Category Archives: Family Law
Lifshitz and Rivlin, ‘Marital Contracts on the Fault Lines: A Liberal Inquiry’
ABSTRACT The revolution in Western family law over the past 50 years – often described as ‘liberalization’ – involves a decrease in the importance of fault-based factors alongside an increase in the significance of marital contracts. While these two trends generally complement each other, they may conflict when a couple seeks to assign economic consequences […]
Shahar Lifshitz, ‘Unbundling marriage law’
ABSTRACT This article illuminates the legal regulation of the economic rights of non-marital partners at separation or death. Current approaches have typically fallen into two categories: one advocating for the separation of legal regimes based on formal status, treating cohabitant partners as strangers, and the other taking a functional approach, treating cohabitation and marriage as […]
Annika Pavlin-Jamal, ‘Considerations for a Tort of Family Violence’
ABSTRACT This article contends that the existing gap in legal recognition of domestic abuse would be effectively addressed through the codification of the proposed tort of family violence. The first section examines a ‘continuous’ and relational understanding of domestic abuse through the lens of Ahluwalia v Ahluwalia, where the tort was initially introduced, and discusses […]
Rivlin and Lifshitz, ‘Reimagining Marital Property at Death’
ABSTRACT This paper argues that death should not automatically terminate the marital partnership, and it suggests a novel and comprehensive model for the regulation of marital property upon death. According to the conventional view, the idea of marital partnership implies an equal division of the marital assets upon dissolution. Thus, in the event of death, […]
Patrick Parkinson, ‘The Constitutional Constraints on Altering Property Rights After Relationship Breakdown’
ABSTRACT Section 79(2) of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) provides that the court shall not make an order altering property rights unless it is just and equitable to do so. This article argues that s 79(2) is required by the constitutional foundations upon which the power to alter property rights rests. The discretion of […]
‘Deserted wives, dastardly husbands, dodgy metaphors’
At this time of year, the thoughts of a historically-minded tutor of Land Law turn to the nature of equity. Yes, it is time to inflict upon a new cohort of second year students the distinction between legal and equitable rules, to skate over the development and demise of conciliar jurisdictions and get them to […]
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 […]
NeJaime and Joslin, ‘Multiparenthood’
ABSTRACT Family law conventionally treats parenthood as binary: A child has two, and only two, parents. These two parents possess all parental rights and responsibilities, which cannot be shared with others. Their status as parents remains fixed throughout the child’s life. Today, legislatures are explicitly challenging this view. Ten jurisdictions now have multiparent statutes, ie, […]
Patrick Parkinson, ‘The Constitutional Constraints on Altering Property Rights After Relationship Breakdown’
ABSTRACT Section 79(2) of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) provides that the court shall not make an order altering property rights unless it is just and equitable to do so. This article argues that s 79(2) is required by the constitutional foundations upon which the power to alter property rights rests. The discretion of […]
Allison Tait, ‘The Haunting of Wealth Law’
ABSTRACT Wealth law is full of ghosts, ghosts everywhere all at once. As a form of both preservation and disruption, a form of continuance as well as a form of interruption, ghosts are reminders of the past in its multiple forms. But they are also figures that prompt consideration of the present as well as […]