared for separation. Believing they have lost control over their lives, they often feel as if they are pawns at the mercy of their former partners. However, divorce is inevitably stressful for both spouses. With the exception of the death of a spouse, divorce has been identified as the most broadly disruptive and stressful event that people face in our society. Never attempt to navigate the complex maze of Utah divorce laws without the assistance of an experienced Magna Utah divorce lawyer.

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At the beginning of the twentieth century, every state in the union, with one exception (South Carolina), had some provision for absolute divorce. South Carolina had no divorce law in the nineteenth century, and, indeed, the South Carolina Constitution of 1895 provided that “Divorces from the bonds of matrimony shall not be allowed in this State” (Art XVII, section 3). Divorce did not arrive there until 1948.

During the century, the divorce laws of the various states differed considerably. There were “easy” states and “hard” states. The general shape of divorce law, at least officially, was much the same everywhere. To get a divorce, a person had to file a lawsuit in court. A good spouse filed suit against an (alleged) bad spouse. The plaintiff would claim that the defendant, the bad spouse, had done something wrong—something which gave plaintiff, the good spouse, valid “grounds” for divorce. In the tough states, the statutory list of “grounds” was short. In the easy states, the list was longer. The defendant was supposed to file an answer to the petition. At the trial, both sides could present evidence. In the end, the judge would decide whether or not the plaintiff had made her case. Or his case; though, in fact, most of the plaintiffs were women.

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Because of the interest of the state in maintaining the marriage institution, it is sometimes said that an action for divorce is a triangular suit involving husband, wife, and the state. The state is also interested in protecting the interests of persons not before the court. The plaintiff and defendant are usually represented by private attorneys; the state in most jurisdictions is represented merely by the court with no resources for extra-mural inquiry. In ordinary civil litigation, collusion is practically unknown. On the other hand, in divorce litigation it is common knowledge that the parties often do everything in their power to evade the requirements of the statutes and resort to perjury and fraud to accomplish their ends. This is especially true in uncontested suits which make up a large proportion of all divorce litigation. If the litigious theory of divorce actions is to continue, and it seems likely that it will for a long period, there ought to be resources to protect the interests of the state. The duty of supplying this protection should not be left to the already over-burdened courts alone, but should be delegated to some agency which has the time and the opportunity to look into the affairs of the parties outside of the court room. This agency should have the power to make reports and recommendations to the court.

In England, since 1860, the interests of the state have been protected by the King’s Proctor. His main duties are: (1) to intervene after a decree nisi, (2) to instruct and counsel at any stage of the litigation when so directed by the court, and (3) to take steps involving investigation and recommendations when collusion is suspected. The basic theory of the divorce counsel or proctor is that he acts as a special agent of the state to protect the community against too easy dissolution of the family and also assists in obtaining justice for the parties. In most American jurisdictions in the absence of statutes creating such an agency, the court before which the proceedings are pending represents the interests of the state and is charged with the duty of protecting those interests. It has been held that the Attorney-General, District Attorney, or other public officer is not permitted to intervene in behalf of the state, unless specifically authorized by statute to do so.

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Rights of Divorced Parties

Since absolute divorce terminates the relationship of the parties as married persons and restores both guilty and innocent parties to the status of single persons, either party is competent to contract a new marriage with a third person in the absence of statutory prohibition to the contrary.

Right To Alimony

The law allows alimony to the wife. It was that allowance which was made to her for her support out of the husband’s estate and was settled at the discretion of the ecclesiastical judge on consideration of all the circumstances of the case. Except for Parliamentary divorce, the only kind of divorce was from bed and board. Since it did not affect the husband’s right to the absolute ownership of his wife’s chattels, to collect her earnings, and to the sole use of her lands during coverture, it, of course, was necessary to make provision for her, which was generally about a third of her husband’s income. When in 1857 Parliament passed an act authorizing absolute divorce in restricted circumstances, it also provided alimony for the wife. By that time the English wife had some rights to her own property, so the courts had the new problem of considering what support was reasonable for the husband to furnish the wife.

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In a case arising shortly after the passage of the act the court said, “I consider, . . . that the wife ought not to be left destitute; on the other hand I think it would not be politic to give to wives any great pecuniary interest in obtaining a dissolution of the marriage tie.” Today alimony, strictly speaking, is an enforcement of the husband’s obligation to support the wife. Every jurisdiction granting absolute divorce has some kind of statute authorizing the court to provide for the support of the wife in divorce actions. Under ecclesiastical law, alimony was a money judgment against the person of the husband and was payable in instalments; so alimony, strictly speaking, is a money decree. Most of the states have statutes of this kind, although a number authorize an award of alimony out of the husband’s property. Some jurisdictions follow the rule of the ecclesiastical courts and do not permit a guilty wife, usually when she is an adulteress, to receive alimony.

In Utah, the determination of the amount of the alimony is left to the courts’ discretion. In arriving at a just award the courts take into consideration the health of the parties, their earning power, age, ability to pay, situation in life, etc. Frequently the courts are called upon to revise their awards. The courts have the power to place a reservation in their decrees allowing for change in the award at a later date if the circumstances warrant it. Such conditions as remarriage and change in finances warrant reconsideration of the amount. A decree for alimony is as much a judgment creating an obligation or debt as is any other judgment for money. Accordingly, a wife awarded alimony occupies the position of a judgment creditor of her ex-husband, and as such she is entitled to avail herself of all the remedies given to a judgment creditor. In some respects she is in an even stronger position than the ordinary judgment creditor, for the statute provides that the husband can be punished for contempt of court if he fails to obey the court’s order to pay, and he may actually be confined to jail. This is a common mode of alimony enforcement, both under the statutes and at common law. If you are seeking alimony from your spouse, speak to an experienced Magna Utah divorce lawyer.

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Utah divorce law has a provision for temporary alimony and suit money to the wife. Temporary alimony or alimony pendente lite is an allowance ordered by the court to be paid by the husband to the wife for her support during the pendency of the divorce action whether the suit is brought by herself or by the husband. The making of the award and the amount are in the discretion of the court.

Right To Custody of Children

Divorce, when there are children of the marriage, is often particularly unfortunate. The Courts are confronted with the necessity of determining which of the parties to the marriage shall have custody of the offspring. Today the decision regarding custody is based upon the welfare of the child, often an exceedingly difficult matter to decide when both parents can give emotional security and wise guidance and can supply a good home. In the United States, courts of law and of equity, aided by legislation, have modified the rule that the rights of the father are paramount as against what we consider to be for the welfare of the child; and furthermore, changes have been made in the rule that the father’s rights regarding his children were superior to those of the mother.

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Although our early courts did not usually decide so rigidly in favor of the father as did the English courts, the justices in determining what was improper detention of children from the father often favored him as against the mother, as, for example, in a New York case of almost one hundred years ago. Here a husband and wife with two children, a son and a daughter less than two years old, separated. An agreement was entered into in 1838 that the young daughter would remain with the mother and the son would temporarily stay with her. Eventually the son was to be given to his father; this was done. In 1839 the father secured habeas corpus writs for the unlawful detention of his wife and daughter by Mrs. Barry’s father, Mr. Mercein. This was the first of five habeas corpus writs that Mr. Barry sought. Several of them were discharged since the young daughter needed a mother’s care and there was therefore no unlawful detention. Finally the supreme court ordered the daughter, then several years older, to be delivered to her father.

Custody and The American Courts

When the problem of custody of children is brought before the court, it is the duty of the court to determine what is wisest for the child and how the interests of the parents, the child, and the community can best be effected. Problems of custody are brought before courts of various jurisdiction under the following conditions:

• When the child is dependent, neglected or delinquent. The court with jurisdiction is the juvenile court which ideally has resources for careful inquiry, which exercises equity jurisdiction, and which acts for the welfare of the child.

• When one or both parents are deceased and a testamentary guardian has been named. Such actions are brought to the probate courts • which are usually without resources to determine what are the best interests of the child.

