Family law is an area of the law that deals with family-related to maintain the matters of any family to retain harmony and peace issues and domestic relations including:
- the nature of marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships;
- issues arising throughout 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 and alimony awards).
- Paternity fraud and testing
- Juvenile adjudication
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).
Famous quotes containing the words family and/or law:
“The family is constantly changing, as each member changes. Some changes we recognize as developments, and the pleasure they bring usually makes us more adaptable. Some changes threaten, or disappoint other members, who may try to resist the change, or punish someone for changing.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)