Category Archives: Family Law
Emily Stolzenberg, ‘Children as Non-owners in US Family Law and Inheritance Law’
ABSTRACT US family law and inheritance law take seemingly opposite approaches to support of minor children. Living parents must provide support, but almost every state permits testators to disinherit even minor children. This Chapter, a contribution to the Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Family Law and Finances, resolves the tension: both strands of family property […]
Deebu R, ‘On The Rights of Wives Against Unjust Enrichment In Return Of Gold Cases’
ABSTRACT In matrimonial cases to recover gold, Family Courts mistakenly specify an alternate value that is recoverable if they cannot return the gold itself. However, when husbands preferred appeals, these cases would remain in litigation for years, and the value of gold would skyrocket. This would allow the husband to pay the lesser amount specified […]
‘Marriage, Property and Solidarity in Europe: Applying the Numerical Comparative Method in Family Law’
How is patrimonial solidarity between spouses conceived and operationalised in continental European jurisdictions? In most systems, the property relations between spouses are governed by a matrimonial property regime. The default regime, which is applicable in the absence of a marital agreement, usually ensures that the property accumulated during the marriage (the ‘matrimonial property’) is equally […]
Erez Aloni, ‘Married by Default’
ABSTRACT This Article examines and critiques the global binary debate surrounding opt-in versus opt-out legal regimes for regulating unmarried cohabitants’ financial obligations upon separation. Using Canadian jurisdictions as a case study, it challenges the prevailing academic consensus that endorses opt-out systems as superior policy, based on assumptions that they are fairer, sufficiently preserve autonomy, enhance […]
Emily Remus, ‘Credit and Coverture in the Age of American Mass Consumption’
ABSTRACT This article considers how married women’s legal status under coverture shaped retail credit practices in the twentieth-century United States, as a mass consumer economy began to take shape. It focuses particularly on the law of necessaries, which made husbands liable for the ‘necessary’ purchases of their wives. Rooted in English common law, this doctrine […]
Rachel Leow, ‘Can parents sell their children’s property? A property law perspective’
INTRODUCTION Christmas arrives. Nicki’s nine-year-old son receives a gaming console and many soft toys as Christmas gifts from his doting relatives, each of them delivering the gift right into her son’s hands. Nicki, however, is annoyed. Her son has far too many soft toys: his entire room is covered in them. Nor does her son […]
Clare Ryan, ‘The Public/Private Home’
ABSTRACT Families today are more private and more public than traditional family law doctrine ever envisioned. This Article reveals how many elements of family life, which the law often assumes will occur in public – work, school, social life – have moved into the private sphere of the home. While at the same time, private […]
Mason Clark, ‘It Takes a Village (to Raise Children’s Privacy)’
ABSTRACT Raising children is an expensive and (mostly) rewarding commitment. Many parents, guardians, and caregivers are willing to invest in indestructible car seats, private schools, and organic, farm-fresh, whole-grain, low-sugar, dye-free, naturally flavored foods. Is it reasonable to ask them to invest in children’s privacy? Surely companies can’t expect parents to stand guard at the […]
James Toomey, ‘Parents as Liberal Fiduciaries’
ABSTRACT The relationship between parents and children is unique in the law. On the one hand, parents exercise more power over their children than in any legal relationship other than ownership; but parents, unlike owners, must act to promote their children’s welfare. At the same time, the parent-child relationship poses perhaps the single most difficult […]
Emily Stolzenberg, ‘Toward a Private Law of Intimates’ Obligations’
ABSTRACT When former cohabitants ask courts to distribute property at the end of a nonmarital relationship, they usually lose – even when the partners were as economically intertwined as spouses. Family law scholars have traditionally criticized these cases in terms of longstanding gendered ideas about family relationships. This Article proposes a complementary account at the […]