DOMESTIC RELATIONS. A term eni-• played to denote the legal relations subsisting between the members of a family or household; and the law of domestic relations is the group of rules which define and regulate the rights and duties of these members. The separate grouping of these rules is a matter of conveni ence. rather than the result of an attempt at logical classification. Indeed, every treatise on this topic contains a large amount of material that is taken bodily from the law of agency, of contract. and of tort. In other words, the law of the domestic relations is not in all its parts a distinct and independent branch of the law, but is made up in large part of legal rules from several branches of the law. As thus conceived, it form. a part of the law of persons, in which the ordinary legal relations are varied by the ab normal status of persons under the various de grees of disability or of legal privilege to which the members of a family are subject. But it also includes the rights arising out of the status of the various family relations, as marriage and divorce, th© rights of children against their par ents. and the like. The topics ordinarily dis cussed under this general heading, are those of husband and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward, master and servant. It is admitted
that the last of these topics carries the discus sion far beyond the limits of the modern family or household. For this reason some recent writers on domestic relations have dropped this topic entirely, or limited their consideration of it to the rights and duties of domestic servants. The attempt has been made in some States to codify the rules applicable to this subject. This has been done in New York by a statute known as the Domestic Relations Law. Its scope is fairly indicated by the headings of its various divisions, viz.: Unlawful Marriages; Solemniza tion, Proof, and Effect of Marriage; Rights and Liabilities of Husband and Wife; The Custody and Wages of Children; Guardians; The Adop tion of Children; Apprentices and Servants. See Gilbert, Domestic Relations (Albany. ISDS) ; Rodgers, Domestic Relations (Chicago. 1S99) ; Sehouler. Domestic Relations (Boston. IS97) Tiffany, On Persons and Domestic Relations (Saint Paul, 1896) ; Laws of New York, c. 272 of 1896. See also the articles GUARDIAN : IlrstANn AND WIFE: :MASTER AND SERVANT; PARENT ANn CHILI), and the authorities mentioned under these titles.