Abstract
In family law, ‘autonomy’ has traditionally meant freedom from state interference in one’s intimate life. This Article describes an emergent, libertarian vision of autonomy as property rights that also demands freedom from other family members. This conception, ‘choice about obligations’, holds redistribution of resources between intimates to be illegitimate unless the richer party ‘chose’ to take on financial obligations ex ante by ceremonially marrying or formally contracting. But as more people conduct their intimate lives outside these legal institutions, choice about obligations increasingly collides with another, more fundamental, family law principle: the imperative to ‘privatize dependency’, ie, to redistribute resources between family members in lieu of publicly supporting those who cannot support themselves. This conflict is insoluble on its own terms and creates persistent doctrinal problems in the modern law of family obligations …
Stolzenberg, Emily, The New Family Freedom (July 11, 2018). Boston College Law Review, volume 59, no 6, 2018.
First posted 2018-08-02 11:54:45
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