New York Family Law Blog

About two months ago, the Obama Administration announced that it would not defend the Defense of Marriage Act, the controversial act that restricts federal benefits for heterosexual couples. Since that announcement, Immigration Equality, a nonprofit based in Washington and New York that advocates in favor of gay immigrants, announced its plans to challenge the immigration law affecting same-sex couples.
As a New York Family Lawyer relates, gay couples face a conundrum when one of the two is a foreign national. They have to make hard decisions. Either the immigrant partner has to live in the shadows of America, hiding and becoming paranoid, or both have to move to a more accommodating country. The decision to leave your country of birth is a monumental leap, and some wonder why it should even have to be considered.
A NYC Family Lawyer shares that under current legislation, heterosexual couples can sponsor their spouse for visas or green cards. Recently, however, U.S. lawmakers reintroduced a bill that will allow gay Americans to do the same with their same-sex partners. The Uniting American Families Act was introduced in both the House and the Senate, and has the largest number of supporters it’s had since 2000 when it was introduced. While the bill has remained stagnant for the last decade, now there are 98 cosponsors of the bill in the House and 18 in the Senate. If passed, UAFA will allow Americans to sponsor their gay “permanent partner,” who is defined as someone who has the intention of maintaining a lifelong intimate relationship with his or her partner. Same sex marriage is on the agenda in counties like Brooklyn and The Bronx.
At the same time as they are reviving this bill’s life, members of Congress are urging the Attorney General to stall deportations for foreign nationals who would be affected by the new bill. They are asking that the Attorney General influence the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services allowing for lenience in the cases of all gay immigrants who would become eligible for a marriage visa if the Defense of Marriage Act is repealed or if the Uniting American Families Act is passed.

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Authorities continue to search for the missing head of 10-year-old disabled girl, Zahra after a long search revealed her desecrated body, said New York Family Lawyers.
Elise Baker, 42, is accused of abusing, murdering and dismembering the girl’s body, according to NYC Family Lawyer reports. Coroner reports said Zahra died “as a result of undetermined homicidal violence.”
The child’s remains were found spread between two different locations with two different types of tool marks on her bones. The coroner concluded she had died before she was dismembered and that animals had eaten her flesh. There are many cases of abuse which arise in Brooklyn and The Bronx but none as gruesome as this one.
New York Family Lawyers said Elisa Baker had a "history and pattern of physical, verbal and psychological abuse" against the child and that family members accused her of “taking advantage of a position of trust and confidence" in order kill Zahra and then "desecrated her body to hinder detection and prosecution."
Authorities said details of the child’s death "must be kept close to the investigation and not be discussed in order to protect this case."
Zahra, who while struggling with cancer, lost a leg and lost most of her hearing, was reported missing in the fall, but police speculate she had disappeared many weeks earlier.
When she was reported missing, her stepmother allegedly issued a phony $1 million reward for her return.
Not long after the search began, authorities found a prosthetic leg matching the description and serial number of Zahra’s. The child reportedly had a very hard life after being abandoned by her biological mother as a baby, struggling with cancer and ending up with an abusive stepmother in the end.
A neighbor said, “Zahra was abused. She was often bruised and was very quiet.”
Before the child’s body was discovered, Elisa Baker had already been indicted for obstructing justice, a charge related to the ransom note and sits in jail awaiting trial.
A few weeks before authorities found the remains, Elisa Baker wrote in a letter that the child was dead, but showed no remorse. She seemed to feel sorrier for herself, said a New York Family Lawyer, while she made vague accusations about her husband doing something "horrifying" to Zahra after she was dead.
Baker’s attorney called this accusation “a desperate attempt at distraction.”

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