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The Family Law Reform Act 1995 introduced a new legal framework for handling disputes involving children whose parents are separated or divorced. A radically different template for post-divorce parenting was established by the Act, which aimed to strengthen connections between fathers and children after separation. There were two key elements in this template. The first was the childs’ right to maintain contact with, and be cared for by, both parents regardless of marital status. The second was a notion of jointly held and exercised parental responsibility. / This thesis adopted a socio-legal approach in assessing how the legislative framework was applied in practice. A particular concern was to establish how the legislative ideal would be applied in social circumstances where parenting remains gendered in practical terms. The empirical basis for this inquiry was a sample of 40 Family Court files involving children matters that were heard in the Melbourne Registries of the Court in 1999 and 2000. The research involved collecting data from each of three layers in the files; parents’ affidavit materials, psycho-social assessments of the litigating families and judicial determinations. Judicial approaches could thus be assessed in the context of the evidence on which they were based. / The analysis reveals that a complex interplay between three factors has produced different standards of ‘adequacy’ that are applied to mothers (mostly residence parents) and fathers (mostly contact parents) in contemporary Family Court decision making. The three factors are the factual backgrounds of the cases, the litigation strategies adopted by the parties and particular psychological and legal concepts that are influential in informing current legal approaches to the question of what children need. / The research shows that separated fathers are making claims for bigger roles in their children’s lives. These claims occur in the context of family histories that often involve violence, entrenched conflict, mental illnesses and substance addiction. These backgrounds prevent fathers’ aspirations for more involvement with their children being completely realised, but a commitment to maintaining father-child relationships is nonetheless strongly evident. In many instances little scrutiny is applied to the nature and quality of the relationship being sustained by contact and some mothers and children continue to be exposed to family violence under court orders. Furthermore, the legal process allows little scope for children to assume a role in determining how their parenting arrangements are worked out. Litigation places them at the centre of conflict between their parents but their opportunity to influence its outcome is very limited.

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Due to the actions of radicals and extremists, many in the West have come to view Islam as a religion of gender inequality that perpetuates the severe oppression of women. However, there is actually great variation in women’s rights across Muslim countries. This thesis presents a theoretical framework seeking to explain this variation, by examining differences in family law. The theory supposes that variation can be explained by the strategic actions of political leaders. From this theory, I hypothesize that the variations in women’s rights come from the variation in family law, which in large, are due to the existence of groups threatening the power of the political leaders, and the leader’s subsequent understanding of this threat. Using a most similar systems research design, I examine 4 moderate Muslim countries, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt. Through case study research, I find limited support for the above hypothesis.

The law assigns to parents primary responsibility for their children and invests them with significant powers and discretion to discharge their duties. The considerable deference the law affords parents can appear to undermine important social and political values like equality, tolerance and social stability. The aim of this thesis is provide a rational account of why parents are invested with legal responsibility and authority over their children, and why the law limits state scrutiny of parental choice. To do so, I develop Hegel’s legal and political philosophy in order to show the family to be a necessary part of a system of institutions that constitute human freedom. As such, Hegel’s thought provides grounds to affirm the family, and broad scope of parental authority, even though the family constrains efforts to achieve equality of opportunity and can propagate intolerant and idiosyncratic values to subsequent generations.

The law assigns to parents primary responsibility for their children and invests them with significant powers and discretion to discharge their duties. The considerable deference the law affords parents can appear to undermine important social and political values like equality, tolerance and social stability. The aim of this thesis is provide a rational account of why parents are invested with legal responsibility and authority over their children, and why the law limits state scrutiny of parental choice. To do so, I develop Hegel’s legal and political philosophy in order to show the family to be a necessary part of a system of institutions that constitute human freedom. As such, Hegel’s thought provides grounds to affirm the family, and broad scope of parental authority, even though the family constrains efforts to achieve equality of opportunity and can propagate intolerant and idiosyncratic values to subsequent generations.

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Univerzita Karlova v Praze Právnická fakulta Markéta Bulantová PRÁVNÍ ASPEKTY OSVOJENÍ Diplomová práce Abstrakt v anglickém jazyce Legal aspects of adoption The purpose of my thesis is to analyze legal aspects of an adoption. By use of the analytic and descriptive methods the valid legal provisions are described and evaluated. Furthermore some changes of the respective law are proposed de lege ferenda. The thesis deals with the proposal of new civil code and analyses it critically. The last part of the thesis describes German Law regarding adoption. The thesis is composed of eleven chapters. First chapter describes the alternative care of children generally. Second chapter deals with the term "adoption". The third chapter deals with history of an adoption and contains a separate part regarding history of an adoption in the Czech territory after 1918. In this part of this thesis the main source of law regarding adoption and most important international contracts and conventions are described. The fourth chapter describes kinds and forms of an adoption. The largest fifth chapter deals with conditions for adoption stipulated by the Czech Law. This chapter is subdivided into two parts, which describe the conditions for the open and closed adoption. The sixth chapter deals with legal aspects of an adoption. This...

