Adoption Tax Credit Update
The IRS recently posted new language regarding eligibility for adoption assistance or subsidy agreements. The IRS clarified the documentation required for claiming the Federal Adoption Tax Credit for special needs adoptions. The official language indicates that Adoption Assistance or Subsidy Agreements are acceptable documentation of special needs. Visit the IRS website to learn more.
According to Voice for Adoption, the Federal Adoption Tax Credit is now refundable. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148) made significant, short term, changes ...
Caylee Anthony – killed for child pornography?
Child advocate Wendy Murphy has a compelling piece about the Casey Anthony acquittal entitled "Not Guilty Verdict is the Right Result - But We're Not Done Yet."
Murphy argues that "Justice for Caylee is still possible, notwithstanding the acquittal, if people call for full disclosure of the entire investigative file - including an unsealing of the evidence thus far hidden from public view. Release of the photographs of Caylee that were seized from the Anthony home and placed “under seal” by the court would be a good place to start."
Law enforcement may have ...
Abused Child Victim Denied Lawyer at Psych Exam
Last month, a federal judge ruled that a child who is suing the Boy Scouts for emotional distress for abuse at a faith-based military camp is not entitled to have his lawyer present during a psychiatric examination.
In M.S. et al v. Cedar Bridge Military Academy et al, federal Magistrate Judge Martin C. Carlson found that a lawyer's presence "interjects an adversarial, partisan atmosphere into what should be otherwise a wholly objective inquiry."
Judge Carlson explained that there is a conflict between federal civil procedure and the Pennsylvania rules. The federal rule ...
International Adoption Racketeering
Using a strategy pioneered by my law firm in this 2006 lawsuit against JCIS and NCFA-certified World Child International Adoption Agency, five couples recently filed a federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) claim against Main Street Adoption Services, based in (where else - the epicenter of bad adoptions) Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
The plaintiffs claim the international adoption agency that promised each a baby from Guatemala scammed them in a "bait and switch" scheme. They accuse the agency and three individuals of conspiring with one another "for the ...
Court Okays Student’s MySpace Principal Parody
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has finally ruled that school officials cannot discipline students for ridiculing their principals on MySpace during their hours away from school.
As I discussed last year in the blog here, the Court agreed to re-hear both cases en banc (with the Court's entire 14 judges considering the case). In the first, J.S. v. Blue Mountain School District, the judges were sharply split, voting 8-6 to overturn a 10-day suspension of a student who posted a fake profile on MySpace that portrayed the principal as a pedophile and a sex addict.
The ...
Judge Overturns 6-Year-Old’s Expulsion Over Touching
A Philadelphia judge has ruled that a kindergartner should not have been expelled from a charter school because he allegedly touched his teacher’s thighs.
Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Paul P. Panepinto, writing an opinion explaining his decision to the Commonwealth Court May 23, said that, on the record before him, no reasonable person would have reached the same decision as the First Philadelphia Charter School for Literacy’s Board of Trustees to expel a student who allegedly touched his teacher’s legs after she complained that they hurt.
The ...
NY’s $1.4 million per disabled child = death and despair
Today's NYTimes has an excellent article about the horrors in New York's residential care system for the developmentally disabled. Despite spending as much as $1.4 million per resident, the "system" has failed most of its residents with sub-standard care, abuse and death.
These institutions spend two and a half times as much money, per resident, as the thousands of smaller group homes that care for far more of the 135,000 developmentally disabled New Yorkers receiving services.
But the institutions are hardly a model: Those who run them have tolerated physical and ...