• When both parents are deceased, no testamentary guardian has been named, and property is involved. These cases also come into the probate court.

• When the parents are legally separated or divorced or are seeking legal separation or divorce. Here the question of custody is decided by the court having divorce jurisdiction which is frequently without resources to determine what is for the welfare of the child.

• When the child is mentally or physically disabled. The court with jurisdiction is sometimes the juvenile court and sometimes the court with authority to commit to institutions.

Before the rights of wives and mothers were equal to those of husbands and fathers, the courts gave preference to the father who was the natural guardian and prima facie entitled to the custody of his minor child. Today if the parents are equally fit some external condition can usually be found that enables the court to decide in terms of the welfare of the child. Sometimes the custody is divided, some children going with one parent and some with another, or all of the children going with one or the other parent for certain periods of time. The decision of the court is based upon the welfare of the child and not on the superior rights of the father. In determining what is for the best interests of the child, the court will consider ties of nature and of association, character and feelings of the parties contending for the custody, the age, health, and sex of the child, the benefits of education and development, and the pecuniary prospects. When the child has reached the age of discretion, he will often be allowed to make his own choice; the court is not bound by his wish if the custody would be improper. It laid down the principle that while neither parent has an absolute right to the custody of minor children, nevertheless the respective claim of each of the parents will be considered. Custody is usually awarded to the innocent and injured party; it is rare indeed that the mother who prevails in a divorce suit will be deprived of the custody of a daughter of tender years.

Today, in the United States the welfare of the child determines which parent shall be given custody, and it may even be given to the “guilty” party. With divorce granted for causes other than adultery in most American jurisdictions, there is little reason for preservation of the theory that custody be given to the innocent spouse. Husband and wife, whether plaintiff or defendant, are often equal; and in awarding custody the welfare of the child, rather than the innocence or guilt of the parties to the divorce action, should be the ultimate determining factor.

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In divorce actions, jurisdiction over care, custody, education, and support of children is either statutory or inherent in a court of equity. Without exception, the statutes make the court’s power regarding custody a discretionary one. The commonest type of statute provides that the court may make such orders as are “necessary and proper,” “just and proper,” “reasonable,” “expedient,” etc. Other elements mentioned are safety, well being of the child, age and sex, the circumstances of the parents and of the case, the child’s choice, if he is of sufficient age to choose, and the child’s happiness, comfort, and spiritual welfare.

The general doctrine of the United States courts is that in divorce actions the jurisdiction over both custody and support of children is a continuing one, and that the courts may modify and change the order when circumstances render such changes proper. The order for custody is usually until “further order of the Court” or “during the child’s minority.” The courts consider remarriage, increased age of the child, and changed financial conditions sufficient cause for a petition to reconsider the question of custody and support. In a 1919 Wisconsin case a woman who had been divorced only three months, married in another state and returned to Wisconsin to live, in spite of the fact that remarriage is prohibited to divorced persons for one year. The Wisconsin high court held that this did not conclusively show moral unfitness of the woman to rear her four-year-old daughter and that no change of custody was desirable or necessary. In a New York case the father, an adulterer, remarried in violation of the divorce statute. He later attempted to acquire the custody of the child which had been given to the mother. The court held that the greater wealth of the father was no reason to remove the custody from the mother; there were no new conditions affecting the welfare of the child which required a change in the order regarding her custody.

The “Best-Interests-of-the-Child” Doctrine

In 1809 a South Carolina equity court heard Jennette Prather’s demand for a separation from her husband and the custody of her children. She charged her mate with living openly in adultery. The judges easily complied with her first request, but hesitated in granting the second. Chancellor Henry De Saussure was mindful, he said, of the father being the children’s “natural guardian, invested by God and the law of the country with reasonable power over them. Unless his parental power has been monstrously and cruelly abused, this court would be very cautious in interfering with the execution of it.” The court finally denied the errant husband his full parental rights. It gave the custody of an infant daughter, though not of the older children, to Jennette. In doing so, the judges acknowledged that they were treading on uncertain legal ground.

The ambivalence of the South Carolina court reveals the conflicting pressures on the post-Revolutionary bench generated by custody disputes between mothers and fathers. Traditional male authority over the family remained a fundamental tenet of family law. But a growing concern with child nurture and the acceptance of women as more legally distinct individuals, ones with a special capacity for moral and religious leadership and for child rearing, undermined the primacy of paternal custody rights.

Courts Create New Custody Rights

The Prather opinion also shows how judicial discretion could be used to restrict paternal rights and align the law with new gender beliefs. Judges like those on the South Carolina court began to enlarge their authority to determine if a father had so clearly abused his domestic authority that custody should be forfeited. They used the era’s faith in the innate childrearing capacities of women as counterweights to paternal economic and political power and judicial policy-making prerogatives as counterbalances to domestic patriarchy. Judicial innovations like Prather v. Prather spread throughout the nation by winning the support of more and more state judges. Custody rulings increasingly devalued paternally oriented property-based standards, emphasizing instead maternally biased considerations of child nurture.

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This rearrangement of custody preferences occurred as the state judiciary resolved suits triggered by separation, divorce and death. The exact incidence of marital dissolution in early nineteenth-century America is difficult to determine. Though in the popular mind, marriage remained a contract for life and its breakdown a source of shame, the number of divorces rose steadily, as no doubt did separations. Divorce records in New Jersey disclose that between 1788 and 1799 only thirteen formal marital dissolutions occurred, but in 1860 alone eighty-six couples formally severed the marital knot. A liberalization of divorce and separation statutes occurred as well. Much like the change in child legitimation procedures, divorce came to be seen as an act that should be routinely available and under the direction of the bench, not the legislature. Pennsylvania became the first state to make the change in 1816; other states followed gradually.

Attempts by the bourgeois white women involved in these collapsing marriages to secure superior rights for motherhood constituted the strongest assault on paternal custody rights. These mothers used their newly enshrined domestic virtues as a wedge for extending the legal boundaries of their sphere. Their efforts sparked spousal, legislative, and judicial battles over child custody and guardianship that sped legal change.

A Pennsylvania couple discovered the subtleties of the emerging American law of custody in 1813. Joseph Lee petitioned for the custody of his children after he obtained a divorce from his adulterous wife Barbara. The husband contended that his wife’s misdeeds and subsequent marriage to her paramour in violation of a state ban on such unions disqualified her from rearing the couple’s seven- and ten-year-old daughters. Chief Justice William Tilghman, citing the Delaval decision to legitimize his assumption of discretion, expressed the court’s “disapprobation of the mother’s conduct.” But he noted that her care of the two girls had been faultless.”[O]ur anxiety is principally directed,” he explained, “to the children. It appears to us, that considering their tender years, they stand in need of the kind of assistance which can be afforded by none so well as a mother.” Consequently, “It is on their account . . . that exercising the discretion with which the law has invested us, we think it best at present not to take them from her.”

The court monitored the situation, however, and three years later Joseph triumphed. Tilghman again relied on the court’s determination of filial needs, now ruling the girls’ maturity rendered them less dependent on maternal nurture. Invoking his power to place children, the judge argued that two potential wives should not be reared by a mother who had flaunted the marital vow. “At the present they may not reflect upon it,” the jurist concluded, “but soon they will, and when they inquire why it was that they were separated from their mother, they will be taught, as far as our opinion can teach them, that in good fortune or bad, in sickness or health, in happiness or misery, the marriage contract, unless dissolved by the law of the country, is sacred and inviolable.”

The judicial disposition to emphasize child welfare in determining custody began to refashion the preferences of the common law. The “best interests of the child” became a judicial yardstick used to measure all claims for children. Its dramatic impact is most apparent in the resolution of disputes between the natural parents for their children.

The mother who was an injured party in a divorce was an early beneficiary of these shifting standards. In 1815 Chancellor Kent granted a bed-and-board divorce (a formal separation) and custody of a six-year old girl to a woman who proved to the court’s satisfaction that her mate drank habitually and physically abused her. The awards of child custody to women in such suits strengthened the judicial tendency to equate motherhood with child care.

