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Full-Text Articles in Law

Equity In American And Jewish Law, Itzchak E. Kornfeld , Ph.D. Jan 2020

Equity In American And Jewish Law, Itzchak E. Kornfeld , Ph.D.

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.


A Postcolonial Theory Of Spousal Rape: The Carribean And Beyond, Stacy-Ann Elvy Jul 2015

A Postcolonial Theory Of Spousal Rape: The Carribean And Beyond, Stacy-Ann Elvy

Stacy-Ann Elvy

Many postcolonial states in the Caribbean continue to struggle to comply with their international treaty obligations to protect women from sexual violence. Reports from various United Nations programs, including UNICEF, and the annual U.S. State Department Country Reports on Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia (“Commonwealth Countries”), indicate that sexual violence against women, including spousal abuse, is a significant problem in the Caribbean. Despite ratification of various international instruments intended to eliminate sexual violence against women, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Commonwealth Countries have retained the …


A Postcolonial Theory Of Spousal Rape: The Carribean And Beyond, Stacy-Ann Elvy Jan 2015

A Postcolonial Theory Of Spousal Rape: The Carribean And Beyond, Stacy-Ann Elvy

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Many postcolonial states in the Caribbean continue to struggle to comply with their international treaty obligations to protect women from sexual violence. Reports from various United Nations programs, including UNICEF, and the annual U.S. State Department Country Reports on Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia (“Commonwealth Countries”), indicate that sexual violence against women, including spousal abuse, is a significant problem in the Caribbean. Despite ratification of various international instruments intended to eliminate sexual violence against women, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Commonwealth Countries have retained the …


The Crisis Of Child Custody: A History Of The Birth Of Family Law In England, Danaya Wright Nov 2014

The Crisis Of Child Custody: A History Of The Birth Of Family Law In England, Danaya Wright

Danaya C. Wright

This article attempts to show that the inter-spousal custody cases of the nineteenth century created such a crisis in equity that they eventually demanded a new court structure and a new set of legal doctrines. The custody cases posed such a profound threat to the stability and authority of the Chancery courts that within fifty years an entirely new court system was required. That court system combined the tripartite jurisdictions of the law, equity, and ecclesiastical courts in matrimonial matters. While many scholars and historians have applauded that moment, I would suggest that the new court was merely a way …


Marriage And Its Alternatives, Jeanine Elbaz Jan 2009

Marriage And Its Alternatives, Jeanine Elbaz

Tribeca Square Press

No abstract provided.


The Uniform Probate Code's Elective Share: Time For A Reassessment, Lawrence W. Waggoner Jan 2003

The Uniform Probate Code's Elective Share: Time For A Reassessment, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

In this Article, Professor Waggoner proposes reforms to the Uniform Probate Code's (UPC) treatment of the elective share of the surviving spouse. First, the Article recommends that the UPC adopt a form of presentation that more transparently reflects the normative theories and empirical assumptions underlying the UPC's elective share framework. Second, the Article presents demographic data suggesting that the UPC's current elective share approximation schedule may be inappropriatef or a sizable faction of married couples, those remarryingf ollowing widowhood. Finally, the Article proposes two substantive revisions to the UPC's election share framework-the first proposal is to lengthen the approximation schedule; …


The Crisis Of Child Custody: A History Of The Birth Of Family Law In England, Danaya C. Wright Jan 2002

The Crisis Of Child Custody: A History Of The Birth Of Family Law In England, Danaya C. Wright

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article attempts to show that the inter-spousal custody cases of the nineteenth century created such a crisis in equity that they eventually demanded a new court structure and a new set of legal doctrines. The custody cases posed such a profound threat to the stability and authority of the Chancery courts that within fifty years an entirely new court system was required. That court system combined the tripartite jurisdictions of the law, equity, and ecclesiastical courts in matrimonial matters. While many scholars and historians have applauded that moment, I would suggest that the new court was merely a way …


Husband And Wife Are One - Him: Bennis V. Michigan As The Resurrection Of Coverture, Amy D. Ronner Jan 1996

Husband And Wife Are One - Him: Bennis V. Michigan As The Resurrection Of Coverture, Amy D. Ronner

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Although the legal fictions of coverture and guilty property have been repudiated by statutes and the Court respectively, the Supreme Court implicitly resurrected and fused the coverture and guilty property myths in Bennis v. Michigan. In that decision, the Court approved the forfeiture of Ms. Bennis' interest in a car in which her husband engaged in sexual activity with a prostitute. This Article explores that resurrected conglomerate in three parts. Part I is a concise review of the feudal doctrine of coverture and the disabilities it imposed on married women. Part II focuses almost entirely on the decision in …


