COVID-19: Protecting Children of Divorce in a Time of Pandemic Surges
In this edition of his Divorce Law column, Alton L. Abramowitz discusses a few decisions that represent the proverbial "tip of the iceberg" with respect to the protection of children at a time imbued with periodic surges of COVID-19 and its multiple variants. They provide us with proof positive of the basic premise that courts are still concerning themselves with the centuries' old standard of determining what is in "the best interests of children," inclusive of vaccination requirements.
February 08, 2022 at 12:00 PM
9 minute read
Serious times involving serious health risks bring about serious issues when children of a marriage are perceived by the courts to be endangered by the attitudes of a parent that oftentimes defy common sense, empirical data and the recommendations of governmental agencies invested with the obligation of informing and protecting the public at large. A headline in the Los Angeles Times of Jan. 18, 2022, blares out a warning in question form: Coronavirus Today: No vaccine, no custody? That newspaper's science and medicine editor, Karen Kaplan, concentrated her article, in part, on published court decisions throughout our country which have focused on the risks to children where one parent refuses to become vaccinated against COVID-19 and the other parent is vaccinated, as well as on questions of whether one parent may cause a child to be vaccinated over the objections of the other parent. See also Catherine E. Shoichet, How COVID is making divorce cases more complicated, CNN (Jan. 30, 2022).
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