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 The Law
The father was arrested for public lewdness; the twenty-two year old son was charged with possession of marijuana; the sixteen year-old son was arrested for a curfew violation. This all happened in the fall of 2003. Adding insult to injury, his twenty-six year-old daughter was in the midst of a bitter, expensive divorce. Her case came to a screeching halt when the court declared her marriage invalid and awarded her nothing. How could one family have so many legal problems? Was this a dysfunctional family? Had some stressful events cracked a fragile family structure? Just the opposite. The family had been in a celebratory mood for several months, having reunited after three years apart. They were originally from Finland. On a visit to New York, the daughter had met an acquaintance from childhood. Shortly thereafter he and she moved to Lansing, Michigan and got married. Three years later the father, mother and youngest brother moved from Germany to Lansing. Two months thereafter the oldest brother joined them, leaving The Netherlands where he had worked as a computer programmer for two years. The family had never been happier. And even the divorce of the daughter had drawn the family closer together in support of her. Then came the fall of 2003. But the problem was not dysfunction. It was ignorance of the law. What exactly is "the law?" In the United States it is the federal statutes, the state statutes and local city ordinances. Some of those federal and state statutes authorize agencies to draft regulations to enforce the more general statutes. Those regulations function like law, too. The law also includes the federal, state and local court rulings that interpret and apply the law for particular cases. Finally, if no statutory law is available, then what is called the "common law" may apply. The common law is accepted law that was developed first in England and often accepted in the United States where no statutes apply. On Lawyers-and-Laws.com you can look up the most important laws that govern the issues that concern you most. Do you have questions about bankruptcy? Crime? Divorce? Insurance? Personal Injury? Class Action Suits? Taxes? Wills? Research the statutes that address your concerns. Read the brief, special article on this site that shows you how. How could it have helped the Lansing, Michigan family? The father might have learned that he couldn´t walk naked into the mixed sauna at the gym. In Finland, Germany and most of Europe, it is quite common to take a sauna that way. Just as Americans are comfortable undressing in a doctor´s office, many Europeans think nothing of enjoying a public sauna without clothes. His twenty-two year old son would have learned that Americans have serious drug laws prohibiting marijuana. The son had heard rumors of this, it is true, but after two years in Holland, where coffee shops sell marijuana as legally as Starbucks sells coffee, he couldn´t imagine that anyone would enforce such a strange law. The youngest son could have learned about the curfew ordinances. His older sister was older than seventeen when she moved to the city and completely unaware of them. And so she did not forewarn him. All of their problems were made worse by their limited English skills, of course. And their immigration issues have been only recently resolved. And what about the sister´s nasty divorce? Why was it so summarily dismissed, giving her nothing? That´s a little more complicated. But here´s what happened. Her husband was her first cousin. And it´s legal to marry first cousins in New York where they first met. But they got married in Michigan. And as in twenty-five other states, it´s not legal for first cousins to marry in Michigan. To make matters worse, Michigan is not one of the few states that recognize common law marriage either. So when it came to light that her purported husband was her first cousin, the whole divorce proceeding stopped. In order to get divorced, you have to be married. And she wasn´t married under Michigan law. Research the law about issues that concern you most. Then contact a good attorney to confirm your understanding of that law and the way it´s applied.
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