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By the 1820s traditional paternal custody rights had declined so precipitously that some judges began to seek a means by which fathers could be given presumptive but not absolute rights. An 1834 Massachusetts decision suggests the bench’s quandary. Samuel Thatcher secured a writ against his wife Mehitabel and her father Wales Briggs for the return of his son. Mehitabel had left her husband without benefit of formal legal proceedings and returned to her parents’ home, complaining bitterly that Samuel’s drinking made life unbearable and left him unfit to be a husband or father. Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw denounced the judicial encouragement of the unauthorized separation of husband and wife that he thought resulted from granting women who had not obtained divorces or legal separations custody of their children. He upheld the discretionary right of judges to use the “good of the child [as the] prominent consideration” in awarding custody of “a child of tender years,” but ruled that only where a man was proven unfit — he cited the example of a vagabond — could mothers claim custody. In general, “the father is by law clearly entitled to the custody of his child.” In this case, Samuel Jr. was returned to his paternal abode. These issues became more acute as divorce ceased to be a legal rarity, and most likely the province of the wealthy. As divorce became more common and percolated downward in the American class structure, parental custody disputes may have become more complicated. The inability of working class fathers, and many middle class ones, to secure corps of nurses and servants, as wealthy men could, is but one example of the new issues thrown up by the changing demographics of nineteenth century divorce.

Treatise writers began to devise new balancing tests for assessing competing parental custody claims. Chancellor Kent noted and accepted the changes in custody law in his influential Commentaries. Maintaining that a “husband was the best judge of the wants of a family,” he nevertheless cited Lord Mansfield and a number of American decisions to contend that paternal custody rights could be overruled when, as he put it, “the nature of the case appears to warrant it.” The jurist accepted the diminution of paternal rights, despite his sentiment that the father is “the independent . . . Lord of [his] fireside.” Joseph Story reached a similar conclusion in his treatise on equity. He paid homage to the traditional ideal of patriarchy, but in fact urged judges to examine the fitness of each parent when selecting a custodian, admitting his own inclination to place a girl of “very tender years” with her mother.

By the 1830s legislators began to codify these judicial innovations. In an 1830 code revision, the New York legislature recognized that husbands and wives were leaving one another despite the state’s strict divorce laws. Unwilling to leave child custody to informal agreements, they authorized women to apply for writs of habeas corpus to let the courts settle the placement of the child. In one of the first judicial tests of the law, a vice chancellor declared in 1840 that the legislature had “neutralized the rule of the common law as annulling the superiority of the patria potestas and placing the parents on an equality as to the future custody of the children, even if it does not create a presumption in favor of the wife.” Massachusetts passed a similar statute in the 1840s with an even more explicit charge to the courts: “[T]he rights of the parents to their children, in the absence of misconduct, are equal and the happiness and welfare of the child are to determine its care and custody.”

A widely publicized custody fight in the 1840s between Ellen Sears, the daughter of a wealthy Boston manufacturer, and the Baron D’Hauteville, a Swiss nobleman, spelled out the implications of these legal developments. The pair parted over the wife’s dissatisfaction with her husband’s filial dependence and his refusal to spend part of each year in America with her family. Fearing that the Baron might try to seize his heir, a son born in Boston, the mother searched the Atlantic coast for a maternal custody haven. Eventually she chose Philadelphia because appellate court rulings in Pennsylvania favored mothers. The state bench vindicated her choice when it rebuffed her husband’s challenge to its jurisdiction over the boy, and then rejected his argument that paternal custody rights are paramount in the absence of clear proof of unfitness.

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In a careful amalgamation of English and American decisions, the state supreme court argued that “the reputation of a father may be stainless as crystal, he may not be afflicted with the slightest mental, moral, or physical disqualification from superintending the general welfare of the infant . . . and yet the interest of the child may imperatively demand the denial of the father’s right, and its continuance with the mother.” Such was the situation with the two-year-old boy before them, the judges asserted. They concluded with a paean to motherhood: “[N]ot doubting that parental anxiety would seek for and obtain the best substitute which could be procured, every instinct of humanity unerringly proclaims that no substitute can supply the place of her, whose watchfulness over the sleeping cradle or waking moments of her offspring is prompted by deeper and holier feelings than the most liberal allowance of a nurse’s wages could possibly stimulate.” The court ordered the child to stay with its mother. John Cadwallader, the victorious woman’s attorney, aptly summarized the growing gender orientation of custody law: “Everyone knows that a father is unfit to take care of an infant; physically unfit and unfit by reason of his avocations.”

A Massachusetts lawyer published an anonymous pamphlet in protest. He attacked the contention that a wife could be granted custody without proving her husband had violated his spousal or fatherly duties. The unity of the husband and wife, he claimed, blocked such an outcome. Married women had no separate custody rights, just as they had none to sue or make a contract. Questioning the judiciary’s growing authority over child placement, the attorney charged that the Pennsylvania decision represented “nothing less than an assumption of power by a court . . . to determine the domestic arrangements of a man’s family.”

Joel Bishop’s 1852 treatise on marriage law took that judicial responsibility for granted. A father’s right, he explained, “is not an absolute one, and is usually made to yield when the good of the child, which, especially according to the modern American decision, is the chief matter to be regarded, requires that it should.” Parental rights were constrained by the new legal assumptions that “children are not born for the benefit of the parents alone, but for the country; and, therefore, that the interest of the public in their morals and education should be protected”; and that “children, though younger in years have themselves an interest more sacred than their parents, and more deserving of protection.” Bishop asserted in conclusion that “no parent has properly an interest in the mere custody of a child.”

Similar reasoning led post-Revolutionary judges and legislators to reassess guardianship. Fathers continued to be considered the proper legal guardians of children. Most states codified paternal guardianship with few alterations from English practice. Even Thomas Jefferson’s liberal revision of the Virginia statutes took paternal testamentary power for granted. Many men apparently appointed their wives, but the law’s longstanding premise was retained in the new republic: children should be distributed as men saw fit. Tapping Reeve made that point by noting that mothers “during coverture, exercised authority over their children; but in a legal point of view, they are considered as agents for their husbands, having no legal authority of their own. After the death of the husband, they often have this authority. Indeed, it is an immaterial inquiry whether they possess this authority in character of parent, mistress, or guardian.”

Even when a mother managed to secure the guardianship of her children, the law placed special restrictions on her authority. Compared to fathers, mothers had less claim to their children’s services, less control of their property, fewer defenses to removal from office, and inferior custody rights. The law made custody dependent on support, and the general assumption that widows lacked financial independence undermined their demands for guardianship, as it did many other feminine claims. Diminished guardianship merely echoed the plight of widows in early nineteenth-century America. More often than not they were viewed as objects of pity and feared as potential drains on community resources. Consequently, unlike in Colonial America, widows, to an even greater extent than other women, were seen as persons in need of protection rather than as individuals with valid claims for legal rights such as custody.

However, the new approach to child placement in custody litigation compelled judges and legislators to reformulate maternal guardianship. In 1835, when a New Jersey mother challenged the school selected by her son’s testamentary guardian, an equity judge pointedly reminded the woman of her legal impotence. After a father appoints a testamentary guardian, he lectured, “the natural right of the mother must yield to the will of the father. It is paramount and testamentary guardianship is considered a continuation of the father’s authority.” But his court did not suffer from such constraints. Expressing distrust of the guardian’s choice, he used his discretionary powers to act in the boy’s best interests, and in that way complied with the mother’s request.

