Families Across Borders | law, policy, news and views
Religious Conversions for Marriage Considered in Pakistan
Controversy over several cases of Hindu women converting to Islam in order to marry Islamic men has reached the Pakistani Supreme Court, which resolved the cases by sequestering the women from their families and their husbands in a shelter for several weeks and then having a court registrar record their statements privately regarding their decisions to convert. [...]
Islamists and Moroccan Marriage Law
An article in the Washington Post discusses the controversy in Morocco sparked by the suicide last month of a teenager who was raped and then married off to the man who had raped her. The current law allows a rapist to avoid prosecution if he marries the vicitm.The story reports that although the current law sets the [...]
International Family Law Desk Book
I’m delighted to announce publication of my book, written for lawyers, judges, students and scholars working in the area of International Family Law. Ordering information is available here from ABA Publishing. If you have comments, suggestions, or other feedback, please feel free to get in touch with me: ann-estin@uiowa.edu.
Infant Abductions Investigated in Spain
An inquiry has begun in Spain into allegations of infant snatching beginning during the Franco regime in the 1950s and continuing into the 1990s. Children were alleged to have been given or sold for adoption; at least 1500 claims have been made with some cases confirmed by DNA testing after children were grown. See Raphael Minder, “Spain [...]
NYT on Russian Oligarch’s Divorce
This piece by Alexei Barrionuevo, “Divorce, Oligarch Style” (NY Times, April 5, 2012) describes some of the international real estate and financial issues in dispute in the Swiss divorce of Dmitry Rybolovlev and Elena Rybolevleva.
Time for non-fault divorce in the U.K.?
According to this piece by Sarah Lyall in the New York Times, recent comments by Justice Nicholas Wall, presdient of the Famly Division of England’s High Court, and Justice Matthew Thorpe of the Court of Appeal suggest that the time has come to change the law to allow no-fault divorce. See Tuna Again? In Fault-Finding England, It’s a Cause for [...]
Adoption Convention Updates
With the accessions in March of Montenegro and Rwanda, the number of Contracting States to the Hague Intercountry Adoption Convention has reached a total of 87. For details, see the Hague Conference web site at www.hcch.net. Information from the U.S. State Department indicates that the governments in Laos, Bhutan, Cambodia and Senegal have recently announced suspension of intercountry [...]
Interracial Marriage in US
A story this winter in the New York Times, based on a Pew Research Center report, suggests that rates of interracial marriage have increased over the past thirty years and that Americans now view interracial marriages more positively. Using data from the U.S. Census Brueau, the Pew Center Report indicated that 15% of all new mariages [...]
