Family law in the Commonwealth Caribbean: The challenge for validity and authenticity

The purpose of this thesis is to establish a framework for family law reform in the Commonwealth Caribbean and to critically analyze the adequacy of recent reforms.;In Chapter II, I explore the concept of law in the plural society and state that it is marked by a stark divergence between law and the social realities of the lives of most of the people leading to widespread evasion and substitution of legal process.;In Chapter III, I show how family in Caribbean societies varies along sectional boundaries, the forms of which contradict fundamental Eurocentric notions of family.;In Chapter IV, I seek to establish that the need for reform in the Caribbean is entirely different from the efforts in the Western industrialised societies.;In Chapter I, I examine the plural society model which describes Caribbean societies as characterised by gross cultural conflicts.;In Chapter V, I turn to the recent reforms which affect certain phenomena in the Caribbean family system identified as unique--the status of the child born out of wedlock and consensual cohabitation. In both cases the conclusion is that the reform measures have failed to fundamentally redress the crisis in law.;Chapter VI is the conclusion. This is that family and law in these societies conform to the plural model of Professor M. G. Smith. The legal system deferentially incorporates these varying forms and therefore reform to integrate the social institutions within the public domain requires that the law extends an equality of effect to comparable cultural action. If this is not done then law reform becomes merely a process of conservation of the hierarchical structure effected by copying modernizing legislation from legal systems which do not exhibit the same social and cultural characteristics and diversity.