13 Sept 2021
1.15 Vaccinations, Mask Wearing, and Parental rights
Melinda Eitzen and Marianne Howland
[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
