FAMILY OUTSIDE THE BOOK ON THE FAMILY

Abstract

The orthodox view of the Civil Code of Québec’s book on the family as an exhaustive enumeration of legal family relations, and of the legislature as sole law reformer, requires revision. Recent cases in which orders justified by children’s best interests have acknowledged other family forms show the judges to be adapting the Civil Code’s resources to the situations before them. The creativity of some Quebec judges, balanced by the constraints perceived by common law judges, confirms that, in family matters, the caricatures of the rule-bound civilian judge and the unconstrained common law judge obscure more than they illuminate.