Reports came out on Wednesday morning that Hostess had filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York. So on my lunch break (eating a salad, sans Twinkie…maybe I’m part of the problem?), I tracked down the docket on WestlawNext. Here are directions for browsing to the Hostess bankruptcy on WestlawNext:

First,  click on the Dockets link from the Browse All tab on the Home page of WestlawNext.

Next,  click on the link to Federal Bankruptcy Courts.

Then, under the State category, I clicked on New York… after that, the link to the Southern District.

That brings up a nice template for us to use. I simply enter “Hostess” in the “Participant Name” box, then use the “Filing Date” box to choose “last 30 days.”

That brings up the dockets related to the Hostess bankruptcy.

Images of the complaints are already available from the docket, along with several other filings.

Much to dismay of many single women here in Minnesota, Twins baseball player, and “Hometown Hero” Joe Mauer, recently announced his engagement to a former high school classmate. His happy news came just a little over a month after the demise of fellow Minnesota-born athlete Kris Humphries’ marriage to Kim Kardashian. News reports indicated that Kardashian declared an intention to keep her reported $2 million engagement ring. A pre-nuptial agreement also may play into the balance, with various news reports indicating that the agreement allows Kardashian to purchase the wedding ring in the event of a divorce.

So what is the law on this classic law-school scenario? On WestlawNext, try a plain language search using West Search in all state cases:

ownership of engagement ring

We get some promising looking results in the case law, but Related Documents includes an ALR article titled,  Rights in respect of engagement and courtship presents when marriage does not ensue, 44 A.L.R.5th 1 . So it looks like we have a good start for the broken engagement situation. But what about a divorce? What happens to the ring when a marriage happens, but fails? For that, simply try,

Ownership of engagement ring after divorce

I click on the cases link on the left to see what we get, and quickly I see language about whether engagement rings are considered marital or separate property. I see references to statutes and again on the right side of the screen, under Related Documents, I see a Yale Law Journal article:

When the marriage ceremony ends, the law declares that a woman has done her part with respect to the ring and can keep it forever.

Rebecca Tushnet, Rules of Engagement, 107 Yale L.J. 2583, 2603 (1998)

Most pregnant women seek out a traditional, medical, model of care for their pregnancies and births, choosing a medical doctor or nurse as their provider and electing to birth in a hospital setting. But there has been a resurgence of women seeking out-of-hospital births, whether that be at a free-standing birth center or at home, often attended by what are known as direct-entry midwives, or sometimes, Certified Professional Midwives (C.P.M.).

Recently, two free-standing birth centers opened near my home. Healthy, low-risk pregnant women hope out-of-hospital birth can help them avoid unnecessary interventions and encourage drug-free labor and delivery. State laws vary regarding the practice and licensure of midwives practicing outside of the hospital setting.

On WestlawNext, click on “Secondary Sources” under  the “All Content” tab,  then “Law Reviews & Journals.” Run the following search within Law Reviews & Journals:

(DIRECT-ENTRY) (“CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL”) /S MIDWIFE MIDWIFERY

I receive 28 results with that search. Browse the headings for articles discussing the legal issues surrounding direct-entry midwifery.

Narrow these results to more recent articles, in the past 3 years, discussing home birth. In the box for “Search within Results” filter on the left, enter:

HOME-BIRTH

Then filter date for “Last 3 Years.”  Apply filters to find 5 articles mentioning home birth within the last 3 years.