Law Commons^™

Zoning For Families, Sara C. Bronin

Indiana Law Journal

Is a group of eight unrelated adults and three children living together and sharing meals, household expenses, and responsibilities—and holding themselves out to the world to have long-term commitments to each other—a family? Not according to most zoning codes—including that of Hartford, Connecticut, where the preceding scenario presented itself a few years ago. Zoning, which is the local regulation of land use, almost always defines family, limiting those who may live in a dwelling unit to those who satisfy the zoning code’s definition. Often times, this definition is drafted in a way that excludes many modern living arrangements and preferences. …

The Law Of Nonmarriage, Albertina Antognini

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The meaning of marriage, and how it regulates intimate relationships, has been at the forefront of recent scholarly and public debates. Yet despite the attention paid to marriage—especially in the wake of Obergefell v. Hodges—a record number of people are not marrying. Legal scholarship has mostly neglected how the law regulates these nonmarital relationships. This Article begins to fill the gap. It does so by examining how courts distribute property at the end of a relationship that was nonmarital at some point. This inquiry provides a descriptive account to a poorly understood and largely under-theorized area of the law. …

Whose Fault Is It Anyway?: Analyzing The Role “Fault” Plays In The Division Of Premarital Property If Marriage Does Not Ensue, Arielle L. Murphy

Catholic University Law Review

Whenever an engagement comes to a premature end, the first question that seems to be asked is: “who gets the engagement ring?” This Comment seeks to answer this question. As societal views regarding marriage and a woman’s role within it began to change in the mid-twentieth century, courts started to recognize engagement rings as conditional gifts that were conditioned upon the marriage actually occurring. Even with this framework, states remain divided on whether fault should be included as part of the analysis in determining which party is entitled to the ring if an engagement ends before marriage occurs. This Comment …

The Property Rights Of Spouses Cohabiting Without Marriage In Israel - A Comparative Commentary, Menashe Shava

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Why New Hampshire Should Permit Married Couples To Choose Community Property, Calvin Massey

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Two states, Alaska and Tennessee, offer married couples the choice of holding their property as separate or community property. Another nine states use community property as the default arrangement. Yet in each of those nine states a couple can opt out of community property rules by agreement. Only in the remaining thirty-nine states are married couples forced to accept separate property. There is no good reason for this condition to exist. This essay sets forth the advantages of offering married couples the choice of community or separate property and deals with some expected objections to this proposal. Section I …

Rights, Privileges, And The Future Of Marriage, Adam Macleod

Adam MacLeod

On the eve of its final triumph, has the cause of marriage equality fallen short? This essay discusses persistent differences in the incidents that attach to same-sex marriages versus man-woman marriages. It examines these in light of the distinction between fundamental rights and concessions of privilege in marriage law, and in common law constitutionalism generally. The Obergefell majority's premise that the marriage right is created and conferred by positive law renders the rights and duties of same-sex marriage unstable. By contrast, the rights and duties of the natural family have proven surprisingly resilient, despite their incompatibility with full marriage equality, …

The Illusion Of Equality: The Failure Of The Community Property Reform To Achieve Management Equality, Elizabeth Carter

Elizabeth R. Carter

The Probate Definition Of Family: A Proposal For Guided Discretion In Intestacy, Susan N. Gary

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Intestacy statutes may not match the wishes of many people who die intestate. Changes to the Uniform Probate Code (UPC) include or exclude potential takers, as the drafters attempt to bring the UPC provisions closer to the intent of more intestate decedents. As the UPC tries to fine-tune the intestacy statutes, however, family circumstances continue to get more and more complicated. Families headed by unmarried couples, blended families with children from multiple marriages, and families in which adults raise children who are not legally theirs, have become commonplace. For some decedents, non-family friends and caregivers may be more important than …

Yours, Mine, Ours? Renovating The Antiquated Apartheid In The Law Of Property Division In Native American Divorce, Vickie Enis

