Madonna and Guy Ritchie, part 2

I have noticed in my reading and research that Madonna’s divorce from Guy Ritchie presents an amazingly compact nugget of family law information. Their situation presents an example from which to answer questions about divorce, if we assume the hypothetical that the divorce was here in Oregon. I hope you can see the same wealth of knowledge that this news story presents to me. I have used celebrity cases such as Alec Baldwin and Britney Spears to educate TV audiences about how “regular” divorces can parallel the issues that famous people also experience.

In Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s family, they have one biological child, one adopted child, and one child from her previous relationship. Are stepchildren, biological children, and adopted children treated three different ways by the court system? Stepchildren, unless they are adopted by the new spouse and the other biological parent has either given up his rights or has died, are not the subject of custody in a divorce. They remain in the custody of their biological parents. Adopted children are treated the same as biological children in a custody proceeding. A parenting time schedule is established for adopted children just as it would be for biological children, and decision-making power is given to one parent or the other (or to both parents if they agree).