Family Law
The Pegasus - Lex et Lux: The Law, Illuminated
Trigger warning: Domestic violence
The terms “family law” or “domestic relations law” encompass a wide range of issues that relate to family relationships. Custody, divorce, child abuse, domestic violence, and even prenuptial agreements fall under the family law umbrella. Because one blog post cannot possibly cover even a general overview of these issues and the laws surrounding them, I will continue this as a series and intersperse posts on the subject from time to time. The personal nature of this practice area and the rather heavy circumstances that transform these issues from “a private family matter” to a sometimes very public legal matter need some space.
We start here with a basic history of domestic violence (“DV”), simply because the hazy vapors of DV permeate all dimensions of family law, blurring outcomes and complicating solutions. For starters, DV is also a relatively new concept. In the U.S., until the mid-1800s, federal and local systems generally did not acknowledge DV as unacceptable behavior by a husband against his wife – and the marital relationship was the limited context through which DV was viewed for centuries. Until 1920, not all states outlawed DV – or as it was called at that time, “wife-beating.” Some anomalous systems of government did address it; however, many countries and cultures still hesitate to involve outside help in DV situations, prioritizing the privacy of any household over the safety of the members within. Federal protection for victims of DV was not enacted until 1994.
While the term “wife-beating” inherently restricts victims to “wives” only and abusive behavior to “beatings,” recognizing it as a crime was progress. The term, however, did acknowledge a fact that has transcended time and place, and still holds today: most victims are women, and most perpetrators are their male romantic partners. Some jurisdictions uphold the gender-specific language in their laws to acknowledge the historical context of DV, while many have since modernized the language to be gender-neutral, allowing prosecution of abusers that victimize men. Even though laws existed, arrests and convictions did not commonly result. The tangle of shame, retaliatory behavior, and the resolute culture of individualism and privacy deterred many victims from speaking out and reporting DV. The perfect storm coalesced around this personal pain, trapping victims of DV in a world where help was just outside of reach.
