WITH RARE exceptions, matrimonial and family law is purely statutory. So, as our courts struggle to adapt to evolving definitions of family, they are working with statutes that were enacted at a time when the average family consisted of a married mother, father, two-and-a-half children and a white picket fence.
The family unit now can consist of a heterosexual couple who has never married; two same-sex parents where, if the two parents are lesbians, they may have elected to have one artificially inseminated and thereby become the “biological” mother; or a married heterosexual couple where the “stepfather” of the child has never adopted the child or children of the biological parent.
