Book Description

This book focuses upon two themes: the definition of 'family' and the impact of the expansion of the concept of 'family' in law: and family fights over wills and estates - what recourse family members may have in challenging an estate. The first part, `The challenge of the "new family" for Law', considers the challenge both in the inter vivos and the postmortem contexts in the United States, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. A particular focus is upon the dramatic expansion of the definition of family from the traditional nuclear family consisting of a husband, wife and their mutual children to a definition that includes unmarried heterosexual and same sex couples living together and, in some jurisdictions to new kinds of companionate partnerships that are not based on a sexual relationship. In some jurisdictions such developments are simply an expression of sharing responsibility by allocating it in the private domain, as opposed to the public potentially through social welfare; in others, particularly in the United States, it is a defence of fundamental institutions and, with it, a defence of society itself. The second part, 'Family fights over wills and estates', examines the law in Australia, Switzerland, France, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. Its comparison of civil and common law approaches shows how the law expresses the same principle objects - protection of family and obligations towards key family members - but does so from entirely different perspectives; and where the common law which enshrined the notion of testamentary freedom is being qualified through the expanding domain of family provision legislation, the civil law which is based on codified shares and allocated responsibilities expressed through proportionate entitlements in estates, is being qualified through a range of disqualifying and varying mechanisms.