Oops
This is why every state needs attentive state legislators — if you don’t, glaring drafting errors can result in absurd features:
Nebraska’s “safe-haven” law which allows parents to abandon children at hospitals without being prosecuted has been garnering lots of news. The reason? While other states have similar laws, other states also have an age-limit. Nebraska’s law does not. So parents can abandon their teenagers – no need for a “person in need of supervision” or other proceeding.
Legislators are supposedly going to close the “loophole.”
From Family Law Prof Blog.
Actually, IIRC, when the story first broke I read that they specifically left that hole because they couldn’t come to an agreement on an age cutoff. So this isn’t carelessness so much as the law of unintended consequences to the Nth degree.
ChrisB,
Still, somebody apparently failed to step in and point out the consequences of having no upper age limit. I can’t believe this was wholly intended.
Either they were careless or stupid. I suppose the latter is worse, and perhaps more likely.
If a parent dumps their teenagers off, doesn’t that say something too? Is this becoming so widespread as to be a crisis? Or what we are seeing are disfunctional parents basically turning themselves in to child protective services?
I suppose every parent, especially parents of teenagers, would be tempted at times to drop the kids off at the local fire house and take off for Vegas. But that is not what is going on here, is it? If a parent is cavalier enough to drop off a child like that, then that parent’s parental rights should terminate. No do over.
Sounds like an argument against unicameralism.
Dale, I try to stay out of religious discussions.
Drafting errors do happen. Several years ago, Oklahoma had to schedule a special legislative session to handle one. Seems that in some big bill dealing with property, the state had required that the original deed to any piece of real property had to be filed with the county and then somewhere else required that the original deed had to be filed with some state office. Some smart guy read the bill after passage and realized that, as there is only one original deed, no one would be able to legally transfer property after enactment. Geniuses.