Category Archives: Family Law
Vera Lúcia Raposo, ‘Wrongful disturbance of reproductive planning: Is there a case for liability?’
ABSTRACT This article analyses claims involving parental allegations pertaining to the features their children were born with in violation of the express requests they made when they used reproductive procedures. This kind of claim, encouraged by the development of reproductive techniques and their associated procedures, has until now found little support in the courts. However, […]
Malinda Seymore, ‘Inconceivable Families’
ABSTRACT Basic biology tells us that each child has no more than two biological parents, one who supplies the egg and one who supplies the sperm. Adoption law in this country has generally followed biology, insisting only two parents be legally recognized for each child. Thus, every adoption begins with loss. Before a child can […]
Kristine Knaplund, ‘Reimagining Postmortem Conception’
ABSTRACT Hundreds, likely thousands, of babies have been born years after a parent has died. Thousands more people have cryopreserved their sperm, ova, and embryos, or have requested that a loved one’s gametes be retrieved after death to produce still more such children. Twenty-three states have enacted statutes detailing how these postmortem conception children can […]
Imogen Goold, ‘Recognising What is Lost in Reproductive Harms: Whittington Hospital NHS Trust v XX’
ABSTRACT Whittington Hospital NHS Trust v XX (XX) turned on whether the courts should fund the creation of children for a woman negligently denied the ability to do so herself by awarding her the cost of pursuing surrogacy via a commercial service in California. The key issues were whether these costs should include surrogacy using […]
James Dwyer, ‘Deflating Parental Rights’
ABSTRACT Perhaps the greatest determinant of individual and societal welfare is who raises children and with what degree of discretion. Philosophers have endeavored in myriad ways to provide normative justification for ascribing a right to be a legal parent and to possess particular legal powers as a parent. This Article shows why they fail and […]
Cahn and Atwood, ‘Nonmarital Cohabitants: The US Approach’
ABSTRACT This article reviews the legal status of nonmarital cohabitation in the United States. The recognition of cohabitants’ claims in the United States has occurred largely through the common law, and the article provides an overview of the patchwork of legal approaches. It shows the continuum of approaches, from states that refuse to recognize cohabitants’ […]
Sirko Harder, ‘Compensation for the Cost of a Surrogacy Arrangement in Personal Injury Cases’
ABSTRACT A woman who has been rendered infertile by a defendant’s wrong may wish to obtain damages for the cost of becoming a parent through a surrogacy arrangement. Such a claim, which has yet to be brought before an Australian court, would raise two partially overlapping issues under Australian law. First, the claim must satisfy […]
Probert and Pywell, ‘Love in the time of Covid-19: a case-study of the complex laws governing weddings’
ABSTRACT During 2020, weddings were profoundly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. During periods of lockdown few weddings could take place, and even afterwards restrictions on how they could be celebrated remained. To investigate the impact of such restrictions, we carried out a survey of those whose plans to marry in England and Wales had been […]
Tamar Ezer, ‘Inheritance Law in Tanzania: The Impoverishment of Widows and Daughters’
ABSTRACT Tanzania’s inheritance laws are in urgent need of reform. Both customary and Islamic law, the two predominant systems of intestate succession in Tanzania, limit women’s inheritance on the basis of their gender. Under customary law, a widow is generally denied inheritance altogether: ‘[H]er share is to be cared for by her children, just as […]
‘Subsequent Marriages and the Elective Share’
Naomi Cahn, ‘What’s Wrong About the Elective Share “Right”?’, 53 UC Davis Law Review 2087 (2020). I have long been perplexed by the inconsistency between the rights of divorcing spouses which are governed by family law rules and the rights of surviving spouses which are governed by trusts and estates law. While the rules governing […]