Frederik Swennen

University of Antwerp | UA · Research Group Personal Rights and Property Rights

Due to abuses and irregularities regarding intercountry adoptions into Flanders, the Flemish government established an expert panel in the Summer of 2019. The expert panel had a twofold task: to investigate intercountry adoptions that had taken place in the past, and to formulate recommendations for the future. The expert panel submitted its report...

De laatste jaren rezen bij steeds meer interlandelijk geadopteerden vragen over hun adoptiegeschiedenis en de adoptieprocedure. Deze vragen kwamen aan de oppervlakte zowel via verhalen in de pers als via rechtstreekse berichtgeving aan het Vlaams Centrum voor Adoptie. Om gehoor te geven aan de verscheidene vragen en bezorgdheden van geadopteerden,...

This article champions a new legal recognition model that emphasises the transformative potential of people’s use of family law. After discussing the flaws of prevailing recognition models, it insists on family formations being unique assemblages that cannot be captured by generalised technical categories. It makes the claim that, rather than one-s...

This article sets out to research and resolve the conceptual lag between the family as defined and recognised in law and the multiplicity of queer constellations of ‘intimate citizenship’ in which families are actually done. The focus is on adult unions outside of conjugal coupledom. The family law practices, and awareness and expectations of adult...

Adult unions are currently visibe in family law only insofar they meet the markers of the Sexual Family, of being domestic, dyadic and sexual in nature. This seminar, by contrast, sets out to explore unfamiliar adult unions, that are nomadic, polyadic, and/or platonic. It puts to the test the claim that unfamiliar adult unions are actually familial...

This article advances a new model for family law to address emerging non-conventional family formations, particularly between parents and children. We contend that the conventional model of kinship categories as static, predefined statuses should be replaced with a model whereby the state accommodates kinship categories the law users themselves pro...

This chapter describes and analyses the perpetual pendular movement of family law between status and contract from a global perspective. It focuses on substantive and procedural family law with regard to parents and children and with regard to life partners. The conclusions of the analysis are quite ambivalent. Firstly, whereas family law is clearl...

“The human infant needs a father and the human mother needs a mate”. Under this commonly accepted claim, it is considered as self-evident that the father of the child and the mate of the mother should be one and the same person. Completing the ‘Sexual Family’, he triangulates the fundamental bond between the child he begot and its mother, with whom...

This article provides a theoretically grounded critical analysis of how the Belgian and the Dutch legal systems are addressing new kinship formations through the production of new legal terminology. As Belgium and the Netherlands are at the forefront of legal recognition of minority sexualities and emerging forms of relatedness, statutory Belgian ‘...

This chapter describes and analyses the perpetual pendular movement of family law between status and contract from a global perspective. It focuses on substantive and procedural family law with regard to parents and children and with regard to life partners. The conclusions of the analysis are quite ambivalent. Firstly, whereas family law is clearl...

This volume presents global and comparative perspectives on the perpetual pendular movement of family law between status and contract. It contributes to the topical academic debate on ‘family law exceptionalism’ by exploring the blurred lines between public law, private law and family law, and sheds light on the many shades of grey that exist. The...

Private autonomy is currently advanced as a basis for the legal enforceability of private self-governance of families through contractual and corporate instruments, akin to pre-modern house laws of prominent families. Private self-governance of the family is developed through tools of both public and private (corporate) governance. Family governanc...

De laatste jaren is het denken over seksualiteit en relaties bij mensen met een verstandelijke beperking grondig aan het veranderen. In het kader van het ‘burgerschapsparadigma’ zijn mensen met een verstandelijke beperking volwaardige burgers, die aan alle aspecten van het maatschappelijk leven moeten kunnen deelnemen. Mensen met een verstandelijke...

Bio-ethische discussies op het gebied van verstandelijke beperking gaan vaak over al dan niet recht op leven (beslissingen rond levenseinde, voor de geboorte, rond de geboorte en bij levensbedreigende ziekten). Andere relevante bio-ethische thema’s bij personen met een verstandelijke beperking zijn bijvoorbeeld de discussie rond kwaliteit van leven...