Category Archives: Family Law
‘Weaponizing The Law and the Cost of Lawyers in Intimate Partner Violence Actions’
Heather Douglas, Women, Intimate Partner Violence, and the Law (2021). Across the world, millions of women experiencing violence and coercive control by an intimate partner turn to the law for help. Lawyers and justice systems ill-equipped to deal with this complex issue are often accused of missing, and even compounding, harms. Heather Douglas’s Women, Intimate […]
Rishi Kumar, ‘An Economic Critique of No-Fault Divorce Laws’
ABSTRACT The impact of no-fault divorce laws is still a hotly debated topic in Economics today. Some say no-fault divorce laws have had no influence on divorce rates; others say they have had a significant impact. This paper essentially claims that no-fault divorce has indeed had significant and often unanticipated financial ramifications for families in […]
Robert Leckey, ‘De Facto Relationships in Canada’
ABSTRACT This chapter surveys the legal approach to unmarried cohabitation in three Canadian provinces: British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec. The jurisdictions exemplify varying approaches: assimilating unmarried partners to married spouses for virtually all purposes, including them partly in family law, and applying a policy of laissez-faire, by which cohabitation entails no reciprocal rights and obligations […]
Robert Leckey, ‘Cohabitation Law in Quebec: Confusing, Incoherent, and Unjust’
ABSTRACT This article studies the regulation of unmarried cohabitation in Quebec, the Canadian federation’s province of the civil law. Quebec has assimilated cohabitants to married spouses for public or social laws, while maintaining for them a policy of laissez-faire under its private law of the family. The article argues that Quebec’s approach is confusing, incoherent, […]
‘Three’s Company, Too: The Emergence of Polyamorous Partnership Ordinances’
“In the summer of 2020, the city of Somerville, Massachusetts, passed the first multiple-partner domestic partnership ordinance in the country. Spurred by the pandemic, the city council acknowledged residents’ inability to access their partners’ health insurance without legal recognition of their relationships. Its members voted unanimously to adopt a domestic partnership law. The novel ordinance […]
Henry Cooney, ‘Restitution, Unjust Enrichment and Domestic Caregiving’
ABSTRACT In Gill v Garrett [2020] NSWSC 795, Slattery J considered a claim in unjust enrichment in which a domestic caregiver sought restitution for the value of caregiving services. While the claimant was unsuccessful, Slattery J’s decision provides several helpful insights into the way courts approach these sorts of claims. This note explores some of […]
‘Unearthing Posthumous Subordination’
Fred O Smith Jr, ‘On Time, (In)equality, and Death’, 120 Michigan Law Review 195 (2021). Fred O Smith Jr’s compelling new article, ‘On Time, (In)equality, and Death’, is a remarkable inquiry that delves into the posthumous rights of individuals and the risks of subordination that persist even beyond death. Smith identifies ‘four long-standing “rights” after […]
Michael Higdon, ‘Common Law Divorce’
ABSTRACT Common law marriage has existed in the United for more than 200 years. Although not permitted as widely today, every state continues to recognize a common law marriage from one of the handful of states that still permit parties to wed in this informal manner. In contrast, never has there been anything even approaching […]
Ashleigh Rousseau, ‘Transgender Beneficiaries: In Becoming Who You Are, Do You Lose the Benefits Attached to Who You Were’
ABSTRACT Suppose William Smith, father of Joseph Smith, executes a will to leave his estate to his children. In his will, the phrase ‘to my son, Joseph’ is used, preceding a bequest for property. Before William dies, Julia embraces her transgender identity, obtains a lawful name change to Julia, obtains a lawful gender marker change, […]
Cahn, Huntington and Scott, ‘Family Law for the Hundred-Year Life’
ABSTRACT … This Article argues that family law must adapt to the new old age. At a conceptual level, family law should address the interests and needs of families across the life span, not just those of younger people. And it must reflect three core commitments: centering the dignity and autonomy interests of older persons, […]