Judges rewrote guardianship law not only by circumscribing paternal power but also by enlarging maternal authority. For example, the traditional common-law rule that remarriage extinguished maternal guardianship fell afoul of judicial sentiments. Their newfound faith in women’s child-rearing instincts led jurists to question the assumption that a remarried woman’s maternal responsibility would be superseded by the deference and affection she owed her new husband. In 1852 the Virginia Court of Appeals upheld the guardianship petition of a newly remarried woman against her former father-in-law. The state code allowed a mother to request the guardianship of her children after her husband’s death, and the justices decided that the “right was not lost by her remarriage, there being no legal guardian to the child; and the facts and circumstances disclose nothing which would induce the court, in the exercise of its discretion, to deprive her of the custody.” In issuing a similar ruling, an Alabama judge explained: “[I]t is safe to presume . . . that a mother . . . would be more careful of the moral, intellectual, and physical well-being of her children than any other person in the world.” Such instances of judicial rule making narrowed the gulf between maternal and paternal guardianship by placing both firmly within the bench’s ever broadening discretionary domain.

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Judicially inspired custody and guardianship changes shifted the child placement authority to the courts more than they changed the subordinate legal status of married women. Post-Revolutionary egalitarianism, popular democracy, and capitalist individualism significantly enlarged the capacity of most white males, but relegation to a special feminine sphere excluded wives and mothers from many of those benefits. Within their sphere, though, married women’s legal prerogatives did increase. That was particularly true of child-related rights because the canons of domesticity demanded that husbands defer to their wives in household matters and submit to feminine moral guidance. Married women gained a foothold in the law primarily in the form of protection for their special domestic responsibilities in republican households. The rapid enactment in mid-century America of laws protecting married women’s property thus represented the demands to free all forms of wealth for use in the market and the desire to shelter women and children from dissolute husbands more than they did attempts to turn wives into independent legal actors. Many advocates of women’s rights acted from the same assumptions as did judges and legislators; they merely wanted to secure the tenuous and contingent new legal privileges by statute. Their demands embodied what Canadian historian Linda Kealey terms “maternal feminism”; that is, although these women protested the “private/female and public/male dichotomy that characterized much of nineteenth century middle-class life,” their critique of society did not include a total rejection of middle class values. Instead they advocated “a transferral of private/female ‘virtues’ into the public/male sphere.”

Declaration of Sentiments

” issued at the first women’s rights convention in 1848 assailed men for framing the law of child custody after separation and of guardianship in disregard of the “happiness of women — the law in all such cases going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all powers into his hands.” Thereafter, custody and guardianship figured prominently in every women’s rights meeting and political campaign.

An 1854 address to the New York legislature set forth the basic arguments advanced in support of equal custody rights. The petition pleaded for the special nurturing abilities of women: “There is no human love so generous, strong, and steadfast as that of the mother for her child.” It attacked the law for being “cruel and ruthless” because man, “in his inordinate love of power,” used it to defy nature’s command to give children to women.

Gamblers and rum sellers had more secure legal rights to their children than did mothers. “By your laws,” it concluded, “the child is the absolute property of the father, wholly at his disposal in life and at death.” Its authors demanded that the legislature give mothers a superior right to their children.

Unlike the incremental adjustments to parental custody and guardianship rights made by the judiciary, the mass campaign for maternal rights generated a mixed, often hostile reaction.

Demands for formal custody rights secured by statute often met a far cooler public response. When a woman demanded statutory custody and guardianship rights, she would be heckled.

Many opponents of women’s rights resisted all significant changes in the legal status of women, not just those such as suffrage that would have clearly extended feminine authority outside the home. Women’s rights advocates countered these charges with the twin themes of equity and motherhood. They demanded that the law consider motherhood the equal of fatherhood. In an 1877 address to voters and legislators, the New York State Women Suffrage Society denounced laws that treated married women “as criminals by taking from them all legal control of their children, while those born outside of marriage belong absolutely to the mothers.” Feminists were outraged by this disparity between the custody rights of mothers of illegitimate children and those of married women.

Little came of the feminist agitation for rights protected by statute. Indeed, the lure of judicial supervision was so strong that it eventually frustrated the movement’s early victories. New York, the seat of the most organized women’s rights effort, passed the first major reform act in 1860. It enlarged married women’s property rights and declared a wife to be the “joint guardian of her children along with her husband, with equal powers, rights, and duties in regard to them, with her husband.” The lawmakers retreated almost immediately, amending the act in 1862 to require that husbands had only to obtain their wives’ consent before appointing testamentary guardians or indenturing their children.

New York judges had much earlier integrated the legislation into their custody determinations so as to preserve, indeed augment, their own power to govern domestic relations. A state tribunal rejected a mother’s contention that the 1860 act gave her independent custody rights. The justices held that her rights could be exercised only in conjunction with her husband unless she proved him to be an unfit father and spouse. “The common law remains, except as modified by the joining of the wife with him.” Determining that she had failed to prove her estranged husband to be an unfit father, they denied her petition.

In 1900 only the District of Columbia and nine states gave mothers the statutory right to equal guardianship. Most American commonwealths continued to grant the father testamentary powers, though many had begun to insist on maternal consent to the choice. By refusing to formalize maternal custody privileges, legislators left the issue to the common law creations of the bench, ensuring that judicial judgments of parental fitness and child welfare, not statutes, determined custody rights. It was one more instance of a disposition to rely on judicial discretion to protect women. In an 1858 self-help manual, Every Woman Her Own Lawyer, attorney George Bishop explained that the law empowered the bench to “give custody to the party that, in the court’s judgment, is most competent to bring them up with advantage to the children themselves and benefit to society.” As Bishop’s explanation intimates, declining paternal rights were not automatically supplanted by maternal ones. On the contrary, the law reduced the rights of parenthood generally. Courts applied judicially created standards of child welfare and parental fitness in order to take the ultimate decision of child placement out of the hands of both parents. Those standards included the best interests of the child, tender years, established ties, and priority to the innocent party in separation and divorce proceedings. These rules often biased custody determinations toward mothers; as important, they made clear the extraordinary increase in the bench’s domestic authority.

The “tender years” rule is an apt illustration of the growing body of rules devised by the courts to enhance their new powers. It decreed that infants, children below puberty, and youngsters afflicted with serious ailments should be placed in a mother’s care unless she was proven unworthy of the responsibility. Under it, mothers gained a presumptive claim to their young children, as in an 1860 New Jersey codification of the judicial creation: “[T]he mother is entitled to the custody of her children under the age of seven unless it affirmatively appears that, in her custody, they would be exposed to either neglect, cruelty, or the acquisition of immoral habits and principles.” Nine years after the act’s passage it won the full endorsement of the state court of errors and appeals. The justices declared that “it is not the dry, technical right of the father, but the welfare of the child which will form the substantial basis of judgment.”

The tender years doctrine institutionalized Victorian gender commitments. After mid-century, courts extended the policy by insisting that daughters of all ages were best cared for by their mothers. An 1876 Alabama divorce decision explained the rationale for broadening the rule. A woman, whose name the court refused to divulge, sued for divorce charging cruelty. The court refused her petition, but accepted the fact that the pair would continue to live apart. Agreeing that the woman had sufficient cause to do so, and to have custody of her daughter, the justices proclaimed: “All must feel, that no greater calamity can befall an infant daughter, than a deprivation of a mother’s care, vigilant precept, and example. A mother’s sympathy and culture exerts an influence on her life and character, perceptible only in its results. Therefore courts are reluctant to deprive her of the custody of her infant daughter and but seldom if ever, do so, unless misconduct is imputable to her.”

The doctrine achieved, in part, what the feminist agitation for statutory reform had sought: the presumptive right of women (or at least, women judged to be fit) to the custody of children in need of maternal nurture. But it proved to be a double-edged sword for women, revealing the weakness of using the argument of maternal instincts as a foundation for women’s rights. Judges could, and did, award to fathers the custody of children deemed to need a “masculine” domestic environment. Courts often split custody by giving fathers the care of older sons and mothers that of daughters and younger children. The Virginia Supreme Court considered such an action necessary in one case because, after the “tender nursing period has passed,” it became time for the masculine duty of training a boy for life outside the home. Though the policy led to the separation of siblings, it was rooted in the widespread conviction that specific gender skills and responsibilities should be transferred from mother to daughter, from father to son.

