Another open enrollment period for Medicare Part D has begun:

If you are a Medicare beneficiary, it is time to review your Medicare prescription drug plan options. The Medicare Part D open enrollment period began Thursday, November 15, 2007 and ends December 31, 2007. During the enrollment period, you can sign up for a prescription drug plan if you don't have one and you will be able to switch to a different plan if you choose to.

Here's an article regarding the huge and growing out-of-pocket costs that exist for people caring for aging relatives. The out-of-pocket cost of caring for an aging parent or spouse averages about $5,500 a year, according to the nation’s first in-depth study of such expenses, a sum that is more than double previous estimates and more than the average American household spends annually on health care and entertainment combined. The National Alliance for Caregiving did the study.

The question: Is the church marital property?

There was a sad but interesting piece here about a pastor and wife going through a divorce and the wife's claiming that the church itself is marital property just like any other small business. The ideas of a small business being "marital property" is nothing new...the sad part of it is the allegation that the pastor/husband was pillaging the church.

Hey, the violence in Iraq is interrupting my scheduled visitation:

In re Marriage of Saheb, No. 1-06-3304 (November 13, 2007) 1st div. (R. GORDON) Affirmed Trial court did not abuse its discretion when it, as part of joint parenting order awarding residential custody to the father, allowed the mother to exercise her visitation in the UAE despite it not being a signatory to the Hague Convention; because a) the father was able to obtain relief in the UAW when he petitioned to bar the mother from traveling with the parties' daughter to Iraq, b) the mother was required to post a bond, and c) the father was allowed to hold the child's visa, and the court found that visitation in the mother's home country was in the child's best interests. In addition, the father waived his objection to the GAL's oral report by failing to object to it; and the trial court was not obligated to follow all of the recommendations of the 604(b) evaluator.

Here's an interesting article about the scary impact of unmarried couples. Some of the impact of divorce and unmarried parents:

However, there are many other studies that, taken together, reinforce the concerns. Among the findings:

_Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents, according to a study of Missouri abuse reports published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005.

_Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents, according to several studies co-authored by David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center.

_Girls whose parents divorce are at significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father, according to research by Robin Wilson, a family law professor at Washington and Lee University.

My letter to the editor concerning the Trib. November 5, 2007 lead editorial:

What a disappointing position from the Tribune...essentially, because adultery is not uncommon our public policy should therefore not discourage it.

An important purpose of our civil litigation system, and specifically tort cases (such as alienation of affections), is to discourage certain types of behavior. Torts are not criminal behavior, so I suppose it is correct to say that people are "legally entitled to do" such acts. But, they are civil "wrongs" that we want to discourage...like doctors who screw up during surgery or the person who drives through the front door of my home.

I think marriage is something to be encouraged and a person's conduct that undermines marriage should be punishable. With the elimination of "fault" in the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act, the alienation of affections cause of action is the only punishment that is left. The tone of the Editorial, "courts...starting" to hand out these financial awards is misleading. This type of action has been around for hundreds if not thousands of years. Also, success in this sort of case is rare I think due primarily to judges allowing personal views to cloud their jurisprudence.

We should encourage greater use of the Alienation of Affection cause of action. Please don't discourage marriage Tribune.

Another useful holding recently was in Crank v. Crank. The case essentially deals with the issue of whether there are limits on how much a court can order to be paid toward past due child support or maintenance arrearages. The court said that a court must look to the Income Withholding for Support Act (750 ILCS 28/1) which caps payments at 50/60 percent of a person's disposable income depending on whether the support is current or past due.

Here's a piece about efforts that the IL Department of Children and Family Services are making to keep former wards in foster and permanent homes.

The piece said that some 8% of children that were adopted a decade ago returned at one time to the custody of DCFS. They're offering services to adoptive families in crisis, respite care, orthodontia, drug treatment and counseling.

The Trib. had an interesting and in my opinion wrong-headed lead editorial yesterday (11/5) opposing the "alienation of affection" tortuous cause of action. Illinois is I believe one of 6 states that continues to have this type of lawsuit. Here's the Illinois Alienation of Affections Act.

My view, what's wrong for a cause of action whereby adultery is labeled wrong and civil liability attaches? As a practical matter this type of lawsuit is very rarely successful. It's gotten some recent publicity due to this large verdict in Mississippi.