A Family Law Q&A Courtesy of Quora

One of our assistants at Gucciardo Family Law encountered a place he’s been enjoying immensely lately: the Family Law topic on the Quora website, a place where anyone can ask any question and get answers from anyone who feels like writing them. After a few days of giggling at some of the questions he read, we asked him if he thought it would make a valuable blog post — and he came to me with a list of questions from Quora for the office to get together and answer. Let’s get to it!

Question: Can I sue my parents for vaccinating me?

Answer: Sure, but you won’t win. A civil suit requires you to prove that

• You suffered physical, mental, emotional, or economic damage, and
• The damage was caused by another person’s recklessness, negligence, or willful misconduct.

Your parents’ vaccinating you isn’t reckless — it’s following the advice of the entire medical establishment. It’s not negligence; that would be not vaccinating you. And it’s not misconduct for the same reason that it’s not reckless. The most likely result of you pushing this lawsuit would be you getting fined for filing frivolously.

Question: Do prenuptial agreements make a couple more prone to divorce?

Answer: There isn’t any actual stat-tracking on this specific issue, so it’s not a question with a definitive answer — but at Gucciardo Family Law, we believe the answer is “not necessarily.” The guiding clue about future divorce isn’t the request for a prenuptial agreement — it’s the attitude surrounding the request. If the spouse making the request is doing so out of fear or because s/he is caving to family pressure, those issues will resurface down the road. If the spouse who receives the request responds by questioning the foundation of the relationship, it’s because they suspect the relationship isn’t that secure to begin with. It’s very possible for a prenup to come into being without any significant drama — and those are the couples that, in our experience, are likely to last.

Question: What is the legal status of children of a couple who co-habits but refuse to marry?

Answer: In Michigan, there is no difference between the legal status of a child with married parents and a child of unmarried parents — in fact, the law makes it illegal to discriminate based on that difference. That said, the legal status of the father — as in, whether or not he is legally considered the father — is quite different. In unmarried couples, the child’s father is not presumed to be the live-in male unless:

• He files a form called an Affidavit of Parentage,
• A paternity test establishes that he is the father, or
• A judge declares him the child’s effective father, regardless of genetics.

Question: Is it legal for my ex to force our 12 year old son to take public transportation to school and athletic practices?

Answer: Absolutely. Your 12-year-old is just as much his child as yours, and as such, only parenting decisions that are truly dangerous to the child would be questionable in court. Statistically speaking, public transportation is massively safer for your child than being driven in a car by you or your ex, so the likelihood that a judge and/or jury would give a second thought to your objection is very slim.

Got any questions like these about Family Law? Email or call Gucciardo Family Law today — we’d love to help!