The tender years doctrine required the courts to devise broad standards for maternal fitness, ones then used in all custody deliberations. Legislators thrust this role on the bench as well. An 1853 Pennsylvania act allowed judges to give women child custody when their spouses proved to be abusive or poor providers as long as the mother afforded the child “a good example.” Similarly, an 1895 code revision qualified equal child-care rights with the stipulation that a mother could exercise them only on the condition that she be “qualified as a fit and proper person to have the control and custody of said child.” Such acts not only put the issue back in the courts, but they indicated a wariness about maternal fitness that accompanied all legal extensions of married women’s sphere.

The courts resolved the question of what constituted a fit mother by relying on what had become a family-law fiction of the reasonable woman. The Supreme Court of Georgia used that standard in 1854 to refuse the custody demands of an adulterous mother. In response to her spouse’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, she claimed that his cruelty and lack of financial support had forced her to flee with her daughter and take refuge with another man. The justices sustained a lower-court ruling that the child’s welfare would best be served by being returned to her father. They observed that while “there may be no difference in the sins of the man and woman who violate the laws of chastity,” in “the opinion of society it is otherwise.” Accordingly, when a man committed adultery, he did not automatically lose the respect of the community; his children would not necessarily be excluded from association with “decent people” and “may be educated to become good and useful members of society.” Adhering rigorously to the sexual double standard, the court reminded its audience that with “the frail female” the outcome was quite different. Having violated the marriage contract, the wife inevitably found herself reduced to “utter and irredeemable ruin, where her associations are with the vulgar, the vile and the depraved. If her children be with her, their characters must be, more or less, influenced and harmed by the circumstances which surround them.” Economic dependency limited maternal rights under the bench’s fitness standards as well. legal changes that increased maternal rights could not overcome the economic reality of feminine dependence. Maternal preference consequently could be a hollow right or a ticket to genteel poverty. New economic rights, such as the married women’s property acts, only partially alleviated the plight of mothers intent on keeping their children.

Divorce and Custody Law

The most direct, and long lasting, impact of the refinements in custody law symbolized by the tender years doctrine came in divorce. The act itself became much more common for Americans of all classes during the latter part of the nineteenth century; horrified family savers considered it a primary source of household and thus social disarray. Tighter divorce codes, in tandem with more stringent marriage regulations, failed to stem the tide. During the last decades of the century, divorce rose at a rate of over 70 percent. By 1900 courts handed down more than 55,000 divorce judgments each year. No longer a mere partnership, over the course of the nineteenth century it became a bond based primarily on affection and thus one that would all the more easily disintegrate as feelings changed. By officially dissolving a marriage rather than informally separating, the parties freed themselves, in most states, to enter another union formally, and protected their property and domestic rights — including custody.

Divorce remained an adversary process in which one spouse sued the other claiming injury. The most widely used and sanctioned grounds were adultery, desertion, cruelty, and drunkenness. With the exception of adultery these generally were charges made by wives, and during the period women won a customary right to file for divorce. In the late nineteenth century, more than two-thirds of all divorces were granted to women; child-custody awards often accompanied those decrees.

By 1867, thirty-three of thirty-seven American jurisdictions had substituted judicial for legislative divorce. These grants of domestic authority to the bench included a large discretionary power to award custody. Though judges constantly reaffirmed their allegiance to paternal supremacy, they used assertions of equity and children’s welfare to equalize custody rights.

Fault became the major criterion for awarding custody. In an 1891 revision of his treatise, Joel Bishop argued that “because one who has done well or ill in the marriage relation will be likely to do the same in the parental, all courts lean palpably to the innocent parent in the divorce when determining the consequential custody of a child.” Because women had chivalrously been accorded a customary right to file for divorce, fault was a boon to maternal custody rights.

The Mississippi Court of Errors and Appeals articulated the rationale. Louisa Cocke had been granted a divorce after proving her husband John’s adultery, but no disposition of the couple’s three-year-old son had been made. Louisa remarried and John demanded the child, claiming a father’s paramount custody rights. The court denied his writ: “After divorce the welfare of the child is the governing consideration. By the misfortune of its parents, it must be deprived of the care and attention of both of them which were due it, and it generally must be committed to one of them. It would be most unjust both to the child and to the mother that it shall be committed to the keeping of an unworthy father, whose misconduct may have caused the divorce from the mother, thereby inflicting a double wrong upon her as well as an injury upon the child.” The legal right of the father was “at an end.” The “father should not be permitted, when his own violation of duty has produced a dissolution of the marriage tie, to deprive the mother of her child to which she was entitled by fidelity to the marriage vow.” Fault could also prevent men from regaining custody of their children in later hearings to modify divorce decrees.

As in all areas of family law, maternal rights deferred in divorce custody deliberations to the double standard. According to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, “a woman who has been guilty of adultery is unfit to have the care and education of children, and more especially of female children.” Jennie Crimmins had been divorced by her husband Thomas for adultery. In 1882 she sought access to her children, complaining that Thomas had not only won custody of their children, but also deprived her of visiting rights. A New York court piously proclaimed that by her act she had ceased to “have any right to the care, control, education, or companionship” of the children. It called the idea of forcing Thomas to admit her into the “purity of the family . . . repugnant to every assessment of virtue and propriety.” The judges lectured the now childless woman that a mother was usually granted custody rights on the “natural supposition that her virtues, and the affection which she has for children, qualify her for the discharge of this duty.” In her case, “the sins of her life” justly led to a denial of those rights.

However, Victorian morality sometimes yielded to judicial concern for child welfare. Another New York ruling awarded a mother custody in an adultery case: “[T]he right of the husband here to the custody of the child seems . . . to be absolute, unless the good of the children themselves requires some other disposition.” Judges could at their discretion invoke the tender years rule to nullify evidence of unfitness; the rule permitted the bench to distinguish a woman’s parental fitness from her marital errors.

Maternal Preference

By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, traditional paternal custody and guardianship rights had been superseded in America; judicial decisions and complementary legislation had established a new orthodoxy, maternal preference. The chances of mothers gaining control of their children were greatly enhanced, and late in the century they became even more secure as a result of the prolongation of childhood through compulsory schooling and the emerging concept of adolescence. However, within that modern law, the bench had the final authority to determine the fate of a child when its parents parted.

American custody law over the course of the nineteenth century thus had rearranged spousal rights. Mothers gained new powers as custody and guardianship rights became part of the new legal domain of married women. Through the best-interests-of-the-child doctrine and its off-shoots, women won the right to go to court, fight for and often obtain their children. Custody, like many other legal policies, had rested on a view of the family as a community of interests governed by a male patriarch. The displacement of that ideal initiated many of the major domestic innovations of the century. Among other things, it ensured that parental fitness, not paternal rights, would be the focus of custody disputes and that judges would assume part of the paternal responsibility, formerly the province of the father. Utah has its own divorce laws, and frequently each county within a state follows somewhat different procedures. For this reason, you would do well to get some straight legal information from an experienced Magna Utah divorce lawyer about how Utah laws and Magna court procedures may affect you personally. The visit will not obligate you to hire the attorney if you do not choose to.

No Gault Divorce

In January 1970, California became the first state in the nation to put into effect a “no-fault” divorce law. The concept of no-fault removed the traditional notion that one party is guilty and the other innocent in divorce. Either spouse could obtain a divorce without the consent of the other and without having to prove marital wrongdoing. Irreconcilable differences became satisfactory grounds in the eyes of the law. Since that time, virtually every state has passed some form of no-fault laws.

In general, continuing alimony (called spousal support or maintenance in many states) is also a thing of the past. Spousal support, when awarded, is usually temporary and designed to give a spouse time and opportunity to become self-supporting. Exceptions may be made in long-term marriages or when a spouse has poor employment prospects due to age or health. Each state has its own guidelines.

