Law Commons^™

What Do You Do When They Don't Say "I Do"? Cross-Border Regulation For Alternative Spousal Relationships, Sharon Shakargy

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Marriage is a local arrangement with international effects. Throughout the Western world, a marriage recognized as valid by the parties' home country is usually considered valid and binding in any other country. This recognition carries substantial benefits. In sharp contrast, unwed couples and some married couples, namely same-sex couples, are denied these benefits due to lack of (sufficient) inter-state and international recognition of their relationships, making their relationships unstable at best. This Article discusses the cross-border recognition of such relationships--or lack thereof--and its effects, and it suggests a way to better the situation using private law tools, thus avoiding much …

Identity And Form, Jessica A. Clarke

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Recent controversies over identity claims have prompted questions about who should qualify for affirmative action, who counts as family, who is a man or a woman, and who is entitled to the benefits of U.S. citizenship. Commentators across the political spectrum have made calls to settle these debates with evidence of official designations on birth certificates, application forms, or other records. This move toward formalities seeks to transcend the usual divide between those who believe identities should be determined based on objective biological or social standards, and those who believe identities are a matter of individual choice. Yet legal scholars …

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 …

Housework, Wages, And The Division Of Housework Time For Employed Spouses, Joni Hersch, Leslie S. Stratton

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

While the popular press may have declared housework passe with the advent of the two-income household (see "Housework is Obsolescent" by Barbara Ehrenreich [1993] for one such example), the facts indicate that housework continues to consume a substantial amount of time, particularly for women. While estimates vary widely depending on the sample examined and the methods used to generate the information, representative values of housework time range around 6-14 hours per week for men and 20-30 hours for women. Since wages are likely to be influenced both directly and indirectly by the time and effort devoted to other activities, and …

Domestic Relations -- 1961 Tennessee Survey, William J. Harbison

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the case of In re Van Huss' Petition' the Tennessee Supreme Court denied an adoption under a literal interpretation of the residence requirements inserted into the adoption statutes in 1959. Under the 1959 statutes, although the petitioners in adoption proceedings were not required to make Tennessee their legal residence, they were required to "have lived, maintained a home and been physically present in Tennessee, or on federal territory within the boundaries of Tennessee for one (1) year next preceding the filing of the petition .... -

In the Van Huss case the petitioning husband met all of the other …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Domestic Relations, William J. Harbison

Vanderbilt Law Review

There have been several important appellate decisions by the Tennessee courts in the field of domestic relations during the past year, and several significant statutes on the subject were enacted by the 1953 General Assembly. These decisions and statutes are discussed briefly herein according to subject matter.