Family Life and the Law

This collection brings together experts from a wide variety of legal disciplines to comment on the way in which different areas of law affect the functioning family today. It refocuses attention on the intact family and the legal issues that affect it. The volume brings a modern critical approach to bear on the broad range of subjects that used to constitute 'family law.' A key consideration in this collection is the way in which law itself is premised upon, and in turn constructs, a particular image of the family. By bringing different areas of law together, it is possible to explore how differing ideas about 'the family' inform different areas of law. This approach allows Law and the Functioning Family to analyse the extent to which the law is (in)consistent in its concept and treatment of the family, both within and across disciplines. This is particularly timely in view of the passage of the Civil Partnership Act 2004, the implications of which reverberate throughout family law and allied disciplines, and the Law Commission's plans to reconsider the position of cohabiting couples.