ABSTRACT

This book explores the intersecting issues relating the phenomenon of ageing to gender and family law. The latter has tended to focus mainly on family life in young and middle age; and, indeed, the issues of childhood and parenting are key in many family law texts. Family life for older members has, then, been largely neglected; addressing this neglect, the current volume explores how the issues which might be important for younger people are not necessarily the same as those for older people. The significance of family, the nature of family life, and the understanding of self in terms of one’s relationships, tend to change over the life course. For example, the state may play an increasing role in the lives of older people – as access to services, involvement in work and the community, the ability to live independently, and to form or maintain caring relationships, are all impacted by law and policy. This collection therefore challenges the standard models of family life and family law that have been developed within a child/parent-centred paradigm, and which may require rethinking in the turn to family life in old age. Interdisciplinary in its scope and orientation, this book will appeal not just to academic family lawyers and students interested in issues around family law, ageing, gender, and care; but also to sociologists and ethicists working in these areas.

chapter |11 pages

Introduction

part I|77 pages

Care, vulnerability and age

chapter 1|21 pages

Embracing vulnerability in ageing

Our route to flourishing

chapter 3|12 pages

Ageing, vulnerability and care

A view from social gerontology

chapter 4|15 pages

Financial abuse of older persons

A criminal law perspective

chapter 5|13 pages

Safeguarding in older age

part II|70 pages

Rights and state institutions

chapter 6|19 pages

Accountability, social justice, and social care decision-making

Reflections on the responsive state

chapter 7|16 pages

Revisiting the feminist critique of rights

Lessons for a new older persons’ convention?

chapter 8|17 pages

Impoverishing care

part III|84 pages

Relationships in old age

chapter 10|16 pages

Ageing, love and family law

chapter 11|14 pages

Which ageing ‘families’ count?

Older lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans* and/or queer (LGBT*Q) – relational legal in/exclusions in (older age) family law

chapter 12|13 pages

‘Inheritance law matters’

chapter 13|27 pages

Looking after grandchildren

Unfair and differential impacts?

chapter 14|13 pages

Grandparents and grandchildren

Relatedness, relationships and responsibility