Emancipation is often discussed like it is the severing of the parent/child relationship, something that the minor can do in cases where they would be better off striking out on their own. However, the actual effects of emancipation are more complicated and more narrow than a true severing of the relationship. Emancipation in Illinois is governed by the Emancipation of Minors Act of 1980, which allows for the emancipation of mature minors. Emancipation is a serious decision and should only be considered after people understand its effects, when it is available, and how to go about it.

The Effects of Emancipation

Emancipation is less like a severing of the relationship between a parent and a child and more like a child reaching adulthood. It severs a parent’s rights of control over the minor rather than the relationship as a whole, so things like inheritance would still function normally. Emancipation allows minors to enter into binding legal contracts, have financial and physical separation from their parents, and make medical decisions for themselves. It is also often used to allow homeless minors to take fuller advantage of government services than they could as part of their family.

Although the vast majority of child custody disputes are settled without either party resorting to illegal or otherwise improper tactics, those sorts of events do happen. One of the most serious of these illegal tactics is a parental abduction, in which one parent absconds with the child without permission. This can be particularly difficult to deal with if the parent leaves the country because getting foreign courts to send a child back to their home country can be both expensive and time-consuming.

In order to help prevent those types of abductions, the federal government places restrictions on passport applications for minors. The law requires both parents to consent to the child's getting a passport, so that one parent cannot simply get the child a passport and then leave the country. However, there are important exceptions to this rule that single parents should be aware of.

The Two-Parent Consent Rule

Divorce can often be a trying experience, but adding a mental illness to the process can often make things difficult. In fact, one study shows that marriages where one spouse has a mental illness are 20 to 80 percent more likely to end in divorce, depending on the illness in question. Of course, the exact way a mental illness will affect a divorce depends greatly on a variety of factors, such as the way the illness is managed and the type of illness. If the disease is well-managed and under control, then it may not affect the divorce much at all. However, poorly managed mental illnesses or those that affect the safety of people close to the mentally-ill spouse can take a more central role in the process.

Legal Issues

From a legal standpoint, there are two major ways that a mental illness can come into play during a divorce. The first is during issues of child custody. The second is when the illness presents a danger to the other spouse.

Child custody law is a complicated area where the well-being of a child is often at stake. Both the complexity and the stakes are often magnified when child custody decisions cross borders. At the end of 2013, the Supreme Court heard arguments on a case about such an international child custody decision. A mother had taken her child away from her husband in London to live with relatives in New York, alleging that her husband was abusing her and the child. The husband sought the return of the child under an international treaty. The Supreme Court recently handed down a ruling in the case, deciding that the treaty did not require them to order the child's return to London.

The Case

The key issue in this case is one of timing. The international treaty, The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, usually requires parents who abduct their children to another country to return them for a proper custody decision. However, there are some exceptions to the rule, and one such exception is if the parent has had the child in the other country for more than a year. This rules stems from concerns about the child's well-being and the fact that after a year the child is likely to have become settled in the new country.

Divorce is a time of great change in people's lives. This sort of change can often be disruptive to the normal routine. They can encourage people to start moving money around, or to try to move children out of reach of the other parent. This sort of gamesmanship can make divorces take longer and turn more acrimonious.

Consequently, the law provides a way of preventing these sorts of maneuvers, a dissolution action stay, named for the formal title of a divorce proceeding, a dissolution action. Dissolution action stays are a form of temporary restraining order that forbid certain behaviors by either member of the couple. These prohibitions go into effect either when the spouse who did not file for divorce receives formal notice of the divorce, or when he or she first appears in court, whichever occurs first.

What Dissolution Action Stays Prevent