IRISH FAMILY LAW COURTS (A COMPARATIVE PROSPECTIVE)

Irish family law Courts (A Comparative Prospective)



Irish family law Courts (A Comparative Prospective)

Introduction

Irish family law is the body of law that governs the relationships between individuals involved in long-term, intimate relationships. The central relationships of concern are those of parent and child and spouse and partner. Although the law does not create these relationships, legal recognition of some relationships and the corresponding nonrecognition of others have enormous consequences. For example, a woman may give birth to a child and, by virtue of having given birth, she may be recognized as the legal mother of that child. Through specified actions, her legal rights can be terminated and another person may be assigned those rights. This is what occurs in adoption. After the adoption is completed, the law recognizes the adoptive parent or parents as the legal parents of the child. The original mother's legal relationship with the child is no longer recognized.

People may establish relationships that closely resemble legally significant relationships, but the law may not recognize those relationships. For example, a person may raise a child and be, for all social purposes, the parent of that child. But the person may not have the legal status of a parent and is therefore, in the eyes of the law, a stranger to the child. In other words, legal status does not necessarily follow from social status.

In any given society, Irish family law reflects both the reality of the human relationships common in that place and time and the ideal relationships the society wants to promote. Thus, current law typically recognizes the status of unmarried fathers as parents (a reflection of reality) but also privileges marital parenthood (a reflection of the ideal marital family). Irish family law is thus both pragmatic and idealistic and, accordingly, is both influenced by and influences gender relationships. This entry provides an overview of the structure of Irish family law, its connection to primary relations including intimate couples and parents and children, and current trends in Irish family law.

Discussion

From 1845 to 1920 the Irish heritage skilled a wave of hardships with a magnitude nearly indescribable. Few nations can contrast with the relentless misery in which the native Irish dwelled in for nearly a century. The Irish culture brags thousands of years of magnificent and prosperous times for which we may gaze upon in admiration, but in this little length of time, Ireland's look and persona would be marked forever. There are numerous causes why Ireland was strike so hard and very quick by misery and anguish, but historians agree that it started mainly on one initial catastrophe, the large Famine. Before the large Famine, numerous Irish were already being squeezed by increasing leases and a sluggish job market. The English had looked upon Ireland for hundreds of years, as a nation with little importance and no worldwide influence. Under England's powerful grab, the Irish persons were compelled to bend with every tyrannical regulation that came from the monopolistic ...