Family law is an area of the law that deals with family-related issues and domestic relations including, but not limited to:

• the nature of marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships;
• issues arising during marriage, including spousal abuse, legitimacy, adoption, surrogacy, child abuse, and child abduction
• the termination of the relationship and ancillary matters including divorce, annulment, property settlements, alimony, and parental responsibility orders (in the United States, child custody and visitation, child support awards).

This list is by no means dispositive of the potential issues that come through the family court system. In many jurisdictions in the United States, the family courts see the most crowded dockets. Litigants representative of all social and economic classes are parties within the system.

For the Conflict of Laws elements dealing with transnational and interstate issues, see marriage (conflict), divorce (conflict) and nullity (conflict).

Criticism of Family Law

Members of the fathers' rights movement criticize the win or lose nature of family law currently used in most Western countries to determine divorce and child custody issues, and define "winning custody" not as the right to parent one's children, but as the power to prevent someone else from parenting his children with the help of the government.^[1]

References

Further reading

• Testimony of Barbara DaFoe Whitehead, Ph.D, Co-Director, National Marriage Project Rutgers University, before US Senate Subcommitee
• Wallerstein, Judith, Ph.D., "The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce", an analysis of the long-term effect of divorce on children; NPR interview (2000)

See also

• Fathers' rights
  • Paternity fraud
• Same-Sex Marriage

Different jurisdictions

• Algerian Family Code
• Family Court of Australia
  • Australian family law
• Mudawana (The Moroccan Family Code).
• Family law system in England and Wales
  • The Children Act 1989
  • Sir Morris Finer - Report on One Parent Families
• Civil Code of the Philippines

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