Family Law Professional

Overview

The practice of family law examines state regulation of sexual and marital relationships, including the delicate balance of family privacy against state intervention in the marital relationship. Litigating around the institution of marriage and family that is most personal to individuals, family law brings to light a number of issues that affect peoples’ lives at a very deep level. Further, family law also covers principles governing child custody and visitation, child support, and the regulation of non-traditional relationships as they pose a variety of questions about what a “family” is under the law.

Covering these intriguing and recently developing issues, this program provides an overview of family law.  Learners will explore fundamental topics including marriage, divorce, annulment, property division, parenthood, adoption, custody, support, and family violence as well as emerging areas such as legal recognition of non-marital families and assisted reproductive technology.  Participants will study all of these points with special attention to the legal principles, ethical issues, research, interviewing, discovery, drafting, and other essential practice skills that make up the work product surrounding this field.

For individuals looking toward law school or who are interested in the paralegal profession, this program offers an incredibly useful and realistic look into the actual work that lawyers and legal professionals do every day. Examining the initial organization, operation and potential dissolution of a family unit, the Family Law program addresses premarital controversies, capacity to marry and the formalities of marriage in light of the rights and duties of marital partners, various grounds for divorce, annulment and separation, spousal support and basic issues of property distribution.

Program Objectives

After completing this program, learners will be able to:

• Describe tasks paralegals perform as members of a family law team
• Perform research on issues related to family law cases
• Interpret the major legal issues related to premarital agreements
• Interpret the major legal issues related to marriage
• Interpret the major legal issues related to annulment
• Interpret the major legal issues related to non-marital families
• Interpret the major legal issues related to parenthood
• Interpret the major legal issues related to adoption
• Interpret the major legal issues related to family violence
• Interpret the major legal issues related to divorce
• Interpret the major legal issues related to discovery and financial statements
• Interpret the major legal issues related to child custody
• Interpret the major legal issues related to child support
• Interpret the major legal issues related to spousal support
• Interpret the major legal issues related to property division
• Interpret the major legal issues related to separation agreements
• Draft family law documents
• Propose strategies for dealing with ethical issues that arise in family law cases
• Use Microsoft Office®