There are few areas of public policy in the Western world where there is as much turbulence as in family law. Often the disputes are seen in terms of an endless war between the genders. Reviewing developments over the last 30 years in North America, Europe and Australasia, Patrick Parkinson argues that, rather than just being about gender, the conflicts in family law derive from the breakdown of the model on which divorce reform was predicated in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Experience has shown that although marriage may be freely dissoluble, parenthood is not. Dealing with the most difficult issues in family law, this book charts a path for law reform that recognizes that the family endures despite the separation of parents, while allowing room for people to make a fresh start and prioritizing the safety of all concerned when making decisions about parenting after separation.

Examining the changes that have occurred in families, family research, and family law in the late 20th century, this volume describes a paradigm shift in the legal and social regulation of the family to an emphasis on parents' relationships to their children, rather than to each other.

One of the law’s most important and far-reaching roles is to govern family life and family members. Family law decides who counts as kin, how family relationships are created and dissolved, and what legal rights and responsibilities come with marriage, parenthood, sibling ties, and other family bonds. Yet despite its significance, the field remains remarkably understudied and poorly understood both within and outside the legal community. Family Law Reimagined is the first book to evaluate the canonical narratives, examples, and ideas that legal decisionmakers repeatedly invoke to explain family law and its governing principles. These stories contend that family law is exclusively local, that it repudiates market principles, that it has eradicated the imprint of common law doctrines which subordinated married women, that it is dominated by contract rules permitting individuals to structure their relationships as they choose, and that it consistently prioritizes children’s interests over parents’ rights. In this book, Jill Elaine Hasday reveals how family law’s canon misdescribes the reality of family law, misdirects attention away from the actual problems that family law confronts, and misshapes the policies that legal authorities pursue. She demonstrates how much of the “common sense” that decisionmakers expound about family law actually makes little sense. Family Law Reimagined uncovers and critiques the family law canon and outlines a path to reform. Challenging conventional answers and asking questions that judges and lawmakers routinely overlook, it calls on us to reimagine family law.

This 2006 book provides a critical examination of and reflection on the American Law Institute's (ALI) Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution: Analysis and Recommendations ('Principles'), arguably the most sweeping proposal for family law reform attempted in the US over the last quarter century. The volume is a collaborative work of individuals from diverse perspectives and disciplines who explore the fundamental questions about the nature of family, parenthood, and child support. The contributors are all recognized authorities on aspects of family law and provide commentary on the principles examined by the ALI - fault, custody, child support, property division, spousal support and domestic partnerships, utilizing a wide range of analytical tools, including economic theory, constitutional law, social science data and linguistic analysis. This volume also includes the perspectives of US judges and legislators and leading family law scholars in the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada and Australia.

Despite the fact that becoming a parent is a pivotal event, the birth or adoption of a child has little significance for parents' legal relationship to each other. Instead, the law relies upon marriage, domestic partnerships, and contracts to set the parameters of parents' legal relationship. With over forty percent of American children born to unwed mothers and consistently high rates of divorce, this book argues that the law's current approach to regulating parental relationships is outdated. A new legal and social structure is needed to guide parents so they act as supportive partners and to deter uncommitted couples from having children. This book is the first of its kind to propose a new 'parent-partner' status within family law. Included are a detailed discussion of the benefits of the status as well as specific recommendations for legal obligations.

Lowe.

Offering intentional parenthood as the most appropriate, flexible and just normative doctrine for resolving the various dilemmas that have surfaced in the modern era.