12. Child Protection

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter examines the law on state intervention into family life where a child is considered to be ‘in need’ or at risk of significant harm. It discusses the competing approaches to state intervention and the principles underpinning the Children Act (CA) 1989; the legal framework governing local authority support for children in need under Part III of the CA 1989 and the Social Services and Well-Being (Wales) Act 2014; the law and procedure regulating compulsory intervention into family life by means of care proceedings under Part IV; and the various emergency and interim measures available to protect a child thought to be at risk of immediate harm.

6. Financial Remedies on Divorce

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter focuses on financial remedies on divorce. After outlining key socio-economic data about the family economy and its impact on family members (especially parents) on relationship breakdown, it discusses financial remedies on divorce; the principles governing the grant of those and exercise of the statutory discretion; the clean-break principle; private ordering; and reform.

4. Domestic Abuse

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter discusses what the law can do directly to punish and rehabilitate perpetrators of domestic abuse and to protect victims. The chapter sets out the latest empirical data regarding domestic abuse and considers various theories regarding domestic violence. The chapter addresses the requirements of human rights law in this area; the criminal justice system and domestic violence; the civil law and domestic violence; the Family Law Act (FLA) 1996, Part 4; enforcement of orders under the FLA 1996; third party action on behalf of victims, including the Crime and Security Act 2010 and latest proposals to enhance such powers; and legal responses to forced marriage.

9. Becoming a Legal Parent and the Consequences of Legal Parenthood

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter examines how the status of ‘legal parenthood’ is acquired under English law. It considers different concepts of parenthood and possible approaches to determining legal parenthood; the current legal framework for identifying a child’s legal parents where a child is conceived through natural procreation; and the problems and challenges raised by the use of assisted reproduction techniques and surrogacy.

7. Property and Finances When Non-Formalized Relationships End

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter focuses on the resolution of property and financial disputes that may arise between family members who are not spouses or civil partners and so who cannot use the statutory remedies discussed in chapter 6. Instead, parties rely largely on the general law of property, trusts, and contract to provide solutions. This chapter examines those areas of law, and the few statutory provisions that apply between these parties, before considering the prospects for reform.

1. Introduction to Family Law

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter begins with an overview of families and family law in England and Wales today. It then discusses themes and issues in contemporary family law, covering rules versus discretion; women’s and men’s perspectives on family law; sex and gender identity; sexual orientation; cultural diversity; and state intervention versus private ordering, including the role of the family court and of non-court dispute resolution in family cases, and challenges facing the family justice system.

10. Parental Responsibility

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter examines the concept of parental responsibility and its legal significance; the various legislative provisions dealing with who automatically holds parental responsibility, as well as how, and by whom, it may be acquired; the exercise of parental responsibility and the various restrictions that may be imposed on the decision-making authority of those who hold it; and the rights and responsibilities of those adults who care for a child but do not have parental responsibility.

5. Financial Provision for Children

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter, which discusses financial provision for children who live apart from one or both parents, whether in a single-parent family, step-family, or with other carers, begins with a brief history of financial provision for children. It then discusses the current law on child support; court-based provision; ‘family-based arrangements’ and other private ordering; and policy questions relating to the financial support of children.

2. Family Relationships Between Adults

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter first considers demographic data on family relationships in England and Wales, and then examines the treatment of ‘trans’ people in this area of family law; and the history of legal recognition of intimate relationships between parties of the same gender, culminating in same-sex marriage and ensuing debates about the future of civil partnership. This is then followed by discussions of status-based relationships (marriage and civil partnership); creating a valid marriage or civil partnership; grounds on which a marriage or civil partnership is void; grounds on which a marriage or civil partnership is voidable; and non-formalized relationships (cohabitants and other ‘family’).

13. Adoption

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing able students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter examines the place of adoption within the government’s child protection policy, the legal framework for adoption under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 (ACA 2002), the core principles underpinning the ACA 2002, the adoption process, and the ongoing reform agenda. It considers the application of the welfare principle to three contentious issues: (i) the importance of the birth family in an adoption dispute; (ii) trans-racial adoption; and (iii) step-parent adoptions and adoptions by a sole natural parent. The chapter also examines the issue of ‘open adoption’, focusing on adopted children’s right to information about their birth families and provision for post-adoption contact, and, finally, considers the main alternative to adoption: special guardianship.