ABSTRACT
This article concerns the pervasive problems American family law now faces given the cascading advances in reproductive science, the changing concepts and the definitions of a family, and the changing roles of women in the family and in the world of work. There is the almost universal recognition that the devices that the law provides for settling family disputes are themselves proving unsatisfactory, costly and often unfair. We think that the heart of the problem is the uncertainty caused by relying on after-the-fact litigation to solve problems that could have been anticipated when the relationship was entered. We find that this failure is common to such subjects as the ownership of frozen embryos, prenuptial property agreements and surrogate motherhood agreements.
