June 2019 Webinar
Protective Parents in Custody Litigation: What Advocates Should Know
This webinar will take a sweeping look at what is happening to abuse survivors and their children in the nation's family courts, as well as recent efforts to change court practices both through litigation and legislation. It will share highlights of the findings from Professor Meier's 5-year empirical study, including rates at which courts do and do not believe mothers' claims of adult or child abuse and rates at which mothers are losing custody, with particular attention to cases in which fathers respond with alienation claims. It will also review recent collaborative efforts at impact litigation to generate corrective appellate law, positive developments in the media, and the most successful legal development to date: the unanimous adoption of House Concurrent Resolution 72 on Child Safety in Family Courts.
Free for members / $25 for non-members
Speaker
Joan Meier is the founder and legal director of the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project (DV LEAP). She has been a clinical law professor for 28 years at the George Washington University Law School, where she founded three pioneering and nationally recognized interdisciplinary domestic violence clinical programs. Joan founded DV LEAP in 2003 to provide pro bono appeals in domestic violence cases and just a few weeks ago, DV LEAP’s petition to the US Supreme Court asking it to hear a Hague Abduction Convention case was granted! DV LEAP has filed eleven amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court, and represented friends of the court and survivors of domestic violence in state court appeals all over the country and in the District of Columbia on a wide array of issues ranging from criminal law to family law to employment law. Joan has published widely on domestic violence, custody, and various Supreme Court decisions. DV LEAP and Joan also provide trainings for judges, psychologists, lawyers, domestic violence coalitions, and others on best practices in adjudication of domestic violence and family court litigation.