Cal Law Trends and Developments
Abstract
The year 1969 marked the decade's principal accomplishment in family law, the passage of the Family Law Act. The last several years have seen a sharply rising discontent with our traditional procedures for handling the dissolution of marriages, and numerous reform proposals have been advanced both in this country and abroad.
The Family Law Act brings some of these proposals to fruition; it marks the first legislative eradication of marital fault as the governing principle of divorce in any American jurisdiction. Because the passage of the new law virtually eclipses the past year's decisional developments in family law and community property, this article will attempt to focus on its highlights in summary form, not to provide an exhaustive catalogue of all its points, but rather to set out its structure and indicate some directions of future growth.