Preface
Acknowledgments
Summary Table of Contents

PART I INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
A. The Themes of Family and Family Law
B. The "Family" as a Regulatory Classification
C. Family, Work, and Gender

PART II MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE

CHAPTER 2 MARRIAGE
A. Entering Marriage
B. Law of the Intact Marriage
C. Consequences of Marital Status

CHAPTER 3 DISSOLVING THE MARITAL STATUS
A. The Origins and History of American Divorce Law
B. The Modern Law in Action
C. Reprise: Re-Evaluating No-Fault, Fault, and the Law's Role in Promoting Marital Stability

CHAPTER 4 PROPERTY DIVISION AND ALIMONY UPON DIVORCE
A. Property Division: General Principles
B. Property Division: Problems in Classifying Property as Marital or Separate
C. Should Earning Capacity, Professional Credentials, or Good Will be Treated as Marital Property?
D. Alimony
E. Rescission After the Short-Term Marriage
F. Modification of Awards: Some Special Problems
G. Should Courts Consider Claims of Marital Misconduct?

CHAPTER 5 CHILD SUPPORT
A. Duty of Support
B. Establishing the Amount of Support: From Discretion to Guidelines to a Support Order
C. Enforcement of Support Orders
D. Interstate Support Litigation

CHAPTER 6 CHILD CUSTODY
A. Introduction
B. The Best Interest of the Child Standard
C. Alternative Custody Decision Rules
D. Rights of the Noncustodial Parent
E. Modification of Custody
F. Parent Non-Parent Disputes
G. The Role of the Attorney in Custody Cases

CHAPTER 7 DIVORCE JURISDICTION
A. Termination of Marital Status
B. Jurisdiction to Issue Support Orders and Divide Property
C. Jurisdiction to Adjudicate Custody Disputes

CHAPTER 8 FIXING THE CONSEQUENCES OF DIVORCE BY AGREEMENT OF THE PARTIES
A. Premarital Agreements
B. Separation Agreements

PART III NONTRADITIONAL FAMILIES

CHAPTER 9 NONTRADITIONAL FAMILIES
A. Constitutional Protection of Nontraditional Families
B. Nonmarital Cohabitation
C. Unmarried Parents and Their Children

PART IV PARENT AND CHILD

CHAPTER 10 STATE REGULATION OF THE PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIP
A. The Nature of the Relationship
B. Overriding Parental Authority in Order to Protect Endangered Children

CHAPTER 11 ADOPTION
A. Consent to Adoption
B. The Role of the Adoption Agency
C. Regulation of Independent Adoptions
D. The Legal Effect of Adoption
E. Adoption Alternatives: Gestational Mothers and the New Biology

Table of Cases
Index

 

Paul M. Kurtz

Paul M. Kurtz is the Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs and the J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law, where he has taught since 1975 and specializes in criminal and family law. Professor Kurtz is also very active in legislative issues, and currently serves on the 11-member Public Defender Standards Council, to which he was appointed by Chief Judge J.D. Smith of the Georgia Court of Appeals. He also served as reporter for the Georgia Supreme Court's Indigent Defense Reform Commission, was instrumental on the Public Interest Loan Repayment Task Force, and was appointed in 2001 to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. Professor Kurtz also served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Harry Phillips of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit and taught at Boston College and Boston University law schools. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Texas, University of Missouri, Vanderbilt University and Mercer University.

B.A., J.D., Vanderbilt
LL.M., Harvard

Ira Mark Ellman

Ira Mark Ellman is a Professor of Law Affiliate Professor of Psychology, Willard H. Pedrick Distinguished Research Scholar, and Fellow of the Center for the Study of Law, Science & Technology at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. Professor Ellman's principal scholarly interests are in Family Law, and the use of social science in policymaking by legislatures and courts. In addition to his principal interests, Professor Ellman has also written on Nonprofit Corporations, Bioethics, and Health Care Financing. He was a founding member of the Bioethics Committee of the Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix. He has served on a variety of statewide committees dealing with various aspects of family law and policy, including most recently the Arizona Child Support Guidelines Committee.

