Family Law Commons^™

Beyond Beyond Conjugality, Brenda Cossman, Bruce Ryder

Canadian Journal of Family Law

No abstract provided.

Book Review: D’Un Océan À L’Autre . . . Recension De Nicole Laviolette Et Julie Audet, L’Essentiel Du Droit De La Famille Dans Les Provinces Et Territoires De Common Law Au Canada, Régine Tremblay

Canadian Journal of Family Law

No abstract provided.

Family Violence And Evolving Judicial Roles: Judges As Equality Guardians In Family Law Cases, Donna Martinson, Margaret Jackson

Canadian Journal of Family Law

Access-to-justice studies initiated by Canadian lawyers and judges in the past four years have described the urgent need for family law reform. Reports from the studies discuss the need for a cultural shift—a fresh approach and a new way of thinking—in the reform process. A Roadmap for Change, the final report of the National Action Committee on Access to Justice, emphasizes the importance of providing justice, not just access: "Providing justice—not just in the form of fair and just process, but also in the form of fair and just outcomes—must be our primary concern." This article deals with the need …

Addressing Controversies About Experts In Disputes Over Children, Nicholas Bala, Rachel Birnbaum, Carly Watt

Canadian Journal of Family Law

There is significant controversy about the use of experts in child-related disputes in family and child protection proceedings in Canada. The 2015 Lang Review of the Motherisk Laboratory at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children concluded that experts retained by child protection agencies were introducing unreliable expert testimony about parental drug and alcohol use. The recent decision of Ontario Court of Appeal in M. v. F. suggested that evidence from a party-retained expert critiquing the opinion of a court-appointed psychologist is "rarely" helpful or admissible. This paper addresses these and related controversies about the use of experts in child-related cases. It …

A Feminist Critique Of Quebec V. A.: Evaluating The Supreme Court's Divided Opinion On Section 15 And Common Law Support Obligations, Natasha Mukhtar

Canadian Journal of Family Law

A case comment on Quebec v. A. In Quebec v. A., the Supreme Court of Canada tackled a Charter challenge to the Civil Code of Quebec. The claimant, A., alleged that the legislation violated her section 15 equality rights by discriminating on the basis of marital status in excluding common law couples from spousal support and division of property upon separation. The Court delivered a lengthy, controversial, and divided decision with three lines of dissent. Ultimately, the exclusion was upheld. Quebec continued to exclude common law couples from the division of property and remained the sole province to …

Book Review: Autonomous Motherhood? A Socio-Legal Study Of Choice And Constraint By Susan B. Boyd, Dorothy E. Chunn, Fiona Kelly, And Wanda Wiegers, Brenda Cossman

Canadian Journal of Family Law

No abstract provided.

Is It Time To Tell? Abolishing Donor Anonymity In Canada, Fiona Kelly

Canadian Journal of Family Law

Over the past two decades, a growing number of donor conceived people have spoken out about the impact of donor anonymity on their health and wellbeing. A significant number of legislatures have responded to these concerns by introducing laws that prospectively (and in one case, retrospectively) abolish donor anonymity. This article considers the increasing pressure on Canadian provinces to end anonymity and introduce registers which enable donor conceived people to access their donor’s identifying information. While the article does not endorse the genetic essentialism that is often a feature of advocacy in the field, it does argue that there are …

Townshend V. Townshend & Buttar V. Buttar: Gifts, Exclusions, And Intentions, Jonathan Robinson

Canadian Journal of Family Law

This comment looks at two fairly recent decisions by the Ontario Court of Appeal, Townshend v Townshend (2012 ONCA 868) and Buttar v Buttar (2013 ONCA 617) with respect to the courts' handling of the exclusion of gifts under section 4(2) of Ontario's Family Law Act (RSO 1990, c F.3). In Ontario, gifts made by third parties outside the marriage to one spouse may be excluded from the calculation of a spouse's Net Family Property (NFP). Property may cease to be excludable if it is not kept separate or if it is used to the benefit of the family. In …

Book Review: A Parent-Partner Status For American Family Law By Merle H. Weiner, Frances E. Chapman

Canadian Journal of Family Law

No abstract provided.