The Road Less Taken: Annulment At The Turn Of The Century, Chris Guthrie, Joanna Grossman Jan 1996

The Road Less Taken: Annulment At The Turn Of The Century, Chris Guthrie, Joanna Grossman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

It is hardly surprising that certain legal institutions--adoption, wills, and guardianship--have lasted through the centuries. Each meets a different, seemingly timeless need: providing parenting for orphans or abandoned children, distributing property at death, and dealing with legal incapacity, respectively. Similarly, divorce, though it appeared somewhat later, took hold and persisted for an obvious reason-the increasing demand for a legally sanctioned way to terminate broken marriages. The endurance of annulment, however, particularly in the face of increasingly liberalized divorce laws, defies easy explanation. The existence of annulment prior to the mid-nineteenth century is easily explained. Until 1857, England was a "divorceless …


Tribute To William F. Fratcher: Marital Property Rights In Transition, Lawrence W. Waggoner Jan 1994

Tribute To William F. Fratcher: Marital Property Rights In Transition, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

"Marital property rights," a term that covers a vast multitude of rights or interests conferred by law on persons who occupy the status of spouse, are in a state of transition. To discuss the themes and trends that are emerging, this Article is divided into four discrete, yet related segments. The first segment addresses how the law allocates original ownership between spouses in a marriage. The second segment turns to the intestate share of the surviving spouse. This is not a topic that much concerns high-powered estate planners because intestate estates are usually fairly small. But to the surviving spouse, …


The Unnecessary Doctrine Of Necessaries, Michigan Law Review Jun 1984

The Unnecessary Doctrine Of Necessaries, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that neither the traditional nor the modem necessaries doctrines are justifiable in contemporary society. Part I investigates the practical effects of both the traditional and contemporary necessaries doctrines and demonstrates that neither is an effective mechanism for providing support to a needy spouse. While a more successful support remedy might be devised to replace modem and traditional versions of the necessaries rule, Part II shows that yet another reformulation would not be worthwhile because the theoretical underpinnings of the doctrine are faulty. There is no persuasive evidence to establish the existence of the narrow support problem the …


Prohibiting Nonaccess Testimony By Spouses: Does Lord Mansfield's Rule Protect Illegitimates?, Michigan Law Review Jun 1977

Prohibiting Nonaccess Testimony By Spouses: Does Lord Mansfield's Rule Protect Illegitimates?, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Not surprisingly, there has been widespread disagreement concerning the validity of the policies advanced in support of Lord Mansfield's Rule and the efficacy of the rule to promote those policies. This Note assesses the validity of this rule of evidence in order to determine whether it is the most appropriate method of safeguarding the interests affected by the litigation of legitimacy. First, the historical development and justifications for Lord Mansfield's Rule are identified, and, in section II, the extent of the current acceptance of the rule in the United States is delineated. Section III analyzes traditional arguments advanced in support …


The Right Of Married Women To Assert Their Own Surnames, Roslyn Goodman Daum Jan 1974

The Right Of Married Women To Assert Their Own Surnames, Roslyn Goodman Daum

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article, then, will attempt to frame the issues involved in the name change controversy and to suggest not only ways to implement reforms, but also the consequences attending these measures. Massachusetts has been chosen as the setting for an in-depth analysis of each problem, and examples of legislative, judicial, and administrative action in that state will be interspersed throughout. The results of the efforts in Massachusetts may be politically and legally instructive for people with similar interests in other jurisdictions.


Joint Tenancy: The Estate Lawyer's Continuing Burden, John E. Riecker Mar 1966

Joint Tenancy: The Estate Lawyer's Continuing Burden, John E. Riecker

Michigan Law Review

The discussion which follows will be divided into three major parts. First, it will be important to see why so much real and personal property remains in joint tenancy between husband and wife or in entireties tenancy. It has been almost eighteen years since Congress eliminated the necessity of holding property in this form in order to split income therefrom for income tax purposes. Is inertia the only reason for the popularity of joint ownership, or are there other reasons? Second, we shall review the familiar but false assumptions most laymen (and even a few attorneys) commonly make regarding the …


Widow's Succession In Common-Law Property State To Husband's Rights In Her Half Of Community Property Is Taxable And Valued At One-Half Of Entire Community--In Re Kessler's Estate, Michigan Law Review Nov 1965

Widow's Succession In Common-Law Property State To Husband's Rights In Her Half Of Community Property Is Taxable And Valued At One-Half Of Entire Community--In Re Kessler's Estate, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