All states now have child support guidelines, which usually consider at least the parents’ incomes and necessary expenses. In most states, judges have discretion to consider other issues and modify the guidelines. States are now required by the federal government to take steps to enforce child support orders, and they are becoming increasingly aggressive in doing so. Wage attachments and parent-locator services are widespread. Some states withhold drivers’ licenses and professional licenses for failure to pay. Some states are prosecuting deadbeat parents. Although enforcement is improving, state laws are effective to varying degrees. The federal government is also getting into the enforcement business, now attaching income tax refunds.

How marital property is divided varies, once again, from state to state. Some states have community property laws, but the great majority have equitable distribution laws. Generally, in community property states each spouse is entitled to an equal share of the marriage assets, although in some states the court has discretion to consider other factors, such as marital wrongdoing, when dividing assets. Equitable distribution laws, at least theoretically, emphasize fairness rather than equality. Although these laws vary from state to state, common factors technically considered include the duration of the marriage, respective contributions to it, support awards, likely financial circumstances in the future, minor children, health, and age. In some states, marital misdeeds are also considered. Judges in equitable distribution states have a great deal of discretion, and there is wide agreement that the lower-wage earner generally receives far less than 50 percent of the marital assets in these states.

In most states, marital property includes assets acquired during the marriage up until the date of separation, regardless of who has legal title to the property.

The concept of the best interests of the child floats in meaning. In law it sometimes refers to the child’s right to basic nurturance and physical care or, at other times, the child’s right to economic and social capital. There is evidence, however, that law often narrows the child’s best interests to thin and one-dimensional affective intersubjective relationships. Contemporary American family law has overlooked how the integrative tradition helped to define the rights and best interests of the child in modern human rights law. An excellent case study is found in the CRC adopted in 1989 and ratified by all member states except the United States and Somalia and considered the definitive international document on children’s rights (including within the United States, a nation deeply involved in drafting the document although it has not ratified it). The American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution reflects mainline legal thinking both in its approach to the rights of parents and children and in its alleged moral neutrality and commitment to family diversity. The report is famous for two salient moves relevant to parental rights and children’s rights and best interests. First, at the moment of family dissolution the report renders legal marriage and a range of cohabiting relationships equivalent before the law. Second, the report thinks about the rights and best interests of the child mainly from the angle of family disruption. Because of this, as noted previously, it views love and care largely as continuous of the child’s relationships with caregivers in order to minimize the stress to the child of family breakdown and change. To advance the best interests of the child at the time of family dissolution, the Principles promotes “predictability in the concrete, individual patterns of specific families.” In situations of family dissolution, the continued participation in the life of the child of parents by estoppel and de facto parents may be “critically important for the child’s welfare.”

This emphasis on the continuity of caretakers leads the Principles to formulate one of its strongest provisions: that dissolving families with children must file a “parenting plan” that outlines the role that parents (both biological and other caretakers) will take in the child’s life on legal rights, decision-making rights, visitation rights, where the child will live, and how to resolve conflicts.

There are, basically, two legal ways to end a marriage: divorce and annulment. Of course, there are also informal ways of ending a marriage. A man (less often a woman) can simply walk out into the night and never come back. This happens often enough; and it has a real impact on families. A couple that does not want to keep on living together can also decide, for whatever reason, to ask a court for a legal separation. In older sources, separation was often called “divorce from bed and board” (a mensa et thoro); and absolute divorce was called divorce “from the bonds of marriage” (a vinculis matrimonii). “Separation” is a better and less confusing term. A legally separated couple will live apart, still officially married, but often with the same kinds of arrangements a divorced couple might have, about custody, property division, and support for the dependent spouse.

Some couples separate, as a kind of prelude to divorce. They execute a separation agreement, to be incorporated into later divorce proceedings. Legal separation and annulment are substitutes for divorce— one quite feeble, the other quite powerful. Legal separations keep a thin version of a marriage alive. Annulments are hard to get (in theory). But if a marriage is annulled, both parties can remarry; indeed, this is usually the point of an annulment. Both annulments and legal separations appeal mostly to people with religious scruples against divorce—devout Catholics, very notably. The legal story of divorce in the twentieth century was basically of how this dual system decayed—at first rather slowly, then, after 1970, in almost a helter-skelter rush. Change started with a bang, in 1970, when California enacted the first so-called no-fault statute. The statute got rid of the very word “divorce,” and changed its name to “dissolution of marriage.” It provided that a court “may decree” a dissolution if “irreconcilable differences” have caused the “irremediable breakdown of the marriage.” The reformers who drafted and lobbied for this law clearly intended that the court would not be a mere rubber stamp. The law defined “irreconcilable differences” as “those grounds which are determined by the court to be substantial reasons for not continuing the marriage.” This seemed to be asking the court to conduct some sort of hearing, and make some findings of fact. Indeed, the statute went on to say that “If from the evidence at the hearing, the court finds that there are irreconcilable differences,” it can order the dissolution of the marriage. The court could also continue the case for thirty days, if there was a “reasonable possibility of reconciliation.”

This is not really divorce on demand—at least not if you read the text literally. But as is so often the case, the text is no guide to what actually happened. Almost immediately, the hearings disappeared, the thirty-day continuances disappeared, the taking of evidence disappeared, conciliation disappeared. The statute came to mean simply this: if either party wanted out, and for any reason, the marriage was over.

Call Ascent Law LLC

Utah divorce laws are complex. Although you can seek a divorce in Utah on no fault grounds, you need to submit the right forms to the court. Seek the assistance of an experienced Magna Utah divorce lawyer if you are seeking a divorce from your spouse. Besides the no fault grounds, Utah divorce law allows you to seek a divorce on various other grounds such as adultery, cruelty, abandonment, etc.

Magna Utah Divorce Lawyer Free Consultation

If you have a question about divorce law or if you need to start or defend against a divorce case in Magna Utah call Ascent Law LLC (801) 676-5506 for your Free Consultation. We can help you with Divorce. Child Custody. Child Support. Alimony. Annulments. Prenups. Postnups. Guardianships. Conservatorships. Modifications of Decrees. Paternity Cases. And Much More. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

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mayarosa47 · 5 years ago

Text

Divorce Lawyer Magna Utah

Rights of Divorced Parties

Right To Alimony

Right To Custody of Children

Custody and The American Courts

• When both parents are deceased, no testamentary guardian has been named, and property is involved. These cases also come into the probate court.

• When the child is mentally or physically disabled. The court with jurisdiction is sometimes the juvenile court and sometimes the court with authority to commit to institutions.

The “Best-Interests-of-the-Child” Doctrine

Courts Create New Custody Rights

Declaration of Sentiments

Unlike the incremental adjustments to parental custody and guardianship rights made by the judiciary, the mass campaign for maternal rights generated a mixed, often hostile reaction.

Demands for formal custody rights secured by statute often met a far cooler public response. When a woman demanded statutory custody and guardianship rights, she would be heckled.

Divorce and Custody Law

Maternal Preference

No Gault Divorce

In most states, marital property includes assets acquired during the marriage up until the date of separation, regardless of who has legal title to the property.

Call Ascent Law LLC

Magna Utah Divorce Lawyer Free Consultation

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

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Family Lawyer American Fork Utah

Alimony For Cheaters In Divorce

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from Criminal Defense Lawyer West Jordan Utah - Blog http://criminaldefenselawyerwestjordanutah.weebly.com/blog/divorce-lawyer-magna-utah

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advertphoto · 5 years ago

Text

Divorce Lawyer Magna Utah

youtube

Rights of Divorced Parties

Right To Alimony

youtube

Right To Custody of Children

youtube

Custody and The American Courts

• When both parents are deceased, no testamentary guardian has been named, and property is involved. These cases also come into the probate court.

• When the child is mentally or physically disabled. The court with jurisdiction is sometimes the juvenile court and sometimes the court with authority to commit to institutions.

youtube

The “Best-Interests-of-the-Child” Doctrine

Courts Create New Custody Rights

youtube

Declaration of Sentiments

Unlike the incremental adjustments to parental custody and guardianship rights made by the judiciary, the mass campaign for maternal rights generated a mixed, often hostile reaction.

