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high rates of divorce, this book argues that the law's current approach to regulating parental relationships is outdated.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.
This popular family law casebook engages students by presenting core family law doctrine while exploring significant transformations in American families and cutting-edge policy debates. It highlights the important role of constitutional law--and other areas of state and federal law--in shaping family law. The book invites students to consider questions of family definition and governmental regulation of families in light of family law's purposes. It charts family law's evolving approach to adult-adult and parent-child (and other caretaker-dependent) relationships, emphasizing that contemporary families take a variety of forms. The Sixth Edition updates all chapters to reflect the latest family law developments, such as the legal treatment of nonmarital families (including plural relationships) and nonbiological parenting as well as recent Supreme Court decisions. It integrates material previously covered in separate chapters on ethical issues in family law practice and jurisdiction into the contexts in which they arise, such as divorce, child custody, and division of marital property. The Sixth Edition has new material highlighting the intersection of family law with race, gender, class, immigration, sexual orientation, and gender identity. As with previous editions, the casebook contains ample problems for students to apply doctrine to realistic factual contexts and highlights practical dynamics of family law practice. The 6th edition: Thoroughly examines the impact of recent Supreme Court cases on family law, including Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (and provides teachers with shorter and longer versions of that case), and Golan v. Saada Includes attention to the role of race and racism in laws that shape and regulate the family, with case law addressing marriage, divorce, and inheritance rights of formerly enslaved persons and a post-Loving v. Virginia case challenging the continued requirement that couples disclose race on a marriage license Provides a restructured chapter on the legal consequences of marriage, spousal roles within marriage, and the gender revolution within family law and related fields Includes new developments on marriage requirements, including state minimum age laws and common-law marriage rules, and addresses First Amendment challenges, post-Masterpiece Cakeshop, to civil marriage equality and state antidiscrimination laws Includes new coverage of the intersection of immigration and family law Addresses changes in legal approaches to nonmarital families, including multi-adult domestic partnerships and the Uniform Cohabitants' Economic Remedies Act Provides updated treatment of custody and parenting time issues, including parenting gender-expansive children Provides a restructured chapter on intimate partner violence (IPV), including updates on various factors impacting IPV and shifting gun control statutes and caselaw affecting civil protection orders Provides new consideration of child support issues, including joint custody and subsequent families Provides revised problems in anticipation of the NextGen Bar Exam
Topics: the changing family, the collective majority, Marriage and other partnerships, families in crisis, planning parenthood, and nontraditional families.
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 emphasizes doctrine, policy, and practice. It presents three central themes: the interrelated rights and obligations of children, parents, and government; ways the legal system assesses and uses children's competence to shape regulation; and the role of the child's lawyer. Volume covers several relevant international law issues, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, international child labor, and U.S. tobacco exports to children overseas. The authors have devoted entire chapters to the representation of children, the meaning of "parent," abuse and neglect, the foster care system, adoption, medical decision-making, support and other financial responsibilities, protective legislation, and delinquency.
