Law Commons^™

The Marital Wealth Gap, Erez Aloni

All Faculty Publications

Married couples are wealthier than people in all other family structures. The top 10% of wealth holders are, in great proportion, married. Even among the wealthiest households, married couples hold significantly more wealth than others. The Article identifies this phenomenon as the “Marital Wealth Gap,” and critiques the role of diverse legal mechanisms in creating and maintaining it. Marriage also contributes to the concentration of wealth because marriage patterns are increasingly assortative: wealth marries wealth. The law entrenches or even exacerbates these class-based marriage patterns by erecting structural barriers that hinder people from meeting across economic strata.

How can the …

Sans Foi, Ni Loi. Appearances Of Conjugality And Lawless Love, Régine Tremblay

All Faculty Publications

This chapter deals with paradigm shifts in the legal regulation of adult intimate relationships. It includes the shifts from a unique conjugality to the multiplication of conjugalities, from marriage until death do us part to multiple subsequent unions, and from mimicking marriage by necessity to mimicking marriage by choice. Such changes open the floor for questions about the relevance of regulating adult intimate relationships today, or at the very least, about the compulsion to conceive of this kind of relationship as the cornerstone of Canadian family law. As such, it questions shifts in latent elements of the regulation of conjugality …

Registering Relationships, Erez Aloni

All Faculty Publications

Despite the dramatic changes in family structure in the past decades — including the unprecedented and skyrocketing number of families who live in non-marital arrangements — marriage and marriage-mimic institutions remain the only legal options for the recognition of relationships. This regulatory regime leaves millions of Americans without the means to establish and protect relationship rights. The article suggests that the legal issues arising from non-marital relationships would be best addressed if more options for legal recognition of such relationships were offered. Accordingly, this article presents the primary principles of a registration-based marriage alternative, founded on contract: “registered contractual relationships.” …

Incrementalism, Civil Unions, And The Possibility Of Predicting Legal Recognition Of Same-Sex Marriage, Erez Aloni

All Faculty Publications

Scholars who have examined the legal recognition of same-sex partnerships in European countries have concluded that the path to the legalization of same-sex marriage follows an incremental process involving specific stages. They suggest that it is possible to predict, based on certain visible social and legal processes or assessable parameters, which U.S. states will be the next to recognize same-sex marriage. These scholars argue that such small cumulative legal changes at the state level constitute the best means of legalizing same-sex marriage in the United States, and that civil unions are a necessary step in this process. This article shows …