While residing with his wife in California, decedent purchased stock, which under California law became community property. The couple later moved to Ohio, a common-law property state, where decedent died. An Ohio probate court approved the executor's determination that the widow's one-half interest in the stock was not subject to the Ohio succession tax. On appeal by the state tax commissioner to the Ohio Supreme Court, held, reversed, three judges dissenting. A wife's succession to her husband's right to manage and control her half of the community property is subject to the Ohio succession tax on joint and survivorship …


The Law Of Infants' Marriages, Robert Kingsley Jun 1956

The Law Of Infants' Marriages, Robert Kingsley

Vanderbilt Law Review

Just as the law requires, for ordinary contracts, that a party thereto must have reached an age sufficient to give him reasonable discretion, so, in connection with the contract of marriage, the law has required that the parties be not too immature. It must be remembered, however, that the word "infant" is not one of fixed meaning: when used with reference to ordinary contracts, and without further qualification, it usually means a person under twenty-one years of age; but in the field of criminal law the dividing line between "infancy" and "adult" responsibility is fixed at a lesser age (14 …


Citizenship-Intent Required For Expatriation, Willis B. Snell S. Ed. Feb 1951

Citizenship-Intent Required For Expatriation, Willis B. Snell S. Ed.

Michigan Law Review

In recent years, many cases have involved the question whether an American citizen has expatriated himself by his actions. Expatriation in the United States is now covered by statute, but the courts, in construing these statutes, have faced a recurrent problem as to what intent on the part of the citizen is required to effect expatriation. To interpret the present doctrine, it is necessary to examine the history of expatriation, the statutes, and the various situations in which the question of intent has arisen.


Some General Aspects Of Michigan Community Property Law, William E. Burby Jan 1948

Some General Aspects Of Michigan Community Property Law, William E. Burby

Michigan Law Review

The common law, in recognition of the fact that one spouse is entitled to some economic security in the property of the other spouse, evolved the interests known as dower and curtesy. These interests, of course, apply only with respect to land. The husband enjoyed an additional economic advantage that came from the management and control of his wife's property. This latter advantage has disappeared with the advent of Married Women's Property Acts that confer upon married women the right to manage their own estates. Statutes have also expanded on the concept of dower and curtesy by providing for a …


Husband And Wife--Memorandum On The Mississippi Woman's Law Of 1839, Elizabeth Gaspar Brown Jun 1944

Husband And Wife--Memorandum On The Mississippi Woman's Law Of 1839, Elizabeth Gaspar Brown

Michigan Law Review

In retrospect, it seems a logical development that married women in the United States should have acquired substantial legal equality with men. The conditions of pioneer life, the relatively high sentimental value placed upon women, the increasing degree of social and domestic freedom which American women enjoyed-all were incompatible with the strict theories of the common law which placed a married woman and her property under the absolute control of her husband.


Revocation Of Wills By Subsequent Change In The Condition Or Circumstances Of The Testator, Elizabeth Durfee Jan 1942

Revocation Of Wills By Subsequent Change In The Condition Or Circumstances Of The Testator, Elizabeth Durfee

Michigan Law Review

Among the oldest rules in the law of wills are those by which a will is held to be revoked by implication by certain changes in the circumstances of the testator. The purpose of this paper is to investigate these rules. Special reference will be made to statutes, both those which deal generally with the subject and those which provide specifically for the effect of particular events, such as marriage; no attempt will be made, however to analyze the latter type of statute exhaustively. By way of introduction, a brief historical survey of the doctrine should be made.


Gratuitous Promises-A New Writ?, Warren L. Shattuck Apr 1937

Gratuitous Promises-A New Writ?, Warren L. Shattuck

Michigan Law Review

Under the early common law, the fact situations which presented actionable wrongs were limited in number and stereotyped into various writs which issued from the Lord Chancellor. Only as new writs were devised by him was it possible for new fact situations to achieve the dignity of justiciability and so raise legal rights and duties. But with the liberalization of pleading the recognition of new legal rights and duties became a judicial function. In consequence, the constant struggle of new fact patterns for a place in the law is now principally waged before the courts. In this struggle some fail, …


Change In The Meaning Of Consortium, Evans Holbrook Jan 1923

Change In The Meaning Of Consortium, Evans Holbrook

Articles

LAWYERS have long boasted of the flexibility of the common law, of its ability to adapt itself to the needs of changing conditions of society, of its responsiveness to sociological progress. And while eager reformers have often-and with much reason complained that the law is laggard in its response to the needs of the people, yet it is clear that sooner or later the courts generally bring themselves into accord with "what is sanctioned by usage, or held by the prevailing morality or strong and preponderant public 'opinion to be greatly and immediately necessary to the public welfare." This responsiveness …