Category Archives: Family Law

‘He Is Still Your Father’: Tetherings, Social Welfare, and Troubled Parental Maintenance Litigation in Taiwan

Elderly Law, Family Law, Law & Society

When asked if parents would sue their adult children (hereinafter ‘children’) for maintenance, many people would instinctively answer, ‘No’. They would probably point to reasons such as love, ‘face’, culture, or the inappropriateness of using the formal legal system to govern child-parent relationships. These answers would comport with socio-legal scholarship on law and continuing relations, that is, generally speaking, people are less likely to use the law against parties with whom they have or desire to have ongoing bonds. However, I find something quite different and far more complicated in my article published in Law & Social Inquiry.

The Two (or Three) Lives of the Mental Capacity Act

Comparative Law, Family Law, Medical Law

The England and Wales Mental Capacity Act 2005 and the Singapore Mental Capacity Act 2008 appear to be twins on paper, sharing the same core principles, the same definition of incapacity, and near-identical best interests checklists for making decisions for people who lack capacity (‘Ps’). Yet they have gone on to live very different lives, as seen in distinct bodies of case law, divergent judicial interpretations, and legislative intentions which have emphasised different themes. My co-authored article ‘The Two Lives of the Mental Capacity Act: Rethinking East-West Binaries in Comparative Analysis’ published in the Medical Law Review explains these differences, similarities, socio-cultural underpinnings, and opportunities for bi-directional learning. My collaborators for this interdisciplinary project were legal philosopher Dr Camillia Kong (School of Law, Queen Mary University of London) and bioethicist Associate Professor Michael Dunn (NUS Centre for Biomedical Ethics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine).