Category Archives: Family Law
Ryan and McMichael, ‘The Future of Frozen Embryos’
ABSTRACT The 2024 Alabama Supreme Court decision in LePage v Center for Reproductive Medicine, which declared frozen embryos to be ‘children’, represents a significant shift in the legal treatment of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the United States. This Article examines the context, implications, and potential consequences of LePage for family law, tort law, and […]
Weisbord and Sterk, ‘Joint Bank Accounts: Who Needs Them?’
ABSTRACT Joint bank accounts, once known as a ‘poor man’s will’, emerged more than a century ago as a probate avoidance device. This Article contends that joint accounts no longer serve a useful estate planning function, and they pose an unacceptably high risk to banking consumers because the legal framework governing lifetime ownership rights is […]
‘Constructive Trusts – Beyond Box Ticking’
A very recent property blog concerned the case of Hudson v Hathway [2022] EWCA Civ 1648, and in this one we find ourselves returning again to the Common Intention Constructive Trust (CICT). Remember that this jurisdiction has developed principally (in the absence of any assistance from the legislature) as the courts’ response to relationship breakdown […]
Jane Thomson, ‘Both Sides Now: Common Law Relationships as Status in Canada’
ABSTRACT Much has been written on the idea of marriage as status-like. However, less time has been dedicated to the idea of common law relationships as status. In the decision of Quebec v A, the Supreme Court of Canada was asked whether the exclusion of unmarried couples from Quebec’s division of property and spousal support […]
Recently Published: Falconer, Barker and Fell (eds), Life and Death in Private Law
Private law regulates life; this is self-evident, but how does it regulate death? This edited collection explores this question. Life and death are the beginning and end of the legal person: the instigator and terminator of rights, interests and obligations. They are also the nominal separator of particular fields of law (medical law from succession […]
Albertina Antognini, ‘Fraudulent Families’
ABSTRACT The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld distinctions between unwed mothers and unwed fathers on the basis of sex. Unwed women are recognized as mothers automatically upon birth, while unwed men must undertake a series of affirmative steps before being recognized as fathers. One of the central rationales for this differential treatment is the Court’s […]
Thijs and Verbeke, ‘Default property rules for same-gender marriages: equivalence over equality?’
ABSTRACT More and more jurisdictions accept that marriage should be open for all couples, both different and same gender. While this identical application of marriage as an institution is not open for debate, differences between same-gender couples and different-gender couples may have some value as to the precise content of marital property rules. Existing research […]
‘Marcus v Marcus: can a non-biological child be “a child of the settlor”?’
In the recent judgment of Marcus v Marcus [2024] EWHC 2086, Master Marsh found that the words ‘the children and remoter issue of the Settlor’ in a settlement meant the two adult sons of the settlor, even though (unbeknownst to the settlor during his lifetime) one of his sons was not biologically his child. The […]
Sowter and Koshan, ‘“Weaponizing” The Tort of Family Violence? Myths, Stereotypes, Lawyers’ Ethics and Access to Justice’
ABSTRACT Intimate partner violence (‘IPV’) causes myriad and gendered harms, but Canadian law has inconsistently provided avenues of economic redress. Although tort law has evolved to allow IPV survivors to seek compensation, tort-based remedies are sought rarely and largely limited to intentional torts such as assault, battery, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress. These […]
‘A Proposal to Save Property for Heirs of Decedents of Modest Wealth’
Danaya C Wright, ‘Trapped Between the URPTODA and the UPHPA: Probate Reforms to Bridge the Gap and Save Heirs Property for Modest-Wealth Decedents’, 127 Penn State Law Review 749 (2023). Although my law practice prior to entering academia focused on representing the uber wealthy, my recent interests focus more on preserving wealth in families of […]