Custody of Unaccompanied Minor

This child custody nerd (well staturory interpretation nerd in general) who is also profoundly interested in the handling of immigration issues, found this case fascinating. Custody of Vale Mass. App. Ct. 24-P-1190 (12/23/2025) involved two brothers (12 and 17) from Honduras who were apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in Texas and placed with an "uncle" in Indianapolis, Indiana, under the auspices of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

They ran away from Indiannapolis and ended up in Revere, MA. A missing person report was filed in Indianapolis. Evenutally, a neglect report (51A) was filed with Mass. DCF. A DCF worker started working with the "Vale" and his brother. They then moved to Brockton, MA, without telling the DCF worker.

MA DCF filed a care and protection petition (Mass. Gen. Laws c. 119, § 24) and the Juvenile Court judge questioned whether Mass. or Ind. had jurisdiction under the Mass. Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (MCCJA) and had DCF contact Indiana authorities. IN then filed a requisition under the rules of the Interstate Commission on Juveniles (ICJ). Though DCF reported to the MA judge that no one in IN had had custody of the children prior to the filing of the C&P, the judge decided that the children needed to be returned to IN. By the time of the appeal, Vale's brother had turned 18, so he was not part of it, and from here on I will refer only to Vale or the child.

The uncle told the ORR that he did not want the child back and then disappeared from IN.

My rendtion of these facts may be out of chronological order. I wanted to highlight the intersting events without spending too much time getting the order of events exactly right. The primary relevant event is that the MA C&P was filed before any IN court action.

The child's lawyer filed a motion to stay removal to permit them the opportunity to appeal. It was denied. They appealed to a single justice in the Mass. Appeals Court (MAC), who stayed the removal, which allowed Vale to stay in MA while the case was considered.

Vale ran away from IN because the uncle was demanding that they pay him $8,000.00 for the costs of getting them into the country and compelled them to work for him to work off the debt. The U.S. Office on Trafficking in Persons found that Vale was, therefore, a victim of a severe form of trafficking in persons.

The MAC ruled that because no one in IN had custody of Vale before DCF was awarded temporary custody in the MA C&P, the ICJ did not apply and because MA had jurisdiction under the MCCJA, which has provisions required by the federal Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act and was similar to the IN child custody law, MA had jurisdiction and IN did not.

So Vale got to stay with his MA foster parents.

Thirteenth Amendment Ratified 12/6/1865

 Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States.

The Amendment says:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Three quartters of the state legislatures (27) passed it on this date in 1865 and it became effective immediately.

Unfortunately, the exception clause, which exempted from abolition the use of involutary servitude "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted". That left open the continued use of chain gangs for incarcerated citizens and for states and private prison companies to make money by leasing out incarcerated citizens as unpaid laborers.

Tax Processing Unit Scam

Letters from

Tax Processing Unit
__________ County Public
Judgment Records
TOLL FREE: (###) ###-####

proclaiming that a

Distraint Warrant

has been issued against you are a scam, phishing attempt, fraud.

I don't usually post outside of family policing law issues here but a client came to me asking about such a letter. When I Googled "Tax Processing Unit, Middlesex County Public, Judgment Records" I saw alerts from a couple of state governments, a couple of out-of-state county governments, and a couple of law firms but none from Massachusetts or any Massachusetts County, so I thought I'd share the alert.

The IRS does have an alert about how to report letters and phone calls that purport to be from the IRS. The Middlesex County Sheriff's Department has a press release about IRS phone scams. I think it might be mail fraud or attempted mail fraud, so I advised the client to report it to their local post office.

Don't call the number listed in the letter. If you do owe taxes to either the IRS or DOR and you haven't already been in touch with them and don't have a payment plan worked out contact them through IRS.gov or Mass.gov/DOR or a phone number listed there to talk to apply only for one or to talk to a legitimate agent. If your issue is complex or involves large amounts of money consider contacting a tax accountant or tax attorney first.

This post is a public service of your local Children's and Family Law attorney and should not be taken as legal or tax advice.

Homeless Youth Handbook

The Massachusetts Appleseed Center for Law and Justice has published a handbook for unhoused youth. 

The Homeless Youth Handbook contains the following chapters:

Safety and Stability

Police Interactions

Status Offenses

Foster Care

Turning 18

Housing and Contracts

LGBTQ+

Education and Schools

Employment 

General Criminal Law

Healthcare and Medical Rights

Mental Health and Substance Abuse

Birth Control, Abortion, and Pregnancy

Dating and Domestic Violence

Identification

Consumer and Credit

Public Benefits

Going to Court and General Civil Law

Immigration & Undocumented Youth

Trafficking

The first time you open the Handbook a general disclaimer pops up with a specific head note:

Disclaimer: On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion. The ruling leaves it to the individual states to decide whether to protect the right to an abortion. The HYH has not yet been updated to address these recent developments. We are working on updates.

You can access the disclaimer on subsequent visits by going to www.homelessyouth.org/en/disclaimer.

The Handbook seems to be a great resource. Mass Appleseed's June update newsletter says, "If your organization is interested in receiving a training on the Homeless Youth Handbook, reach out to our staff! 

SCOTUS: ICWA constitutional

The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act in Haaland v. Brackeen. ICWA wins by a 7-2. The majority opinion was written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Gorsuch wrote a concurring opinion. Justices Thomas and Alito dissented. Here is a link to the PDF: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-376_7l48.pdf

IL Court rules that parents have a right to obtain their child’s full electronic medical record

 The Family Justice Resource Center reports in its Summer 2022 Newsletter:

In a new Circuit Court ruling (Cook County IL), Prieto v. Rush University Medical Center, Judge James N. O'Hara ruled that parents have a right to obtain their child’s full EMR and that a hospital’s failure to release a full EMR, complete with the audit log and revision history, is a violation of the Supreme Court’s discovery rules, as well as federal information blocking regulations.

It addresses the issues that come up in child abuse cases when hospitals refuse to give parents access to their children's electronic medical record once the child protection team becomes involved or a report has been made to the government child protective services agency. The article says that under HIPAA and HITECH "Parents are entitled to their child’s EMR as long as parental rights have not been terminated." I believe the federal CURES Act highlights and broadens parents' rights to obtain and share their children's complete EMR.

Often the records that medical providers give to parents or their attorneys in response to release authorizations and to courts in response to subpoenas are incomplete and inaccurate, leaving out statements that do not support the allegations of abuse and entries that were subsequently edited out or amended.

Practice note: Attorneys for all parties in care and protection (dependency) cases need to seek the full EMR including audit trails.

Family Integrity & Justice Works

I just read some of the articles and reviews of the inaugural issue of The Family Integrity & Justice Quarterly Journal, the publishers of which describe it as: 

a forum for bold, actionable movement toward replacing many traditional child welfare approaches that do not support family unity and strengthening with approaches that focus on preventing the need for child welfare involvement by keeping families safely together.

I highly recommend it, as do several of my colleagues. I look forward to reading the rest of the first issue and expect future issues will be as on point for my practice as the first. See more and the free, peer reviewed, journal here:  fijw.pubknow.com/quarterly-journal/