Beginning Family Law

Glossary

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Marriage - A status entered into by a couple seeking a formal legal basis for their relationship.

Void - A marriage which has never existed.

Voidable - A marriage which ceases to exist from the moment of the court order.

Civil partnership - A status availiable for couples of the same sex who seek to formalise their relationship in law.

Polygamy - A marriage involving three or more people.

Non-marriage - A ceremony that might look a little like a marriage but is of no legal effect.

Non-consummation - A failure of the married couple to engage in sexual intercourse.

Cohabitant - Someone living with someone else to whom they are not married.

Trust - A formal legal arrangment whereby one person looks after property on behalf of others.

Unconscionability - Unfairness.

Intestacy - Where a person dies without a will.

Divorce - An order of the court brining the marriage to an end.

Petitioner - The person applying to the court for a divorce.

Respondent - The person receiving an application by their spouse for a divorce.

Judicial separation - A court order acknowledging that the parties no longer live together, even though they are technically still married.

Domestic violence - Abuse or mistreatment by one partner of another.

Non-molestation orders - An order that one party not harass or disturb the other.

Periodic payments order - An order that one party pay the other a certain sum of money each month.

Property adjustment order - An order that one party transfer to the other ownership in a piece of property.

Lump sum order - An order that one party transfer to the other a sum of money.

Pension sharing order - An order dividing a pension between two spouses.

Biological parent - The person whose gametes (sperm or eggs) produced the child.

Social parent - The person performing the day to day care of the child.

Surrogacy - An argreement by which a woman will carry a child on behalf of someone else.

Residence order - An order determining with whom a child will live.

Contact order - An order determining whether a child will spend time with someone else.

Specific issue order - An order dealing with a particular issue of dispute over a child.

Prohibited steps order - An order stopping a parent acting in a particular way towards a child.

Threshold criteria - The facts which must be established before a child can be taken into care.

Adoption - description

Special guardianship - An order that someone is from now recognised as the parent of a child.