St. Louis Family Law Blog

The biological mother of a 5-year-old boy will have a chance to nullify the boy's 2008 adoption by Missouri couple. A retrial of the child custody matter is scheduled to begin Feb. 28, during which the mother, who was arrested and accused of being an undocumented immigrant in 2007, will argue to regain her parental rights over the boy.

We have previously discussed this child custody case in this blog, most recently on Feb. 1, 2011. Six months after the boy was born in Missouri, his mother, who had come from Guatemala to work at a poultry processing plant, was arrested during a raid of the plant by ICE.

February is National Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month in Missouri and across the U.S. As couples prepare to celebrate their love on Valentine's Day, it is a good time to remember that domestic violence is a reality for millions of teenagers, many of whom do not know where to turn to protect themselves from a physically or emotionally abusive boyfriend or girlfriend.

While people of any age can be a victim of abuse from their significant other, teenagers and young adults make up an especially large share of the victims. As many as 1.5 million high school students across the country are physically abused by a dating partner each year. When verbal and emotional abuse are included, the numbers are even more frightening: one out of three teenagers have been the victim of some form of abuse.

In general, when a person is charged with a crime in Missouri and cannot afford an attorney, the government provides an attorney to advise him or her and argue his or her position in court. But an arrest on criminal charges is not the only way people can end up in jail.

In most states, if a judge finds that a non-custodial parent has accrued a certain amount of unpaid child support and cannot or will not pay back the debt, the parent can be jailed on civil contempt charges. If the parent cannot afford an attorney, he or she will have to handle the case on his or her own, likely without much knowledge of his or her legal rights and how to deal with the legal system.

Once again, the Kardashian family is making news in the arena of family law. This time, the reality television stars are refuting claims made by two former wives of the late Robert Kardashian that daughter Khloe Kardashian is not his biological child. Statements Robert Kardashian made under oath around 1998 appear to support Khloe Kardashian's denial of those paternity claims.

Robert Kardashian, an attorney best known for helping represent O.J. Simpson in his 1995 murder trial, divorced Khloe Kardashian's mother in 1990 and married twice more before he died in 2003. In 1998, he sought to annul his marriage from his then-wife Kris. He filed a sworn affidavit with the court to support his contention that the marriage should be annulled due to his changing his mind over whether to have another child.