Following graduation from law school, Professor Ellman served as a law clerk for Justice William O. Douglas of the United States Supreme Court, a legislative aide to Senator Adlai Stevenson III, and a consultant to the California legislature. He also practiced law in San Francisco. Professor Ellman has been a member of the faculty at Arizona State University Law School since 1978. He has visited for a semester or more at the Hastings College of Law, Brooklyn Law School, the Institute for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, and both the Earl Warren Institute, and the Center for the Study of Law and Society, at U.C. Berkeley, and Trinity College at the University of Cambridge.

B.A., Reed College (1967)
M.A., Psychology, University of Illinois (1969)
J.D., University of California, Berkely (1973)

Karen Czapanskiy

Karen Czapanskiy is the Francis & Harriet Iglehart Research Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, where she joined the faculty in 1983 and teaches Civil Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Family Law, and Property and is affiliated with the Clinical Law Program. She serves as a reporter for the Maryland Joint Special Committee on Gender Bias in the Courts and as a member of the Governor?s Commission on Disruptive Youth. She has also served as an attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and taught at the University of Hawaii Law School and Washington College of Law. She was chair of the Section on Women in Legal Education of the AALS and organized the Maryland/DC/Virginia Women Law Teachers Group. She is a member of the American Law Institute and the Prytanean Society. She spent the fall semester of 1994 as a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Durban-Westville, South Africa.

B.A., University of California, Berkely (1969)
J.D., Georgetown University (1973)

Lois A. Weithorn

Lois A. Weithorn is a Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of Law, where she teaches Bioethics, Law & Health Care Decisionmaking, Family Law, Child Maltreatment, and Criminal Law. She clerked for the Honorable Joseph T. Sneed III of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit, and also held a positions at the University of Virginia Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy and the Department of Psychology. She served as a fellow at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, worked on federal mental health policy at the National Mental Health Association in Washington, D.C., and consulted with the Judicial Council of California and other agencies on child and family policy issues. She also served on the Ethics Committee of the American Psychological Association and chaired several APA divisional committees relating to children and the law.

B.S., Hamilton College (1974)
M.S., Ph.D., Psychology, University of Pittsburgh (1976, 1980)
J.D., Stanford University (1989)

Brian Bix

Brian Bix is the Frederick W. Thomas Professor for the Interdisciplinary Study of Law and Language at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he joined the faculty in 2001 and teaches jurisprudence, family law, and contract law, and holds a joint appointment with the Department of Philosophy. He also taught at Quinippiac University School of Law (1995-2001), at King's College, University of London (1991-1993), at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University (1989-1990), and was a visiting professor at both Georgetown University Law Center (2000) and George Washington University Law School (1999). He was a law clerk for Justice Benjamin Kaplan at the Massachusetts Appeals Court (1993-1995), Judge Stephen Reinhardt, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (1987-1988), and Justice Alan Handler, New Jersey Supreme Court (1986-1987).

B.A., Washington University, St. Louis
J.D., Harvard Law School
D.Phil., Ballilol College, Oxford University

Maxine Eichner

Maxine Eichner is the Reef C. Ivey II Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she joined the faculty in 2003. Her teaching interests include sex equality, family law, employment and employment discrimination law, legal theory and torts. She writes on issues at the intersection of law and political theory, focusing particularly on family relationships, social welfare law and policy; sex equality; and the relationship of the family, the workplace, and market forces. During law school she was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal, and after graduation she held a Women's Law and Public Policy Fellowship through Georgetown Law School. She clerked for Judge Louis Oberdorfer in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and for Judge Betty Fletcher in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She practiced for everal years at the law firm of Patterson, Harkavy, and Lawrence in Raleigh, N.C., and held a fellowship in public affairs at the Miller Center of the University of Virginia.

B.A., magna cum laude, Yale University (1984)
J.D., Yale University (1988)
M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1997)
Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2006)