Morris Singer's blog

It can be difficult to take the necessary steps to travel with your children after you have divorced your ex-spouse. But one thing makes it easier: picking a country that is a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

Is marriage not in the cards for you and your loved one? Are you planning a life with someone you cannot marry in your state?

Whether you simply think marriage is not the ticket for you, or you are, unfortunately, denied the chance to marry your partner, there are several ways in which not getting married can put a serious kink in planning your future together.

Between 1994 an 2003, the number of students permanently excluded from public education in Massachusetts more-than doubled.

Expulsion has had a disproportionate effect on minority students.

For those students who were expelled, there is no right to ever obtain education in the public schools.  On the contrary, once a student is expelled, no school in Massachusetts is obligated to accept the student into any of their programs.

In a single year, over 4,500 children in the United States were hospitalized due to child abuse, and three hundred of them died of their injuries, according to a new study performed by the Yale School of Medicine.  The study was published in the March 2012 edition of Pediatrics.

The study used several sources to track occurrences of child abuse, including data from child protective services agencies.  It was the first of its kind to quantiy the severity of the abuse, including whether an abused child was hospitalized.

A statute can be construed however one pleases. The courts have developed more than a handful of huristics to help them construe meaning from the scant words legislators enact into law.  Many of them bear impenetrable latin names, such as ejusdem generis and ipse dixit. In the abstract, these so-called canons of construction serve as fodder for legal trivia, even the kind queried for points on high-stakes law school exams.

Sometimes, however, they matter in the real world; to real people with real problems.

It used to be that sending your child to school meant there were a few hours during the day when you could take a mental break from your children. But chances are, if you're raising children these days, you don't feel that way. My guess is you worry about the safety of your children when they're out of your sight. If so, you're not alone.

Sufficient to say there are many things that parents worry about when their children are away at school. I won't take a lot of time to list them; my guess is that would be enough to drive most readers away from this post. But with bullying taking the front-and-center of our collective consciousness, there is at least one common scenario I think is worth talking about. I will also tell you what to do about it.

A tween boy took his own life. News watchers have been quick to think of bullying. But bullying or not, there are things each of us can do to help youngsters in need. After a spade of high-profile cases, most notably the suicide of South Hadley high-schooler Phoebe Prince, bullying is heavy on everyone's mind, especially when we try to determine what might be putting a child in despair. But working as hard as we can to prevent bullying is not the only way to reduce the number of children who take their own lives. Nor do we know whether or not it is the most effective way to do so.

Anxiety is perplexing. No, paralyzing. Sometimes, it makes us leave our reasoning skills behind. But, more peculiarly, we sometimes forget why we are afraid in the first place.

So it went for an expert interviewed for Deborah Slotnick's recent "Playdate Playbook" column. The column advised a parent wary of sending her daughter to a father-chaperoned sleepover with the daughter's friends. She quoted Tina Paone, Ph.D., a play therapist, mother of three, and founder of Counseling Center at Heritage, in Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania, who advised the parent to decline the invitation for her daughter to spend the night.

On Tuesday night, President Brack Obama called for compulsory school attendance across the nation. But simply making school attendance mandatory is to overlook a real blight on our system of secondary education.

In Massachusetts, where I practice law, a child who is expelled from her school is denied the ability to attend any school in the entire state. Ever.  It seems draconian, shocking, and unbelievable.

But it's true.

In an earlier blog post, I stated that the Supreme Court held that a warrant is required to put a GPS device on someone's car.  I was wrong.  Turns out, however, I was in the company of many people talking about the decision.