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![handle is hein.journals/whitlr22 and id is 337 raw text is: MARRIAGE AND THE INTACT
FAMILY: THE SIGNIFICANCE
OF MICHAEL H. v. GERALD D.
LYNNE MARIE KOHM*
Marriage as a conventional social and legal institution has
undergone serious and substantial assault from numerous opponents,
sometimes invariably from within the family unit itself. Individual
rights of women, men, parents, and even children have led the attack
on the necessity of marriage and the family as a unit.1 Divorce,
promiscuity, homosexuality, reproductive technology, and cultural
changes have significantly altered the American legal view of the
marital unit, and its foundation for the intact family. Although the
* John Brown McCarty Professor of Family Law, Regent University School of
Law; J.D. Syracuse 1988, B.A. (Philosophy) Albany University 1980. This research
was done thanks to a gracious stipend from Regent University School of Law and The
William and Eleanor Chaney Family Law Endowment. Many thanks are also extended
to my Research Assistant Ann C. Thompson for her valuable research. This article is
dedicated to my own family, Joseph A. Kohm, Jr., Joseph A. Kohm, III, and Kathleen
Elizabeth Kohm, and my parents, James R. Donnelly and Lois E. Donnelly, who are all
a great blessing to me from the Lord, representing a combined 58 years of intact
marriage and families. The best gets better with time.
1. The term family has been redefined in many ways. The Bureau of Census
now defines a family as two or more related people living together. Diane Crispell,
Thomas Exter & Judith Waldrop, Census '90 (A Special Report): Mirror Image, Wall
St. J. R12-13 (Mar. 9, 1990). The Statistical Abstract of the United States for 1994
states that [t]he term 'family' refers to a group of two or more persons related by
birth, marriage, or adoption and residing together in a household. U.S. Bureau of the
Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1995, 6 (115th ed. 1995).
2. See Leslie J. Harris & Lee E. Teitelbaum, Family Law (2d ed., Panel Pub.
2000).
Several social phenomena account for the extent to which family structure
departs from the traditional model. In addition to premature death of a parent,
high rates of divorce and of childbirth to unmarried mothers have combined](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/whitlr22&div=18&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)