Course Details

After successfully completing this course, you will be able to:

1. Recall the historical role of family law from colonial American to present day.
2. Examine the legal aspects of premarital agreements, same-sex marriages, and cohabitation.
3. Demonstrate important considerations during the client interview process.
4. Restate the various types of alimony.
5. Analyze the distribution of property and debt after dissolution.
6. Identify assorted legal features of child custody, visitation, and third party rights.

Weekly Forums due during the course count as 30% of the final grade. Questions and topics posed in the Forums are designed to promote thought and insight. Students must provide a critical review of the questions, topics and issues posed and substantively reply to the contributions of at least three peers. Individual postings should include a full discussion of the content of the question posed and explain how it relates to the concepts in the weekly text readings and other resources. The postings should be analytic in nature and include comparisons/contrasts, and examples that can bolster your point. The Forum is for your benefit and it is important to respond to the discussion topic and to engage others in a running dialogue.

Your initial post should be made by Wednesday this week. You should then respond to 3 or more posts. Note that at least one response to your classmates must be made before Sunday. If you make all of your responsive posts on Sunday, you will not earn full points for timeliness.

This can be accomplished by

· Validating with additional evidence from the literature.

· Posing a thoughtful question with commentary which generates further discussion.

· Providing an alternative point-of-view, with evidence and examples.

· Offering additional insight into how the concept might be understood, with evidence provided with real world examples.

You should be active in the classroom throughout the week and actively engaged in the back-and-forth discussion between your colleagues and the professor.

The forum grading rubric can be found in gradebook by clicking on the forum entry.

Late Assignments

Students are expected to submit classroom assignments by the posted due date and to complete the course according to the published class schedule. As adults, students, and working professionals, I understand you must manage competing demands on your time. Should you need additional time to complete an assignment, please contact me before the due date so we can discuss the situation and determine an acceptable resolution. Routine submission of late assignments is unacceptable and may result in points deducted from your final course grade.

Deductions:

Late forum posts can be penalized up to 5 points per day

Late assignments can be penalized up to 5 points per day

Additional Resources

You will be required to complete five CALI (The Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction) lessons. You need to register using the instructions below and make sure you save your scores so I can verify you completed the lesson. The instructions are as follows:

CALI Registration Information:

1. Go to www.cali.org and click on the 'Not a registered user yet?' link.

2. In the field requesting an authorization code enter: AMEPUNstu622

3. Provide the information requested on the next screens.

4. At the completion of the registration process you will be logged on to the CALI website and may use the legal education lessons.

On subsequent visits to the website, log on by just entering your email address and the password you created when you registered on the site. The authorization code is used only the first time when you registered on the website.

The assignments section contains embedded links to the required lessons. Please use these links when completing the lesson and make sure you do a complete ScoreSave before you exit the lesson.