Demands for formal custody rights secured by statute often met a far cooler public response. When a woman demanded statutory custody and guardianship rights, she would be heckled.

Divorce and Custody Law

Maternal Preference

No Gault Divorce

In most states, marital property includes assets acquired during the marriage up until the date of separation, regardless of who has legal title to the property.

Call Ascent Law LLC

Magna Utah Divorce Lawyer Free Consultation

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Is A Spouse Responsible For Medical Bills After Death?

Family Lawyer American Fork Utah

Alimony For Cheaters In Divorce

Trademark Rights

IRS Tax Bills

Can I Put A Trademark On My Logo?

Source: https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/divorce-lawyer-magna-utah/

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gonnagoandrunwiththehorses · 5 years ago

Text

Divorce Lawyer Magna Utah

youtube

Rights of Divorced Parties

Right To Alimony

youtube

Right To Custody of Children

youtube

Custody and The American Courts

• When both parents are deceased, no testamentary guardian has been named, and property is involved. These cases also come into the probate court.

• When the child is mentally or physically disabled. The court with jurisdiction is sometimes the juvenile court and sometimes the court with authority to commit to institutions.

youtube

The “Best-Interests-of-the-Child” Doctrine

Courts Create New Custody Rights

youtube

Declaration of Sentiments

Unlike the incremental adjustments to parental custody and guardianship rights made by the judiciary, the mass campaign for maternal rights generated a mixed, often hostile reaction.

Demands for formal custody rights secured by statute often met a far cooler public response. When a woman demanded statutory custody and guardianship rights, she would be heckled.

Divorce and Custody Law

Maternal Preference

No Gault Divorce

In most states, marital property includes assets acquired during the marriage up until the date of separation, regardless of who has legal title to the property.

Call Ascent Law LLC

Magna Utah Divorce Lawyer Free Consultation

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Is A Spouse Responsible For Medical Bills After Death?

Family Lawyer American Fork Utah

Alimony For Cheaters In Divorce

Trademark Rights

IRS Tax Bills

Can I Put A Trademark On My Logo?

Source: https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/divorce-lawyer-magna-utah/

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asafeatherwould · 5 years ago

Text

Divorce Lawyer Magna Utah

youtube

Rights of Divorced Parties

Right To Alimony

youtube

Right To Custody of Children

youtube

Custody and The American Courts

• When both parents are deceased, no testamentary guardian has been named, and property is involved. These cases also come into the probate court.

• When the child is mentally or physically disabled. The court with jurisdiction is sometimes the juvenile court and sometimes the court with authority to commit to institutions.

youtube

The “Best-Interests-of-the-Child” Doctrine

Courts Create New Custody Rights

youtube

Declaration of Sentiments

Unlike the incremental adjustments to parental custody and guardianship rights made by the judiciary, the mass campaign for maternal rights generated a mixed, often hostile reaction.

Demands for formal custody rights secured by statute often met a far cooler public response. When a woman demanded statutory custody and guardianship rights, she would be heckled.

Divorce and Custody Law

Maternal Preference

No Gault Divorce

In most states, marital property includes assets acquired during the marriage up until the date of separation, regardless of who has legal title to the property.

Call Ascent Law LLC

Magna Utah Divorce Lawyer Free Consultation

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Is A Spouse Responsible For Medical Bills After Death?

Family Lawyer American Fork Utah

Alimony For Cheaters In Divorce

Trademark Rights

IRS Tax Bills

Can I Put A Trademark On My Logo?

Source: https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/divorce-lawyer-magna-utah/

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divorcelawyergunnisonutah · 5 years ago

Text

Divorce Lawyer Magna Utah

youtube

Rights of Divorced Parties

Right To Alimony

youtube

Right To Custody of Children

youtube

Custody and The American Courts

• When both parents are deceased, no testamentary guardian has been named, and property is involved. These cases also come into the probate court.

• When the child is mentally or physically disabled. The court with jurisdiction is sometimes the juvenile court and sometimes the court with authority to commit to institutions.

youtube

The “Best-Interests-of-the-Child” Doctrine

Courts Create New Custody Rights

youtube

Declaration of Sentiments

Unlike the incremental adjustments to parental custody and guardianship rights made by the judiciary, the mass campaign for maternal rights generated a mixed, often hostile reaction.

Demands for formal custody rights secured by statute often met a far cooler public response. When a woman demanded statutory custody and guardianship rights, she would be heckled.

Divorce and Custody Law

Maternal Preference

No Gault Divorce

In most states, marital property includes assets acquired during the marriage up until the date of separation, regardless of who has legal title to the property.

Call Ascent Law LLC

Magna Utah Divorce Lawyer Free Consultation

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Is A Spouse Responsible For Medical Bills After Death?

Family Lawyer American Fork Utah

Alimony For Cheaters In Divorce

Trademark Rights

IRS Tax Bills

Can I Put A Trademark On My Logo?

from Michael Anderson https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/divorce-lawyer-magna-utah/

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melissawalker01 · 5 years ago

Text

Divorce Lawyer Magna Utah

youtube

Rights of Divorced Parties

Right To Alimony

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In a case arising shortly after the passage of the act the court said, “I consider, … that the wife ought not to be left destitute; on the other hand I think it would not be politic to give to wives any great pecuniary interest in obtaining a dissolution of the marriage tie.” Today alimony, strictly speaking, is an enforcement of the husband’s obligation to support the wife. Every jurisdiction granting absolute divorce has some kind of statute authorizing the court to provide for the support of the wife in divorce actions. Under ecclesiastical law, alimony was a money judgment against the person of the husband and was payable in instalments; so alimony, strictly speaking, is a money decree. Most of the states have statutes of this kind, although a number authorize an award of alimony out of the husband’s property. Some jurisdictions follow the rule of the ecclesiastical courts and do not permit a guilty wife, usually when she is an adulteress, to receive alimony.

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Right To Custody of Children

youtube

Custody and The American Courts

• When both parents are deceased, no testamentary guardian has been named, and property is involved. These cases also come into the probate court.

• When the child is mentally or physically disabled. The court with jurisdiction is sometimes the juvenile court and sometimes the court with authority to commit to institutions.

youtube

The “Best-Interests-of-the-Child” Doctrine

Courts Create New Custody Rights

youtube

A Pennsylvania couple discovered the subtleties of the emerging American law of custody in 1813. Joseph Lee petitioned for the custody of his children after he obtained a divorce from his adulterous wife Barbara. The husband contended that his wife’s misdeeds and subsequent marriage to her paramour in violation of a state ban on such unions disqualified her from rearing the couple’s seven- and ten-year-old daughters. Chief Justice William Tilghman, citing the Delaval decision to legitimize his assumption of discretion, expressed the court’s “disapprobation of the mother’s conduct.” But he noted that her care of the two girls had been faultless.”[O]ur anxiety is principally directed,” he explained, “to the children. It appears to us, that considering their tender years, they stand in need of the kind of assistance which can be afforded by none so well as a mother.” Consequently, “It is on their account … that exercising the discretion with which the law has invested us, we think it best at present not to take them from her.”

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Treatise writers began to devise new balancing tests for assessing competing parental custody claims. Chancellor Kent noted and accepted the changes in custody law in his influential Commentaries. Maintaining that a “husband was the best judge of the wants of a family,” he nevertheless cited Lord Mansfield and a number of American decisions to contend that paternal custody rights could be overruled when, as he put it, “the nature of the case appears to warrant it.” The jurist accepted the diminution of paternal rights, despite his sentiment that the father is “the independent … Lord of [his] fireside.” Joseph Story reached a similar conclusion in his treatise on equity. He paid homage to the traditional ideal of patriarchy, but in fact urged judges to examine the fitness of each parent when selecting a custodian, admitting his own inclination to place a girl of “very tender years” with her mother.

