미국에 있어서 혼인법의 전개

The Development of the Marriage Law in the United States of America

&nbsp;&nbsp;American family law, like Korean situation, has changed for several decades, and it is not too much to find on the front line of what is called the culture war. This change is still in advance and is distinctively found out in customs related to the family livelihood community. In particular, the traditional ideal of a nuclear family confronts with serious difficulties such as single parenting, unmarried cohabitation or same sex domestic partnership.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Of course, these problems cause the pluralism of family and lead to a lot of legal problems. Therefore, many arguments in America focus on the social and cultural resolution of the problems arising from not only the marriage law, parent and child relationship but also surrogate motherhood, unmarried cohabitation or same sex domestic partnership.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Although most states have their family laws, case laws still play a significant role in domestic problems. That is because family law consists of general provisions which have rooms for factual judgment against relating cases, so they can be solved through judge’s interpretation and application. Every state family law has distinctive provisions and this fundamental distinction often makes issues such as property between spouses. Basically, neither the Congress nor the Supreme Court intervene a state family law because it is believed that private laws include family belong to each state’s judicial authority. However, in these days, a variety of federal laws and constitution law affect to each state family law with the object of unification of state laws.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;The characteristic of American marriage law is prescribed in the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act(UMDA) in detail. This act is accepted few states as a law, but it has tremendous influence on the lawmaking process of lots of states. Therefore, this paper generally examines essential issues specially focusing on the UMDA and other federal uniform acts to understand American marriage law.