Family Court ReviewPub Date : 2026-05-19Epub Date: 2026-04-05DOI: 10.1111/fcre.70057
Eileen O'Brien, Ben Livings, Dale Bagshaw
{"title":"Exploring eldercaring coordination as a way to safeguard the rights of older people: A case study from South Australia","authors":"Eileen O'Brien, Ben Livings, Dale Bagshaw","doi":"10.1111/fcre.70057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.70057","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines a 19-month pilot introducing eldercaring coordination to Australia through collaboration between the University of South Australia and Relationships Australia South Australia. The research demonstrates that eldercaring coordination enhances existing tools for courts and professionals while complementing Australia's progression toward supported decision-making and addressing high-conflict, complex family cases. Eldercaring coordination offers tiered intervention, maintaining autonomy while providing professional oversight for high-conflict situations. Integration into Australia's elder support frameworks would provide professionals with an evidence-based tool for managing complex disputes while enhancing relationships.</p>","PeriodicalId":51627,"journal":{"name":"Family Court Review","volume":"64 2","pages":"284-299"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148065596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Family Court ReviewPub Date : 2026-05-19Epub Date: 2026-05-07DOI: 10.1111/fcre.70064
Naomi Cahn, Patricia Papernow
{"title":"Meeting the health, financial and legal challenges of stepfamilies in later life: White coats, green dollars, and special teacups","authors":"Naomi Cahn, Patricia Papernow","doi":"10.1111/fcre.70064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.70064","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Longtime stepfamilies and later-life re-couplers with adult children from previous relationships are a growing demographic. Legal default assumptions are designed for younger first-time families, not for aging families or stepfamilies. However, for stepcouples who plan, and who document their wishes, the legal landscape allows for later-life stepcouples to exercise choice and create individualized alternatives. This article addresses normal challenges created by stepfamily structure that impact later-life “blended families” in three areas: health and end-of-life decision making, later-life financial management, and inheritance plans that consider both the current partner and children of previous relationships. Throughout, this article addresses the importance of using a stepfamily lens, not a first-time family lens.</p>","PeriodicalId":51627,"journal":{"name":"Family Court Review","volume":"64 2","pages":"196-221"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/fcre.70064","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148068145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Family Court ReviewPub Date : 2026-05-19Epub Date: 2026-03-25DOI: 10.1111/fcre.70066
Sarah Whiting, Joshua Coleman
{"title":"Estrangement is a systems issue","authors":"Sarah Whiting, Joshua Coleman","doi":"10.1111/fcre.70066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.70066","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines the breakdown of relationships between adult children and their parent(s) through a family systems approach. Estrangement arises from complex interactions, intergenerational patterns, unmet needs, unresolved conflicts, individualism, and external influences. The article emphasizes how professional interventions can strengthen family ties and support healthier boundaries and dialogue rather than intensifying family divides. This perspective challenges traditional fault-based narratives and calls for innovative legal and therapeutic strategies that address the family system as a whole. Professionals and courts can either reinforce divisions or support healthier boundaries and dialogue. This system's perspective underscores the need for collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches that prioritize respect, healing, and long-term family resilience.</p>","PeriodicalId":51627,"journal":{"name":"Family Court Review","volume":"64 2","pages":"240-253"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148090521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Family Court ReviewPub Date : 2026-05-19Epub Date: 2026-04-29DOI: 10.1111/fcre.70071
Pamela Laufer-Ukeles
{"title":"Family-making with the gametes of the deceased","authors":"Pamela Laufer-Ukeles","doi":"10.1111/fcre.70071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.70071","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article discusses post humous reproduction (PHR), beginning with the Israeli context and the narrow circumstances in which family members may desire to bring to life offspring of deceased kin. However, I argue that the lessons and implications of PHR reach well beyond this narrow context. First, Israel is not that unique and PHR is part of a shift in reproduction towards control and design of offspring. Second, this relatively narrow context provides broader lessons about defining parenthood, whose interests matter in family law, and the centrality of children's rights and interests. I argue that PHR is not an inquiry into rights—as there is no individual family member who retains rights to the sperm of the deceased—but an inquiry into policymaking. Instead of focusing on competing rights, the questions that frame the discussion should be: What kinds of families should society promote? How can children's interests be best protected? Can such interests be promoted through allowing PHR? Instead, the questions that frame the discussion should be: What kinds of families should society promote? How can children's interests be best protected? Can children's interests be promoted through allowing PHR?</p>","PeriodicalId":51627,"journal":{"name":"Family Court Review","volume":"64 2","pages":"363-384"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148097183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Family Court ReviewPub Date : 2026-05-19Epub Date: 2026-05-04DOI: 10.1111/fcre.70072
Sooyoung Kim
{"title":"Marriage as a legal gateway to care: Legal entitlement and gender inequality in the 2020 and 2025 Korean time use survey","authors":"Sooyoung Kim","doi":"10.1111/fcre.70072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.70072","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines caregiving inequality in South Korea through an integrated legal-empirical analysis of the Korean Time Use Survey (KTUS), constitutional interpretation, and family and labor law architecture. Rather than treating low fertility as a policy failure to be corrected, it approaches demographic decline as an aggregation of private choices, or a structural outcome reflecting how caregiving is legally recognized, institutionally allocated, and culturally mediated. Drawing on repeated cross-sectional data from the 2019–2020 and 2024–2025 cycles of the KTUS, the article demonstrates that marriage has not functioned as a site of gender-equal redistribution of care. By enabling longitudinal comparison of daily caregiving practices, the Survey serves as an empirical tool for evaluating whether formally gender-neutral legal entitlements translate into substantive equality in everyday life. Both cycles of the KTUS show that unpaid care work remains persistently feminized within marriage, while caregivers outside legal marriage are structurally excluded from labor-law protections. The article further analyzes how Korean family and labor law allocate caregiving entitlements through marriage- and lineage-based definitions derived from the Civil Act. Although labor statutes are framed in gender-neutral terms, parental and spousal leave operate not according to caregiving function, but through compliance with marital form. This structure presumes that marriage reliably organizes care and internalizes dependency—a presumption that is empirically and doctrinally unsustainable. By tracing the interaction between empirical patterns, constitutional principles of equality and dignity, and labor-law entitlement design, the article argues that formally gender-neutral caregiving rights produce substantively unequal outcomes when filtered through marital status, raising a constitutional question about whether the adequacy of marital status as the gateway to care protection may continue.