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 produce within their fluid and nomadic family assemblages and that they actively revise when negotiating state recognition. We claim that this model would better reflect and govern the emerging kinship system. We corroborate this by drawing on insights from family research that takes issue with the fragmentation of kinship, particularly the fragmentation of motherhood. We then elaborate on a conception of state recognition as the capacity to trace connections and identify normative frameworks, one that valorizes the self-organizing force of social practices but at the same time holds onto the filtering role of the state. 532

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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-size-fits-all model for relationship recognition that relies upon dyadic, sexual and domestic relationships, people ought to be able to identify different modules of relationship upon which to base legal recognition or particular legal consequences. It terms this model ‘cont(r)actualisation’, as the law should adopt a new orientation to how people form their normative networks. In the context of relationship recognition, this means that fixed bundles of pregiven labels should not drive recognition; rather, different modules or nodes law users themselves define when performing family ought to define family for law, at least for different legal purposes.

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