In The Shadow Of A Myth: Bargaining For Same-Sex Divorce, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores a relatively new phenomenon in family law: same-sex divorce. The Article's central claim is that parties to the first wave of same-sex divorces are not effectively bargaining against the backdrop of legal dissolution rules that would govern in the absence of an agreement. In other words, to use Robert Mnookin and Lewis Kornhauser's terminology, they are not "bargaining in the shadow of the law." Instead, the Article argues, many same-sex couples today bargain in the shadow of a myth that same-sex couples are egalitarian—that there are no vulnerable parties or power differentials in same-sex divorce.

The Article …

The Privatized American Family, Maxine Eichner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Sharenting: Children's Privacy In The Age Of Social Media, Stacey B. Steinberg

UF Law Faculty Publications

Through sharenting, or online sharing about parenting, parents now shape their children’s digital identity long before these young people open their first email. The disclosures parents make online are sure to follow their children into adulthood. Indeed, social media and blogging have dramatically changed the landscape facing today’s children as they come of age.

Children have an interest in privacy. Yet a parent’s right to control the upbringing of his or her children and a parent’s right to free speech may trump this interest. When parents share information about their children online, they do so without their children’s consent. These …

John Moore Jr.: Moore V City Of East Cleveland And Children's Constitutional Arguments, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

At the heart of Moore v City of East Cleveland is 7 year old John Moore Jr. How would we tell the story of Moore from his perspective, and how might the case have been constructed if his rights and constitutional harms were asserted? The ordinary act of registering John for school was the apparent trigger for efforts to exclude him from school, by mandating his removal from his grandmother’s house, after an earlier effort to deny his entry into school had failed. In this essay I first tell the story of the case from John’s perspective and then construct …

Indigenizing Equality, M. Alexander Pearl, Kyle Velte

Faculty Articles

Notwithstanding the significant victories of the LGBT civil rights movement over the past 20 years, culminating in the declaration of full marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges, anti-LGBT sentiment generally, and anti-marriage-equality sentiment in particular, continue to run deep. One pocket of resistance is in some tribal communities. While Obergefell unequivocally resolved the problem of the “patchwork quilt” of marriage equality among the states, the problem of gaps in marriage equality among Tribal Nations has left the problem of the “patchwork quilt” intact. This article answers the question: What is the effect of federal marriage equality on the modern expression …

The Rules Of Maternity, Dara Purvis

Faculty Scholarship

A diverse body of laws and regulations speaking to reproductive rights, healthcare, criminal punishment of drug use, termination of parental rights, and more creates the rules of maternity. These rules are guidance provided both obliquely and explicitly by the law's coercive power telling women both how to and who should mother. Rule one begins in pregnancy, with the message that "your body is your child's vessel." During pregnancy, women are counselled that doctor knows best. After the child's birth, the mother remains responsible for the people who enter a child's life, leading to rule 3: "mothers must always protect." …

Rural Women And Developments In The Undue Burden Analysis: The Effect Of Whole Woman's Health V. Hellerstedt, Hannah Haksgaard

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Doing More For Children With Less: Multidisciplinary Representation Of Poor Children In Family Court And Probate Court, Robert N. Jacobs, Christina Riehl

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Family court and probate court are Barmecide feasts for too many children, especially poor children with special needs. “Multidisciplinary representation” of children enables the courts to address needs and risks that cannot be resolved by fine-tuning a custody schedule, frequently at little or no additional cost to the taxpayers. Since most children cannot identify the salient issues in their cases and do not have standing in family court or probate court much less lawyers to represent them, it becomes the court’s responsibility in every case to identify the issues most relevant to children’s interests and decide whether multidisciplinary representation is …

Manhattan Court Rebuffs Ex-Partner Custody Claim, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Theorizing The Immigrant Child: The Case Of Married Minors, Medha D. Makhlouf

Faculty Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

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. …