Wills have a lengthy history.
Forum non conveniens (FNC) is a mostly common law legal doctrine whereby a court "acknowledges that another forum or court is more appropriate and sends the case to such a forum. A change of venue, where another venue is more appropriate to adjudicate a matter, such as the jurisdiction within which an accident occurred and where all the witnesses reside."
In law, domicile is the status or attribution of being a lawful permanent resident in a particular jurisdiction. A person can remain domiciled in a jurisdiction even after they have left it, if they have maintained sufficient links with that jurisdiction or have not displayed an intention to leave permanently.
Choice of law is a procedural stage in the litigation of a case involving the conflict of laws when it is necessary to reconcile the differences between the laws of different legal jurisdictions, such as sovereign states, federated states, or provinces. The outcome of this process is potentially to require the courts of one jurisdiction to apply the law of a different jurisdiction in lawsuits arising from, say, family law, tort, or contract. The law which is applied is sometimes referred to as the "proper law." Dépeçage is an issue within choice of law.
In conflict of laws, renvoi is a subset of the choice of law rules and it may be applied whenever a forum court is directed to consider the law of another state.
Characterisation, or characterization, in conflict of laws, is the second stage of the procedure to resolve a lawsuit that involves foreign law. The process is described in English law as Characterisation, or classification within the English judgments of the European Court of Justice. It is alternatively known as qualification in French law.
In the Roman conflict of laws, an incidental question is a legal issue that arises in connection with the major cause of action in a lawsuit. The forum court will have already decided that it has jurisdiction to hear the case and will be working through the next two stages of the conflict process, namely: characterisation and choice of law. For example, the court may classify the cause as "succession", but it notes that the plaintiff brings the claim for relief as the deceased's widow. Before the court can adjudicate on the main issue, it must first decide whether the plaintiff actually has the status claimed, i.e. the incidental question would be the validity of the claimed marriage. The inconvenient reality is that many lawsuits involve a number of interdependent legal issues. In purely domestic cases, this poses no difficulty because a judge will freely move from one domestic law to another to resolve the dispute. But in a conflict case, the question is whether the incidental question is resolved by reference either to its own choice of law rules, or to the same law that governs the main issue. States have not formulated a consistent answer to this question.
A proxy wedding or proxy marriage is a wedding in which one or both of the individuals being united are not physically present, usually being represented instead by other persons. If both partners are absent a double proxy wedding occurs.
In the conflict of laws, the validity and effect of a contract with one or more foreign law elements will be decided by reference to the so-called "proper law" of the contract.
In conflict of laws, the choice of law rules for tort are intended to select the lex causae by which to determine the nature and scope of the judicial remedy to claim damages for loss or damage suffered.
In modern society, the role of marriage and its termination through divorce have become political issues. As people live increasingly mobile lives, the conflict of laws and its choice of law rules are highly relevant to determine:
Conflict of marriage laws is the conflict of laws with respect to marriage in different jurisdictions. When marriage-related issues arise between couples with diverse backgrounds, questions as to which legal systems and norms should be applied to the relationship naturally follow with various potentially applicable systems frequently conflicting with one another.
The lex domicilii is the Latin term for "law of the domicile" in the conflict of laws. Conflict is the branch of public law regulating all lawsuits involving a "foreign" law element where a difference in result will occur depending on which laws are applied.
In the conflict of laws, the lex loci contractus is the Latin term for "law of the place where the contract is made".
Lex loci solutionis, in conflict of laws, is the law applied in the place of an event.
Marriage law refers to the legal requirements that determine the validity of a marriage, and which vary considerably among countries. See also Marriage Act.
This article summarizes the same-sex marriage laws of states in the United States. Via the case Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States legalized same-sex marriage in a decision that applies nationwide, with the possible exception of American Samoa and some tribal nations.
A void marriage is a marriage that is unlawful or invalid under the laws of the jurisdiction where it is entered. A void marriage is "one that is void and invalid from its beginning. It is as though the marriage never existed and it requires no formality to terminate." A marriage that is entered into in good faith, but that is later found to be void, may be recognized as a putative marriage and the spouses as putative spouses, with certain rights granted by statute or common law, notwithstanding that the marriage itself is void.
Common-law marriage, also known as sui juris marriage, informal marriage, marriage by habit and repute, or marriage in fact is a form of irregular marriage that survives only in seven U.S. states and the District of Columbia along with some provisions of military law; plus two other states that recognise domestic common law marriage after the fact for limited purposes. It is arguably the original form of marriage, in which a couple took up residency together, held themselves out to the world as a married couple, and otherwise behaved as a married couple. It has been gradually abolished in Western nation states since the sixteenth century, when the Council of Trent in 1563 ruled that no marriage thenceforth would be valid in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church unless it were solemnised by a priest. This ruling was quickly adopted in predominantly Roman Catholic countries, and eventually became the norm in Protestant nations as well. In 1753, the Kingdom of Great Britain passed Lord Hardwicke's Act, which provided no marriage in England and Wales was legally valid unless performed under the auspices of the Church of England, with exceptions for Jews and Quakers. The Act did not apply to Scotland or to the American colonies, and Ireland was still a separate country in 1753; so common law marriage continued in the future United States until individual states abolished it.
The Brussels I Regulation contains a jurisdictional regime: the rules which courts of European Union Member States use to determine if they have jurisdiction in cases with links to more than one country in the European Union. The basic principle is that the court in the member state of the party that gets sued has jurisdiction, while other grounds exist, which are diverse in content and scope, and are often classified in descending order of exclusivity and specificity. The original Brussels regulation (44/2001) is with regard to jurisdiction rules very similar to the 2007 Lugano Convention, containing the same provisions with the same numbering. Numbering -and certain substantial issues- will be different when a recast version of the Regulation applies from 1 January 2015 (1215/2012).
