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Browse the 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand
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Graphic: An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966.

Warning

This information was published in 1966 in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock. It has not been corrected and will not be updated.

Up-to-date information can be found elsewhere in Te Ara.

Contents


FAMILY LAW

The law relating to the family divides into two branches – the marriage relationship, its formation, incidents, and breakdown, and the parent-child relationship, including adoption. The modern preoccupation with personal rather than property rights and relations has led to much development in both these branches, more particularly the first. New ideas have affected institutions and, in due course, the law to an extent little short of revolutionary. In changing the law, New Zealand has led as much as it has followed, and our family law differs from that of England in many respects. While its basic characteristics are common to Western countries generally, it is in details essentially an independent system.

by Bruce James Cameron, B.A., LL.M., Legal Adviser, Department of Justice, Wellington.

Co-creator

Bruce James Cameron, B.A., LL.M., Legal Adviser, Department of Justice, Wellington.