Advanced aspects of Family Law [ LDROP2071 ]

Every year, according to current events related to legislation and case law, the lecturer or lecturer's team responsible for the course will determine specific topics likely to adequately give rise to a deepened examination of the applicable legal rules. Those particular issues will be chosen among the following subjects: ' the status of the human person ' the personal and patrimonial status of the married and unmarried couple ' filiation and status of the child ' incapable adults and the protection of the dependent persons ' legal relations within the extended family ' inheritance and gifts. Legal rules applicable to the chosen themes will be studied taking into account the recent evolutions of Belgian law (legislation, doctrine and case law) as well as the solutions offered by comparative law, especially within the European Union.

The specific aim of this course is a theoretical and critical deepened examination of legal rules applicable in various fields of family law. Running on from the course Family Law given in Bac 3 and the course of Patrimonial Family Law given in Master 1, it aims to allow students to go back to certain specific problems they could only have examined in a general way until then, in order to proceed to a detailed study of the relevant legal rules as they are formulated by the Legislator and as they are interpreted and applied in case law. This course is part of a consistent whole of three courses. The lecturers in charge of those courses form an educational team : they consult each other on the contents and methods of each course in order to assure complementarity. The course is based on participative educational methods (learning by projects or by cases, comments on jurisprudence or doctrines, debates with guests, field research,'), allowing the student to autonomously develop a critical, forward-looking and creative evaluation. The student is encouraged to participate in the course and to get involved in the learning, both on an individual and collective level. With this in prospect, the lecturers will confer within the Faculty about the teaching methods to be put into action.

Two aspects of the student's participation will be evaluated:

• The collective work and the presentation will form a third of the final mark.
• A written exam will be organised regarding the rest of the course. Questions will be asked in French as regards the part of the course given in French, and in English for the part given in English. Students will preferably answer in English to the questions asked in English but are allowed to make use of French if they want during the academic year 2013-2014.

In its first part, the course will go further into some specific questions about Belgian family law, with slides and/or a documentary portfolio as a teaching aid.

In a second part, lessons will be given in English and dealing with topics related to comparative law or with an international aspect, for example by analysing decisions of the European Court of Human Rights concerning personal rights and family law, or courses about selected subject matters, analysing documents or solving study cases in application of Anglo-Saxon legal systems. Again, the teaching aid for this part will consist of slides and/or a documentary portfolio.

Besides, the students will be divided into groups and pairs, each group being assigned to a particular topic. They will carry out a comparative law project which will consist of analysing the way a specific question of family law is dealt with or solved in an Anglo-Saxon legal system, or for which sources of information are available in English, and to compare it to the Belgian law. They will search relevant information on the matter and analyse it in order to give a short talk as well as a written report of 5 pages for each pair, in French or in English.

Knowledge  of the course of Family Law given in BAC is essential.