In Search of Parity: Child Custody/Visitation and Child Support for Lesbian Couples Under “Companion” Cases Debra H. and In Re H.M.

The United States is engaged in a national debate over whether to grant same-sex couples the rights and privileges of marriage. Supporters of marriage equality flood the media with images of jubilant same-sex couples simply wanting the chance to say their “I dos” and have the state formally recognize their shared love and commitment. The unfortunate reality is, however, that many homosexual relationships, like heterosexual relationships, dissolve. Marriage rights play as important a role at a relationship’s dissolution as they do at a relationship’s inception. This paper focuses on one such issue often left out of the public discourse over marriage equality: determining parentage for the purposes of child custody/visitation as well as child support in the context of a lesbian relationship that has broken down.Looking at two recent cases from the New York Court of Appeals, Debra H. and H.M. together, one can clearly see an alarming development: eliminating the applicability of equitable principles to provide legal parental status for a non-biological, non-adoptive parent to contest custody/visitation, while at the same time relying on such principles to force child support payments on the same individuals. Child visitation jurisprudence and child support jurisprudence should stand in parity, making it so an individual would simply be adjudicated a parent, not a parent solely for contesting child custody/visitation or a parent solely for child support. Otherwise, not only is the best interest of the child lost, but so too is the principle of fundamental fairness on the part of the defendant partner. In addition to drawing attention to this alarming jurisprudential development, I also set for alternate, substantive solutions

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

Correction to: A nonsynonymous mutation in PLCG2 reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies and frontotemporal dementia, and increases the likelihood of longevity

The IPDGC (The International Parkinson Disease Genomics Consortium) and EADB (Alzheimer Disease European DNA biobank) are listed correctly as an author to the article, however, they were incorrectly listed more than once

Correction to: A nonsynonymous mutation in PLCG2 reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies and frontotemporal dementia, and increases the likelihood of longevity

The IPDGC (The International Parkinson Disease Genomics Consortium) and EADB (Alzheimer Disease European DNA biobank) are listed correctly as an author to the article, however, they were incorrectly listed more than once

Correction to: A nonsynonymous mutation in PLCG2 reduces the risk of Alzheimer's disease, dementia with Lewy bodies and frontotemporal dementia, and increases the likelihood of longevity.

The IPDGC (The International Parkinson Disease Genomics Consortium) and EADB (Alzheimer Disease European DNA biobank) are listed correctly as an author to the article, however, they were incorrectly listed more than once

In Search of Parity: Child Custody/Visitation and Child Support for Lesbian Couples Under “Companion” Cases Debra H. and In Re H.M.

The United States is engaged in a national debate over whether to grant same-sex couples the rights and privileges of marriage. Supporters of marriage equality flood the media with images of jubilant same-sex couples simply wanting the chance to say their “I dos” and have the state formally recognize their shared love and commitment. The unfortunate reality is, however, that many homosexual relationships, like heterosexual relationships, dissolve. Marriage rights play as important a role at a relationship’s dissolution as they do at a relationship’s inception. This paper focuses on one such issue often left out of the public discourse over marriage equality: determining parentage for the purposes of child custody/visitation as well as child support in the context of a lesbian relationship that has broken down.Looking at two recent cases from the New York Court of Appeals, Debra H. and H.M. together, one can clearly see an alarming development: eliminating the applicability of equitable principles to provide legal parental status for a non-biological, non-adoptive parent to contest custody/visitation, while at the same time relying on such principles to force child support payments on the same individuals. Child visitation jurisprudence and child support jurisprudence should stand in parity, making it so an individual would simply be adjudicated a parent, not a parent solely for contesting child custody/visitation or a parent solely for child support. Otherwise, not only is the best interest of the child lost, but so too is the principle of fundamental fairness on the part of the defendant partner. In addition to drawing attention to this alarming jurisprudential development, I also set for alternate, substantive solutions