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- From: matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt)
- Newsgroups: misc.legal
- Subject: Status-based Law is Alive and Well
- Summary: Proposed Maryland law will hold grandparents liable.
- Keywords: Flesh and Blood
- Message-ID: <19604@smoke.brl.mil>
- Date: 26 Jan 93 14:04:04 GMT
- Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Lab, APG MD.
- Lines: 22
-
- We have seen here in "misc.legal" the argument that Status-based law
- is a relic of the Middle Ages, on its way out, an anachronism. Well,
- that's not so in Maryland.
-
- Just today, Governor William Donald Schaefer proposed to the Maryland
- General Assembly a bill that would hold parents of minor children
- liable to pay child support for those children's children. That is,
- these grandparents would have to support their grandchildren solely
- because they *were* their grandchildren. That's an obligation based
- on their Status as flesh-and-blood grandparents of their flesh-and-blood
- grandchildren, not on any "contract" or "consent," or even upon their
- having committed any "intentional" or "negligent" tort.
-
- It's pure, Status-based law; it's as new as 1993; and it will have
- no trouble getting through the Assembly. Reports of the imminent
- demise of Status-based law are highly exaggerated.
-
- -- Matt Rosenblatt
- (matt@amsaa.brl.mil)
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- "quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus"
-