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Difference between revisions of "Further Topics and Overlapping Legal Issues in Family Law"
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Further Topics and Overlapping Legal Issues in Family Law (view source)
Revision as of 04:44, 22 April 2013
, 04:44, 22 April 2013→Issues affecting transgendered & transsexual people
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To be brutally frank, the jury is still out on how family law impacts on the trans community. Right now, the laws have slipped into a comfortable understanding of "the same or opposite genders" and only accommodates people on the spectrum in between with difficulty. While bisexuality is as close to a non-issue in this context as there can be, transgendered and transsexual people may well encounter difficulty in dealing with family law matters. This discussion offers only a gloss on some of the issues affecting this community. | To be brutally frank, the jury is still out on how family law impacts on the trans community. Right now, the laws have slipped into a comfortable understanding of "the same or opposite genders" and only accommodates people on the spectrum in between with difficulty. While bisexuality is as close to a non-issue in this context as there can be, transgendered and transsexual people may well encounter difficulty in dealing with family law matters. This discussion offers only a gloss on some of the issues affecting this community. | ||
If you have a family law problem and your orientation, gender or identity becomes an issue, contact a lawyer known to be sympathetic or activist on the issue, such as barbara findlay or another lawyer she can refer you to. | If you have a family law problem and your orientation, gender or identity becomes an issue, <span class="noglossary">contact</span> a lawyer known to be sympathetic or activist on the issue, such as barbara findlay or another lawyer she can refer you to. | ||
===Marriage=== | ===Marriage=== | ||
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===Children=== | ===Children=== | ||
Those who have discovered another self-identity during a relationship may find their new identities hotly at issue in the event that the living arrangements for any children must be decided in court. The problem here is that while shows like Will and Grace, The Birdcage and The L Word have made | Those who have discovered another self-identity during a relationship may find their new identities hotly at issue in the event that the living arrangements for any children must be decided in court. The problem here is that while shows like Will and Grace, The Birdcage and The L Word have made homosexuality something commonly understood and empathized with, nothing similar has popularized and explained the experience of the trans community. | ||
It can be very difficult for people, including ex-partners, to understand trans issues, and this problem is especially acute in courtroom discussions about the care and control of children. Often the most important task is to demystify the person's self-identity and explain why his or her self-identity has no impact at all on his or her ability to parent, nor on the expected outcomes for the children. | |||
On the bright side, the single reported case I was able to find in researching transgendered and transsexual family law issues dealt fairly positively with the subject. (This research is a few years old.) In ''[http://canlii.ca/t/fvzvc Forrester v. Saliba]'', 2000 CanLII 28722 ONCJ, a 2000 decision of the Ontario Court of Justice, the father of the child had begun the process of transitioning to female following the pronouncement of a consent order which provided that the parents would have joint custody of the child. The mother brought an application to vary the order to obtain sole custody of the child based on the stress and depression that affected the parents since the commencement of the transitioning process. Here are some interesting excerpts from the decision: | On the bright side, the single reported case I was able to find in researching transgendered and transsexual family law issues dealt fairly positively with the subject. (This research is a few years old.) In ''[http://canlii.ca/t/fvzvc Forrester v. Saliba]'', 2000 CanLII 28722 ONCJ, a 2000 decision of the Ontario Court of Justice, the father of the child had begun the process of transitioning to female following the pronouncement of a consent order which provided that the parents would have joint custody of the child. The mother brought an application to vary the order to obtain sole custody of the child based on the stress and depression that affected the parents since the commencement of the transitioning process. Here are some interesting excerpts from the decision: | ||
