What happens when a baby is born in jail in New Jersey? What departments/agencies are automatically involved? We are looking to get legal guardianship of a sister's soon-to-be-born child while she is in jail and need to know what agencies we should be dealing with beforehand.
posted by infostud on Sep 29, 2009 - 8 answers

Tell me more about publicly-funded attorneys in non-criminal cases. [more inside]
posted by not that girl on Nov 20, 2007 - 14 answers

My wife has two kids from a previous marriage. Can I consider myself, legally, to be their step Father? (If so, does that entail any certain rights as such?) Should or can I adopt them? Since the Mom and I have raised them for most of their lives (90%), we would like to do something (together) to set them up in case something happens to us. Death etc. M.I. [more inside]
posted by snsranch on May 2, 2006 - 14 answers

You are not my attorney, and I'm not asking for legal advice. I would like an opinion, though, on the financial situation of a rough breakup. I've been with my girlfriend for seven years, and we're splitting up. It's gotten ugly. She has $10k in credit card debt, some of it for things she's bought for me/us, some not. She's telling me now she wants $5k from me, or she's going to start selling the things she's bought for me (such as the PowerBook I got last Christmas). I was going to be the bigger man in this, and help her pay her debts off a bit at a time, but now I'm extremely angry. I want to find out if there is any legal grounds for me telling her that no, we were never married, she gave me these things as gifts, and I don't owe her a dime. I live in Texas, for what it's worth, and I am looking for an attorney locally.
posted by anonymous on Dec 11, 2004 - 33 answers