The Family in Law

Archana Parashar's research is interdisciplinary in nature and has spanned a very wide area of contemporary legal theory and the relevance of contemporary theory for women in the Third World. Her work explores the implications for social justice in contemporary post-structural theory, contemporary legal theory and legal education literature. Archana joined Macquarie University, Sydney in 1990 as a Lecturer in Law and has been an Associate Professor in Law there since 2001. Her research interests include contemporary legal theory with a special emphasis on social justice, legal pluralism, legal education, discrimination law, and family law. She continues to collaborate extensively with colleagues in India and is an adjunct Professor of Law at the National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS), India and National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), India. Francesca Dominello is a Lionel Murphy Scholar. She holds a combined BA LLB degree from Macquarie University, Sydney and a LLM (Research) degree from the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Dominello is currently the convenor of Remedies, Reparations and Resolution in Law (LAW555) and Indigenous Peoples and the Law (Law468). She also has extensive teaching experience in the areas of family law and constitutional law. In 2009 she was awarded the CCH-ALTA Best Paper Award for the paper she presented at the 2008 Australasian Law Teachers Association Conference titled 'Beyond Symbolism: Aboriginal Sovereignty and Native Title'. More recently she has been a legal consultant to LawTermFinder (lawtermfinder.mq.edu.au), an online termbank of words and phrases frequently used in Australian family law. Prior to her academic appointment at Macquarie University, Dominello practiced as a solicitor in the areas of native title law, personal injury law and immigration law.

Introduction; 1. Studying family law; 2. The family law and its institutions; 3. Marriage and marriage like relationships; 4. Divorce; 5. Financial relations; 6. Spousal maintenance; 7. Private ordering in property proceedings; 8. Dependency and the law; 9. Child related disputes; 10. Children in court proceedings; 11. Child maintenance and support; 12. Children and family formation.