This popular family law casebook engages students by presenting core family law doctrine while exploring significant transformations in American families and cutting-edge policy debates. It highlights the important role of constitutional law—and other areas of state and federal law—in shaping family law. The book invites students to consider questions of family definition and governmental regulation of families in light of family law's purposes. It charts family law's evolving approach to adult-adult and parent-child (and other caretaker-dependent) relationships, emphasizing that contemporary families take a variety of forms. The Sixth Edition updates all chapters to reflect the latest family law developments, such as the legal treatment of nonmarital families (including plural relationships) and nonbiological parenting as well as recent Supreme Court decisions. It integrates material previously covered in separate chapters on ethical issues in family law practice and jurisdiction into the contexts in which they arise, such as divorce, child custody, and division of marital property. The Sixth Edition has new material highlighting the intersection of family law with race, gender, class, immigration, sexual orientation, and gender identity. As with previous editions, the casebook contains ample problems for students to apply doctrine to realistic factual contexts and highlights practical dynamics of family law practice. The 6th edition: Thoroughly examines the impact of recent Supreme Court cases on family law, including Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (and provides teachers with shorter and longer versions of that case), and Golan v. Saada Includes attention to the role of race and racism in laws that shape and regulate the family, with case law addressing marriage, divorce, and inheritance rights of formerly enslaved persons and a post-Loving v. Virginia case challenging the continued requirement that couples disclose race on a marriage license Provides a restructured chapter on the legal consequences of marriage, spousal roles within marriage, and the gender revolution within family law and related fields Includes new developments on marriage requirements, including state minimum age laws and common-law marriage rules, and addresses First Amendment challenges, post-Masterpiece Cakeshop, to civil marriage equality and state antidiscrimination laws Includes new coverage of the intersection of immigration and family law Addresses changes in legal approaches to nonmarital families, including multi-adult domestic partnerships and the Uniform Cohabitants' Economic Remedies Act Provides updated treatment of custody and parenting time issues, including parenting gender-expansive children Provides a restructured chapter on intimate partner violence (IPV), including updates on various factors impacting IPV and shifting gun control statutes and caselaw affecting civil protection orders Provides new consideration of child support issues, including joint custody and subsequent families.

Family Law Simulations offers versatile, in-depth simulations for an experiential learning, drafting, or lawyering skills course, and can also supplement a traditional family law course. Contemporary fact patterns present students with "bread and butter" lawyering tasks on behalf of a diverse set of clients. Students will interview clients, draft pleadings, conduct discovery, argue motions, negotiate, and mediate. The book further develops a sustained knowledge of the governing ethical rules and explores the interdisciplinary nature of family law and its intersections with other legal specializations. Family Law Simulations is also a uniquely specialized text that focuses on developing cultural competency for lawyers, cultivating a strong professional identity, and honing communication skills with clients. Several fact patterns continue throughout the book to allow students to experience the arc of a family law case. Students represent clients in different states, applying actual family statutes, supplemented by practice guidance materials and independent research. This multifaceted text meets the varied and complex needs of modern family law classrooms.