Issues

A handful of states have passed piecemeal measures to support families owning heirs' property, but the law-writing group is urging legislatures to adopt its draft bill. The proposal would allow a co-owner to buy out another who wants to push the property to sale and establish a thorough review process for courts to determine whether the property should be sold or divided among the owners. It also would require courts to order open market sales to ensure properties are not sold below market value.  more »

25 Years of Hubble Space Telescope; finding and using health statistics has become requisite for a number of careers; biographies of women who have made contributions to fields as diverse as chemistry, primatology, biophysics, and astronomy; distinctive literary titles with expert book lovers from around the country; retracted papers in a wide variety of fields, some due to fraud, others just to mistakes in experiments or the publishing process; "Start Your Family Research" section; 1940s knitting patterns and other interesting sites. more »

President Obama announced that the Department of Labor will propose extending overtime pay to nearly 5 million workers. The proposal would guarantee overtime pay to most salaried workers earning less than an estimated $50,440 next year. The number of workers in each state who would be affected by this proposal can be found here. more »

Historically, about 17 percent of families move in a given year, but the recession knocked that number down as low as 11 percent, said Kimball Brace, president of Virginia-based Election Data Services. After two straight years of improvement, the number of moving families has partially recovered to about 15 percent. "The recession kept people at home. They couldn't sell their home, they couldn't find a job," Brace said. "We're starting to see bigger numbers. We're not all the way back." more »