Kinship in family law

Kinship in family law

Legal Aspects of Family Life: Kinship
Kinship is a word that not many people are aware of; I first heard the word a few weeks ago. However the meaning behind the word is something that is universally known. Its technical definition is a relationship between “any entities that share a genealogical origin, through biological, cultural, or historical descent” (Kinship 2008). Society is based on human relationships and every one of those relationships must be defined. When you know how to define a relationship you then know your rights, duties, obligations, etc., to that person. Laws and rights would be impossible to enforce if they could not be assigned to certain relationships. Mothers have certain duties to their children and the children have certain duties to their parents. Kinship helps classify who we can or cannot marry. Then when two people do marry they suddenly gain a new set of rights and duties pertaining to their spouse. Settling disputes are dependant on these relationships; such was the case in deciding who will inherit the late actor Heath Ledger’s estate. Heath and Michelle Williams were married and had a baby girl Matilda, but the two divorced and Michelle, as the ex-wife, will not be entitled to any of Heath’s assets. His daughter is now the heir to his estate. Family law would not exist without the concept of kinship because the family needs to be defined before legalities can be applied. Therefore kinship is the most significant part of understanding family law because we need to know who we are talking about before we can say what they can or cannot do.
Kinship varies culturally in many ways. Who your relatives are depend on the system of lineage used in your own culture. The different systems are unilateral and bilateral. Unilineal kinship makes a direct and simple assignment of social statuses, rights, and duties by “confining transmission to a single descent line” (Schwimmer 1995). Patrilineage, only tracing male descent, is...