Writer and columnist Benjamin Law revisits his joyous and much-loved family memoir, spilling the tea on his family's latest antics The book that inspired the major SBS television series! Meet the Law family – eccentric, endearing and hard to resist. Your guide is Benjamin, the third of five children and a born humourist. Join him as he tries to answer some puzzling questions. Why won't his Chinese dad wear made-in-China underpants? Why was most of his extended family deported in the 1980s? Will his childhood dreams of Home and Away stardom come to nothing? What are his chances of finding love? In this updated edition with a new chapter, Benjamin Law fills us in on his family's antics from the past decade. ‘Benjamin Law manages to be scatagogical, hilarious and heartbreaking all at the same time. Every sentence fizzes like an exploding fireball of energy.’—Alice Pung ‘A vivid, gorgeously garish, Technicolour portrait of a family. It's impossible not to let oneself go along for the ride and emerge at the book's end enlightened, touched, thrilling with laughter.’—Marieke Hardy ‘The eccentric, clever and beautifully resonant The Family Law. It's sharply written, brilliantly observed and infused with an authenticity that makes it compelling.’ —Saturday Age ‘Very funny...you may find yourself at times almost barking with laughter’ —The Monthly ‘Law is a writer of great wit and warmth who combines apparently artless and effortless comedian's patter with a high level of technical skill.’ —Sydney Morning Herald ‘Simultaneously weird and instantly recognisable, the Laws are an Australian family it's well worth getting to know’ —The Enthusiast ‘Wonderful. Everyone should run to their nearest bookshop and buy a copy.’ —Defamer ‘An addictive read.’ —Courier-Mail

This book argues that the legal understanding of 'family' in the UK continues to be underpinned by the idealised image of the 'nuclear family', premised upon the traditional, gendered roles of 'father as breadwinner' and 'mother as homemaker'. This examination of the law's model of the 'family' has been prompted by the substantial reforms that have taken place in family law in recent decades, and the significant evolution in social attitudes and familial practices that has occurred in parallel. Throughout the book, the influence of the nuclear family is noted in several different contexts: various specific legal definitions of 'family', the legal regulation of adult, conjugal relationships, the attribution of legal parenthood and the construction of the role of the 'parent' within the law. Ultimately, this book argues that while these reforms have resulted in additional categories of relationship coming to be situated within the nuclear family model, there has not, as yet, been any fundamental alteration of the underpinning concept of the nuclear family itself. This book concludes by considering the possibilities offered beyond the 'nuclear family'; exploring the reconceptualising of the legal understanding of 'family' around alternative and potentially 'radical' models of 'family'.

The second edition of this casebook has been updated and trimmed, although it retains a wide range of topics and materials. It covers a variety of private international law issues, including child abduction, child custody, adoption, child support enforcement, and recognition of marriages and divorces. The book also explores the impact of public international law on both domestic and international regulation of the family, using topics such as family violence and the rights of the child. Finally, the book uses comparative law materials to examine traditional family law topics, such as the regulation of marriage, the rights of same-sex couples, adoption, reproductive freedom, and more.

This casebook provides a comprehensive, accessible, and up-to-date analysis of family law from comparative and private international law perspectives. It emphasizes the need to examine complex cross-border family situations by comparing legal systems and understanding the jurisdictional overlay, with a particular focus on the United States. The casebook addresses some of the most intimate and legally complicated situations in which cross-border families find themselves, including the validity of foreign marriages, simultaneous divorce proceedings in multiple countries, the changing law in creating families using adoption and assisted reproductive technology, and how to remedy an international parental child abduction. In addition, the book dives into the importance of judicial assistance treaties and laws when understanding the legal issues, including the necessity to have proper service in a foreign country, obtaining evidence overseas, and authenticating foreign public documents. This book is a superb companion for law students and practitioners alike, and can readily be used in a traditional theory-based class and in practicum courses. It provides substantive material for a course on International Family Law, or can supplement a course on Family Law, International Law, or Comparative Law.

Family law draws from constitutional law as well as from criminal law, conflict laws, and the laws of contracts, torts, property, inheritance, and even taxation. This comprehensive review inspects the creation of marriage relationships, spousal rights and obligations, parent and child relationships, marriage termination, and the economic consequences of divorce.