Doctor of Philospohy in Social Work / This research is concerned with decision-making in judgments made in the Family Court of Australia where there are allegations of child sexual abuse. The focus of the research is the identification of the concepts that are relied on in the assessment of these allegations by professionals providing evidence to the court and how judges determine what evidence should be given weight and relied on. This research was undertaken against a historical and current backdrop of scepticism about the veracity of child sexual abuse allegations in family law disputes, despite the heightened risk to children, and in particular to girls, after their parents separate and/or divorce. In this context the Family Court is also increasingly becoming a part of the child protection system as allegations of abuse are raised in hearings. This research has taken place in the period of time after the Reform Act (1995) and before new proposed legislation for 2006 was proclaimed. This research is based on a detailed thematic analysis of 21 judgments of first instance trials between 1997 and 2001 that were selected for the presence of a child sexual abuse allegation and at least two professionals disputing some aspect of the allegation. Twenty-five family members, including 18 mothers and four maternal grandmothers, made allegations about 28 family members, 21 of whom were fathers. Professionals who gave evidence included 11 child protection officers and 20 court-ordered private assessors (including 17 child and family psychiatrists, three clinical psychologists and 11 court counsellors). This research found that the context of the allegation, the family law litigation, had a dominant influence on how the allegations were assessed and interpreted: the impact of two influential paradigms, the separation and divorce and the legal/psychiatric paradigms, resulted in a reticence to test out the allegations of child sexual abuse made against fathers. Concepts from these paradigms were applied by court-ordered assessors and represented the sceptical conceptualisation of allegations of child sexual abuse as the product of the parental conflict, associated maternal anxiety and mental illness. In contrast, fathers were not scrutinised as closely against criteria for sex offending even when they made admissions relating to the allegations. Evidence from and about children was not central to the hearings and professionals who were in a position to present assessments of the child sexual abuse allegations to the court were discredited as a result of concerns about ‘contamination’ relating to criticisms of investigation and other methodological errors. In addition, allegations from children were frequently not fully examined or analysed by assessors or the judiciary. There were glimpses of a child-focused approach in a small number of hearings and, while there was no specialist assessment of the child sexual abuse allegations, there was evidence of specialist knowledge pertaining to domestic violence in cases in which there was a high level of evidence relating to serious domestic violence. This research has shown that there is a continuing influence of a sceptical paradigm in relation to the assessment of child sexual abuse allegations in the Family Court. It suggests that the scope of assessments needs to go beyond the usual scope of parental competencies to include an assessment of the propensity for child sexual abuse perpetration and the dynamics and effects of incest.

Lesbian families with children are greater in number and more visible today than ever before. In fact, social scientists have suggested that we may be in the midst of a lesbian "baby boom". Canada's Census figures support this assertion. Between 2001 and 2006 there was a forty-seven per cent increase in households made up of two lesbian mothers and their children. This dissertation addresses the legal issues raised by lesbian motherhood, focusing primarily on legal parentage. It considers the terms upon which parental recognition has been achieved thus far, and evaluates the efficacy of a reform agenda focused exclusively on gaining access to the existing legal framework. To explore the legal and social dynamics of planned lesbian families, interviews were conducted with forty-nine lesbian mothers living in British Columbia and Alberta who conceived using assisted reproduction. Mothers were asked about the structure of their families, how they defined terms such as "parent" and "family", the extent to which they had engaged with law, and their recommendations for law reform. The interviews revealed that lesbian mothers define family and parenthood broadly, emphasizing intention and caregiving over a purely biological model of kinship. All of the mothers defined a "parent" as someone who intends to parent and, once a child is born, performs that intention through caregiving. Parental status was thus not limited to those who shared a biological relationship with a child, or even to two individuals. The research suggests that lesbian mothers have little interest in being subsumed into the existing legal framework which tends to prioritize dyadic and biological parenting. In fact, only a tiny portion of the mothers felt that identical treatment would adequately respond to their needs. The vast majority supported law reform that would extend to them the benefits of the current system, while simultaneously expanding the existing framework to include a wider variety of parental and family configurations within it. The reform model chosen to achieve this aim combined parental presumptions in favour of the lesbian couple or a single lesbian mother, with opt-in mechanisms that allowed the family to extend beyond the two parent unit.