ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that neither marriage nor heterosexual cohabitation now alone defines the family, it is still usually important to establish whether there is a marriage or other partnering relationship, since such status is at present still crucial to most statutory family law. This may change in the foreseeable future, as increasing claims are made with regard to parentage as the core status relationship (see Chapter 1). The government is at present still explicitly supporting the institution of marriage as the best environment in which to bring up children. Nevertheless, confusing messages are coming out from this source, which also espouses the principle that children’s interests should be paramount and identifies this as the ‘first principle’ of modern family law (see the Home Office’s consultation document, Supporting Families, 1998). Thus, has Tolstoy’s Divorce, which alone constituted the family law of 50 years ago, been overtaken by a wider view?