</p>","PeriodicalId":51627,"journal":{"name":"Family Court Review","volume":"64 2","pages":"335-362"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148066039","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Family Court ReviewPub Date : 2026-05-19Epub Date: 2026-03-30DOI: 10.1111/fcre.70061
Jessica J. Laguerre
{"title":"No cap, that's a lot of money: The legal obligations for college funding by unmarried and divorced parents","authors":"Jessica J. Laguerre","doi":"10.1111/fcre.70061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.70061","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In an intact family, the parents can decide together how much they are willing to contribute to their child(ren)'s post-secondary education, regardless of their financial ability. However, this right can be taken away from divorced/unmarried parents. In New York, the court has authority to order the non-custodial parent to pay a percentage of their child(ren)'s college education. There is no limit on the amount the court can order nor a set percentage. These cases are being decided on a case-by-case basis through judicial discretion. The current approach is if the non-custodial parent can “afford it,” the court may order it.</p>","PeriodicalId":51627,"journal":{"name":"Family Court Review","volume":"64 2","pages":"442-457"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148098767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Family Court ReviewPub Date : 2026-05-19Epub Date: 2026-03-21DOI: 10.1111/fcre.70059
Rhea Mayall
{"title":"The greatest good is what we do for one another: The United Arab Emirates legalizes surrogacy","authors":"Rhea Mayall","doi":"10.1111/fcre.70059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.70059","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The enactment of Federal Decree Law No. 17 of 2023 amended the law on surrogacy in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Those living in the UAE now have the option and flexibility to embark on their surrogacy journey. The removal of a prior ban on surrogacy reflects the cultural development and modernization of a predominantly Muslim country that is largely governed by Islamic law. This note explores the surrogacy framework in the UAE, focusing primarily on Dubai, and proposes local legislation to provide protection and prevent the exploitation of Emirati surrogate women throughout the entire process.</p>","PeriodicalId":51627,"journal":{"name":"Family Court Review","volume":"64 2","pages":"458-472"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148089521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Family Court ReviewPub Date : 2026-05-19Epub Date: 2026-04-07DOI: 10.1111/fcre.70058
Linda Fieldstone, Sue Bronson
{"title":"Widening our professional lenses: “Eldering” as a systemic imperative","authors":"Linda Fieldstone, Sue Bronson","doi":"10.1111/fcre.70058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.70058","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The concept of “eldering” frames aging as an evolving, relational facet within families applicable to diverse legal and cultural contexts. By broadening our professional lenses, we can more effectively respond to the complex, layered interdependent intricacies of families, and the needs of the individuals within, as they evolve through time. This article incorporates valuable insights from this Family Court Review Special Issue and offers a guide for professionals and the court to bridge the gaps between outdated norms and lived realities of family systems, benefitting multigenerations, practitioners, and the court.</p>","PeriodicalId":51627,"journal":{"name":"Family Court Review","volume":"64 2","pages":"317-332"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148068965","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Family Court ReviewPub Date : 2026-05-19Epub Date: 2026-04-15DOI: 10.1111/fcre.70062
April Harris-Britt, Ann Ordway
{"title":"Safe harbors and stable connections? The relationships between grandparents and grandchildren","authors":"April Harris-Britt, Ann Ordway","doi":"10.1111/fcre.70062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.70062","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Grandparents can play a variety of roles in the lives of their grandchildren, ranging from occasional visitor to full-time caregiver, representing a stabilizing force or a source of conflict. Grandparents' level of engagement varies according to cultural norms, familial need for support, and legal determinations. Research suggests that children benefit from the presence of supportive and involved grandparents and perhaps lose out on opportunities for social capital when grandparents are absent from their lives. This article discusses the roles and relationships between grandparents and grandchildren, highlights the impact of those relationships on both, and outlines various legal implications for understanding grandparenting within the context of family law cases.</p>","PeriodicalId":51627,"journal":{"name":"Family Court Review","volume":"64 2","pages":"222-239"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/fcre.70062","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148078349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Family Court ReviewPub Date : 2026-05-19Epub Date: 2026-03-25DOI: 10.1111/fcre.70063
Fran Tetunic, DeLila S. Bergan
{"title":"Narrative ethics as an eldering paradigm","authors":"Fran Tetunic, DeLila S. Bergan","doi":"10.1111/fcre.70063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.70063","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article explores how interdisciplinary family law professionals can use narrative ethics to elevate the voice of older adults and benefit multiple generations of family members. Narrative Ethics is the study of the way in which an individual tells us a story and the way in which we listen to that story. We offer a hypothetical older adult's story as we consider the application of narrative ethics to the story and discuss relevant professional ethical codes and standards for various professions. We then reflect on the practical application of narrative ethics and ethical obligations in our professional lives.</p>","PeriodicalId":51627,"journal":{"name":"Family Court Review","volume":"64 2","pages":"300-316"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148090522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}