[00:00:00] Melinda Eitzen: Hello and welcome to the duck United attend podcast, answering all the questions you didn't know you had about family law. I'm your host, Melinda . And for our 15th episode, we are lucky to have here with me, Marianne Helen, one of my parts. I I'm so glad to have you. Thank you. And we thought it would be good to talk today a little bit about right to duties.

[00:00:40] Melinda Eitzen: And when you're a parent, what rights and duties you have when you go through a divorce, how those are divvied up and. What are rights and duties about immunizations? Cause that's certainly a hot topic right now. We cert we have people we've always had people, Marianne didn't you think that had maybe different views about vaccinations?

[00:01:06] Marianne Howland: Yes. And that's definitely been a topic throughout the years, um, regarding children and vaccinations and school and how that affects whether they can go to school. And so that's definitely been an issue ongoing, but obviously sometimes been more emergent because of the COVID vaccine and how that is affecting children's ability to go to

[00:01:28] Melinda Eitzen: school.

[00:01:29] Melinda Eitzen: I know when I've been surprised at how political this was, How strongly people feel about it and we're not here to, we have no political agenda in our podcast today. We're just here to explain to people, you know, what, if you don't agree with your ex-husband or your ex-wife, what do you do? So Marianne, how does the judge handle all that?

[00:01:53] Melinda Eitzen: Or how did the courts handle that? And if I have certain rights and duties in my. Decree like maybe that a says that one parent has a right to make the decision about invasive medical or maybe it says that to right. Subject to agreement is a vaccination invasive medical. So that's,

[00:02:14] Marianne Howland: that is a great question.

[00:02:15] Marianne Howland: What is the definition of case? Right. So the, um, we have some case law that, that reflects that and it's from 2010, but it hasn't. Changed over with, I would say. And so the family code does not define what is invasive medical procedure, but the Texas health and safety code section 85.2 best. And it says really an invasive procedure would be a surgical entry into the tissues as a result, organs or repair of major traumatic injuries associated with operation and then, or delivery room cardiac.

[00:02:56] Marianne Howland: Catholic just catheterization, um, things like that, but this can also include braces. So, uh, this case was really about whether or not this was an invasive procedure and it it's because it was moving parts of the mouth around, then it it's considered invasive. However as shot would not be considered invasive because that's not the surgical infrequent.

[00:03:21] Marianne Howland: It is just a needle and it's not moving things around or performing

[00:03:25] Melinda Eitzen: surgery. Oh, that's interesting. And it doesn't matter. What's in the shot. It could be a shot for another purpose besides the vaccination. It doesn't matter. What's in the shot. You can have your child receive a shot without it being considered invasive.

[00:03:41] Marianne Howland: Correct? Yes, because it's delivering medicine. And so that's not considered an invasive and a shot itself is not that an invasive surgical, um, entering the tissues. So even we didn't talk about this at the beginning, but even the HPV vaccine, which has kind of a hot topic for her parents to cause children falling older can get that.

[00:04:02] Marianne Howland: Um, and some parents don't want that something that's true. So those are all, it's good to know that that is not invasive, but then you have the question. Who has the right to make decisions regarding medical. Um, and so I think what we would have to look at them is, are they independent or would this one parent have to be exclusive right after this info with the othe

Melinda Eitzen: [00:00:00] Hello, welcome to the DFW divorce, insider podcast, answering all the questions you didn’t know you had about family law and today education law. I’m your host, Melinda Eitan. And for our 14th episode, we’re going to be discussing education law, our guests today’s George shake. How are you doing George?

George Shake: [00:00:26] Good afternoon. Thanks for having me. I’m doing great.

Melinda Eitzen: [00:00:29] So George is my partner and he works at our firm and he does family law like we all do, but he also has this wonderful education law practice. George, tell us a little bit about education law.

George Shake: [00:00:44] Of course. I’ll start by explaining, some areas that I do not work with, because other people have experience and expertise that I refer to. And so there are times where education employees feel like they need legal counsel and there are great employment attorneys that specialize in that. And that’s how we take care of those folks. I’m, I’m really representing families and students with education issues. And I’ll tell you there’s a wide range of those issues.

Melinda Eitzen: [00:01:16] I bet.

George Shake: [00:01:17] So some common, some common concerns that parents have are regarding their child is, is going to be disciplined at school that that could be very concerning and they want to make sure that everything’s being handled properly. Another common example would be parents with a child with disabilities, and there are many questions and concerns that could come up with that.

And then a host of other issues such as. Truancy, children’s ability to participate in extra curricular activities, graduation requirements. And of course in this last year and a half, many, many unique concepts came our way with COVID and children doing distance learning in mass.

Melinda Eitzen: [00:02:03] Okay. So you mentioned a lot of good areas and I want to dig into some of those, but first I want to ask, does this apply. Only the public schools or public and private.

George Shake: [00:02:15] That’s a great question. And really we’re talking about two very different areas of law because for private school students and that’s from daycare, pre-K all the way through graduate and professional schools.

If that’s a private school, we’re talking about a contractual relationship. Just as if we were talking about a consumer and a company or some other type of contractual relationship, there is advocacy for sure to be had for those types of students, but it all exists in a very long standardization of contractual law.

That is not as complicated. And there are no independent rights outside of the country.

Melinda Eitzen: [00:02:58] Okay. So probably this comes up more in public school. Is that true?

George Shake: [00:03:03] Far more, we have parents that are choosing to place their minor children in the local public school system. And because it is governed by state and federal law, there are a tremendous amount of regulations and rules and rights that come in.

Melinda Eitzen: [00:03:21] And are we talking about K through 12 or are we also talking about college?

George Shake: [00:03:27] Another great question. And so we do use the term K through 12 and family law, and we all know what that means, but strictly speaking, local public school systems have obligations to children starting on their third birthday.

Now that obligation only pertains to children with disabilities, but of course, that is an area where I spend a lot of time. And when we talk about 12th grade, most of us are imagining that 18 or 19 year old that we know or have known. But again, with special education, those obligations on the public school can go through a child’s 21st year that they’re in school.

And so there are students that have as many as 18 years of public education and it comes with all the obligations and rights.

Melinda Eitzen: [00:04:18] So why would a fa