Family law is the body of law governing the constitution, incidents and dissolution of family relationships — marriage and its validity, the rights and duties of spouses, parent-child relations (legitimacy, custody, guardianship, adoption), matrimonial remedies (judicial separation, divorce, maintenance) and the family's property regime (joint-family property, partition, inheritance). Its unit of regulation is not the individual but the relationship: the state regulating the household — which is why family law is called the most intimate of legal disciplines.
Nature — four propositions: Personal-law character: historically family law followed religion and community rather than territory; Nepal's legal journey is precisely the move from personal-religious law (shastric and customary) to a uniform civil code; A hybrid discipline: part private law (property and obligations within the family), part public law (the state's interest in marriage registration, child protection, and criminal sanctions for child marriage, bigamy and domestic violence); Status and property intertwined: family law creates statuses (spouse, parent, adopted child, heir) and attaches property consequences to them (maintenance, partition share, inheritance); Morality-laden and dynamic: the most value-contested legal field — religion, gender roles and child welfare all contest its rules, so family law is where legal change and social change track each other most visibly. Scope (the map of this course): marriage and court marriage (Units 2–3); divorce (Unit 4); parents and children (Unit 5); guardianship (Unit 6); adoption (Unit 7); partition (Unit 8); inheritance (Unit 9); the family court (Unit 10); and the leading cases (Unit 11).