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Requirements Of A Valid Islamic Marriage Vis-À-Vis Requirements Of A Valid Customary Marriage In Nigeria, Olanike Sekinat Odewale Mrs

Olanike Sekinat Adelakun

Much Ado About Nothing Much: Protestant Episcopal Church In The Diocese Of Virginia V. Truro Church, Henry L. Chambers Jr., Isaac A. Mcbeth

University of Richmond Law Review

This essay reviews the issues the Supreme Court of Virginia resolved in Truro and notes important issues it did not resolve. Part II supplies the factual background and procedural history ofthe dispute. Part III summarizes the court's opinion and the reasoning underlying its determination that Virginia Code section57-9(A) is not applicable to this particular action. Part IV critiques the opinion, noting the issues the court resolved and how it resolved them. Part V briefly addresses issues that remain unresolved by the court's decision and discusses the implications of leaving those issues unresolved. Part VI presents the authors' conclusions.

Gender And Nation-Building: Family Law As Legal Architecture Symposium - Nation Building: A Legal Architecture: Articles And Essays, Tracy E. Higgins, Rachel P. Fink

Faculty Scholarship

Although the discipline of family law in the western legal tradition transcends the public/private law boundary in many ways, it is the argument of this Essay that family law, in the private law sense of defining the rights and obligations of members of a family, forms an important part of the legal architecture of nation-building in at least three ways. First, access to the resources of the nation-state devolves through biologically and culturally gendered national boundaries, both reflecting and reinforcing the differential status of men and women in the sphere of the family. Second, the social institution of the family …

The Passage Of Community Property Laws, 1939-1947: Was "More Than Money" Involved?, Jennifer E. Sturiale

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Part I of this article reviews the legal landscape that provided the backdrop against which Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Pennsylvania later adopted community property laws. It also examines the tax consequences of the two Supreme Court cases, Lucas v. Earl and Poe v. Seaborn, that resulted in the disparate tax treatment of married couples in common law and community property law states. Part II briefly reviews the subsequent passage of community property laws by Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Pennsylvania; the passage of a federal tax reduction bill that provided for equal treatment of community property law and …

Marriage Contracts And The Family Economy, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

One simplified view of contract law is that the state enforces private bargains without looking into the substance of those bargains. From this contractual perspective marriage might look like a contract to exchange services and goods: love, money, the ability to have and raise children, housework, sex, emotional support, physical care in times of sickness, entertainment and so forth. But when the parties to a marriage put these terms in writing, courts only enforce the provisions governing money. This contract/family law rule of selective enforcement disproportionately benefits those who bring more money to a marriage, who are more likely to …

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage? Applying Washington's Community Property Marriage Statutes To Cohabitational Relationships, Jennifer L. King

Seattle University Law Review

The “Creasman presumption” held that, absent any evidence to the contrary, the way property was titled at the end of a cohabitational relationship was presumed to be the way the parties intended. The “exceptions” to the Creasman presumption should be the rule to ensure the flexibility required by equity in these types of cases, while keeping distinct the lines between marriage and cohabitation. To promote this thesis, Part II discusses the facts of Creasman and then dispels the myth of importance surrounding its presumption. Part III reviews the facts of In re Marriage of Lindsey, looks at whether cohabitation …

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 …

Due Process

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Problem Of Selecting A Valuation Date For Property Subject To Equitable Distribution In New York

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Some Aspects Of Householding In The Medieval Icelandic Commonwealth, William I. Miller

Articles

There has been much, mostly inconclusive, discussion about how to define the household in a manner suitable for comparative purposes. Certain conventional criteria are not very useful in the Icelandic context, where it appears that a person could be attached to more than one household, where the laws suggest it was possible for more than one household to be resident in the same uncompartmentalised farmhouse; and where headship might often be shared. Definitions, for example, based on co residence or on commensalism do not jibe all that well with the pastoral transhumance practised by the Icelanders. Sheep were tended and …

Women And The Law Of Property In Early America, David H. Bromfield

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Women and the Law of Property in Early America by Marylynn Salmon

The Legal Effect Of Marital Separation Agreements Upon Community Property Status: Is It Time To Amend The Constitutional Definition Of Wife's Separate Property., Teresa A. Hunter

St. Mary's Law Journal

The present constitutional definition of married women’s separate property serves to protect the wife’s property rights and to preserve the community property system in Texas. However, the policy reasons for the constitutional definition no longer apply, since there is no present danger of the legislature reducing the property rights of married women or abandoning the community property system. Further, the needs and customs of the people of Texas have changed since the adoption of the original Texas Constitution in 1845. Today, it is estimated that thirty percent of couples who marry in the United States eventually divorce and sixty percent …

The New Arkansas Inheritance Laws: A Step Into The Present With An Eye To The Future, Robert R. Wright

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

The Conflict Of Laws: A Comparative Study, Second Edition. Volume One. Introduction: Family Law, Ernst Rabel

Michigan Legal Studies Series

This volume, the first in Ernst Rabel's monumental comparative treatise on the conflict of laws, was initially published in 1945. Since then three additional volumes have been added, completing the survey of the systems of conflicts law as originally contemplated. Meanwhile, the first edition of the first two volumes has been exhausted for some time, and the literature of conflicts law has substantially increased, reflecting the new developments that have taken place since 1945. Accordingly, plans for a new edition of the first two volumes were discussed with the author before his death on September 7, I955, and were approved …

Real Property - Adverse Possession - Title Acquired By Husband And Wife, Richard S. Rosenthal, George F. Lynch S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

John and Maltie Preston moved onto a parcel of land in 1910 where they lived until 1950 when John died intestate. Maltie died intestate in 1954. Title to the land had been perfected by twenty years adverse possession. Evidence showed that the adverse possession was intended to inure to their joint benefit. Complainants, collateral heirs of John, sued in ejectment claiming that John took the whole title by exclusive adverse possession. Defendants, collateral heirs of Maltie, claimed a tenancy by the entirety had been created, with the survivor, Maltie, becoming the sole owner. The court of appeals ruled that the …

An Analysis Of Marriage Trends And Divorce Policies, Robert S. Redmount

Vanderbilt Law Review

Divorce law, theoretically, is the embodiment of policies governing the dissolution of marriage. It is the legal expression of the values attached to marriage and implicitly states the law's understanding of the marital relationship, at least that part of it that reflects conflict and disturbance.

The analytic discourse which follows briefly assesses the roles and meanings of marriage, the sources and consequences of marital disharmony and the complications of marriage dissolution. The history and composition of divorce policies and laws is carefully savored and sharply scrutinized for fidelity to the reason and experience of marriage. The outcome of this analysis …

Marriage In The Conflict Of Laws, Charles W. Taintor, Ii

Vanderbilt Law Review

It must first be recognized that three different types of problems are raised in this field by what purport to be marriages: problems concerning the creation of the relationship of man and wife; those concerning the method whereby the parties signify their consents to the assumption of the relationship; and those concerning the legal protection accorded to claims arising therefrom. These involve, respectively, the status, the ceremony, and the incidents' of marriage.

It has often been said or assumed in the past that the laws of the domicile or domiciles of the parties at the time of the ceremony govern …

Retroactive Legislation Affecting Interests In Land, John Scurlock

Michigan Legal Studies Series

Professor Scurlock's monograph covers an area of the law which is commonly by-passed in treatises and in classroom instruction. If we could merely tear Maitland's "seamless web" of the law and retain all the shreds, no part of the legal system would escape us. What we actually do, however, is to set up, in a more or less arbitrary fashion, numerous centers of legal classification, such as contracts, torts, property and constitutional law, to which closely related legal materials are attracted as to a magnet. But those legal materials which stand midway between two centers of attraction are likely to …

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 …

An Introduction To The Law Of Community Property, Allen C. Steere

Indiana Law Journal

Address delivered at the Annual Meeting of The Indiana State Bar Association at Evansville, Indiana, September 5, 1947.