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In a careful amalgamation of English and American decisions, the state supreme court argued that “the reputation of a father may be stainless as crystal, he may not be afflicted with the slightest mental, moral, or physical disqualification from superintending the general welfare of the infant … and yet the interest of the child may imperatively demand the denial of the father’s right, and its continuance with the mother.” Such was the situation with the two-year-old boy before them, the judges asserted. They concluded with a paean to motherhood: “[N]ot doubting that parental anxiety would seek for and obtain the best substitute which could be procured, every instinct of humanity unerringly proclaims that no substitute can supply the place of her, whose watchfulness over the sleeping cradle or waking moments of her offspring is prompted by deeper and holier feelings than the most liberal allowance of a nurse’s wages could possibly stimulate.” The court ordered the child to stay with its mother. John Cadwallader, the victorious woman’s attorney, aptly summarized the growing gender orientation of custody law: “Everyone knows that a father is unfit to take care of an infant; physically unfit and unfit by reason of his avocations.”

A Massachusetts lawyer published an anonymous pamphlet in protest. He attacked the contention that a wife could be granted custody without proving her husband had violated his spousal or fatherly duties. The unity of the husband and wife, he claimed, blocked such an outcome. Married women had no separate custody rights, just as they had none to sue or make a contract. Questioning the judiciary’s growing authority over child placement, the attorney charged that the Pennsylvania decision represented “nothing less than an assumption of power by a court … to determine the domestic arrangements of a man’s family.”

Judges rewrote guardianship law not only by circumscribing paternal power but also by enlarging maternal authority. For example, the traditional common-law rule that remarriage extinguished maternal guardianship fell afoul of judicial sentiments. Their newfound faith in women’s child-rearing instincts led jurists to question the assumption that a remarried woman’s maternal responsibility would be superseded by the deference and affection she owed her new husband. In 1852 the Virginia Court of Appeals upheld the guardianship petition of a newly remarried woman against her former father-in-law. The state code allowed a mother to request the guardianship of her children after her husband’s death, and the justices decided that the “right was not lost by her remarriage, there being no legal guardian to the child; and the facts and circumstances disclose nothing which would induce the court, in the exercise of its discretion, to deprive her of the custody.” In issuing a similar ruling, an Alabama judge explained: “[I]t is safe to presume … that a mother … would be more careful of the moral, intellectual, and physical well-being of her children than any other person in the world.” Such instances of judicial rule making narrowed the gulf between maternal and paternal guardianship by placing both firmly within the bench’s ever broadening discretionary domain.

youtube

Declaration of Sentiments

Unlike the incremental adjustments to parental custody and guardianship rights made by the judiciary, the mass campaign for maternal rights generated a mixed, often hostile reaction.

Demands for formal custody rights secured by statute often met a far cooler public response. When a woman demanded statutory custody and guardianship rights, she would be heckled.

Divorce and Custody Law

As in all areas of family law, maternal rights deferred in divorce custody deliberations to the double standard. According to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, “a woman who has been guilty of adultery is unfit to have the care and education of children, and more especially of female children.” Jennie Crimmins had been divorced by her husband Thomas for adultery. In 1882 she sought access to her children, complaining that Thomas had not only won custody of their children, but also deprived her of visiting rights. A New York court piously proclaimed that by her act she had ceased to “have any right to the care, control, education, or companionship” of the children. It called the idea of forcing Thomas to admit her into the “purity of the family … repugnant to every assessment of virtue and propriety.” The judges lectured the now childless woman that a mother was usually granted custody rights on the “natural supposition that her virtues, and the affection which she has for children, qualify her for the discharge of this duty.” In her case, “the sins of her life” justly led to a denial of those rights.

However, Victorian morality sometimes yielded to judicial concern for child welfare. Another New York ruling awarded a mother custody in an adultery case: “[T]he right of the husband here to the custody of the child seems … to be absolute, unless the good of the children themselves requires some other disposition.” Judges could at their discretion invoke the tender years rule to nullify evidence of unfitness; the rule permitted the bench to distinguish a woman’s parental fitness from her marital errors.

Maternal Preference

No Gault Divorce

In most states, marital property includes assets acquired during the marriage up until the date of separation, regardless of who has legal title to the property.

Call Ascent Law LLC

Magna Utah Divorce Lawyer Free Consultation

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Is A Spouse Responsible For Medical Bills After Death?

Family Lawyer American Fork Utah

Alimony For Cheaters In Divorce

Trademark Rights

IRS Tax Bills

Can I Put A Trademark On My Logo?

from Michael Anderson https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/divorce-lawyer-magna-utah/ from Divorce Lawyer Nelson Farms Utah https://divorcelawyernelsonfarmsutah.tumblr.com/post/190138167370

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michaeljames1221 · 5 years ago

Text

Divorce Lawyer Magna Utah

youtube

Rights of Divorced Parties

Right To Alimony

youtube

Right To Custody of Children

youtube

Custody and The American Courts

• When both parents are deceased, no testamentary guardian has been named, and property is involved. These cases also come into the probate court.

• When the child is mentally or physically disabled. The court with jurisdiction is sometimes the juvenile court and sometimes the court with authority to commit to institutions.

youtube

The “Best-Interests-of-the-Child” Doctrine

Courts Create New Custody Rights

youtube

Declaration of Sentiments

Unlike the incremental adjustments to parental custody and guardianship rights made by the judiciary, the mass campaign for maternal rights generated a mixed, often hostile reaction.

Demands for formal custody rights secured by statute often met a far cooler public response. When a woman demanded statutory custody and guardianship rights, she would be heckled.

Divorce and Custody Law

Maternal Preference

No Gault Divorce

In most states, marital property includes assets acquired during the marriage up until the date of separation, regardless of who has legal title to the property.

Call Ascent Law LLC

Magna Utah Divorce Lawyer Free Consultation

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Is A Spouse Responsible For Medical Bills After Death?

Family Lawyer American Fork Utah

Alimony For Cheaters In Divorce

Trademark Rights

IRS Tax Bills

Can I Put A Trademark On My Logo?

from Michael Anderson https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/divorce-lawyer-magna-utah/

from Criminal Defense Lawyer West Jordan Utah https://criminaldefenselawyerwestjordanutah.wordpress.com/2020/01/08/divorce-lawyer-magna-utah/

0 notes

coming-from-hell · 5 years ago

Text

Divorce Lawyer Magna Utah

youtube

Rights of Divorced Parties

Right To Alimony

youtube

Right To Custody of Children

youtube

Custody and The American Courts

• When both parents are deceased, no testamentary guardian has been named, and property is involved. These cases also come into the probate court.

• When the child is mentally or physically disabled. The court with jurisdiction is sometimes the juvenile court and sometimes the court with authority to commit to institutions.

youtube

The “Best-Interests-of-the-Child” Doctrine

Courts Create New Custody Rights

youtube

Declaration of Sentiments

Unlike the incremental adjustments to parental custody and guardianship rights made by the judiciary, the mass campaign for maternal rights generated a mixed, often hostile reaction.

Demands for formal custody rights secured by statute often met a far cooler public response. When a woman demanded statutory custody and guardianship rights, she would be heckled.

Divorce and Custody Law

Maternal Preference

No Gault Divorce

In most states, marital property includes assets acquired during the marriage up until the date of separation, regardless of who has legal title to the property.

Call Ascent Law LLC

Magna Utah Divorce Lawyer Free Consultation

Ascent Law LLC 8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite C West Jordan, Utah 84088 United States Telephone: (801) 676-5506

Ascent Law LLC

4.9 stars – based on 67 reviews

Recent Posts

Is A Spouse Responsible For Medical Bills After Death?

Family Lawyer American Fork Utah

Alimony For Cheaters In Divorce

Trademark Rights

IRS Tax Bills

Can I Put A Trademark On My Logo?

Source: https://www.ascentlawfirm.com/divorce-lawyer-magna-utah/

0 notes