Legal Recognition of Non-Conjugal Families: New Frontiers in Family Law in the US, Canada and Europe

The level of care and commitment amongst individuals has not diminished, despite marriage rates falling in the West: people are investing in relationships outside of marriage and of the traditional model of family it embeds. Think of non-conjugal relationships of friends or relatives that lack a sexual component. Examples also include polyamorous relationships involving more than two persons, and various religion-based families such as polygamous unions. I should term these unions to be ‘new families’. Such families are new not in an ontological sense. Some are truly a novel phenomenon, while others are more well known. Extended families, for instance, have always existed; indeed, they were legally paid reverence at some points in history. This occurred in the pre-industrialisation era in the US, and in Eastern European societies constitutionalising the protection of extended families.