Queer families and the law after I do

Dr Alexander Maine, Senior Lecturer at The City Law School, has been awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant for 2025.

The project, ‘Queer Families and the Law after I do’, started this month and will investigate how LGBTQ people navigate the complex world of family relationships, law, and society.

The project will explain how LGBTQ people navigate the complex world of legal relationship recognition when approaching their familial, sexual, and emotional relationships after 15 years of legal same-sex marriage. Through embedded engagement with family law practitioners, this research will support and promote LGBTQ inclusivity in legal practice.

The grant will support a range of research and knowledge exchange activities:

• In collaboration with YouGov, a survey of married and divorced LGBTQ people in order to delve into the lived experiences of same-sex family law
• The establishment of a ‘Queer Family Law Network’ which will bring together academics, practitioners, third sector, and policy-makers working with same-sex families
• Collaboration with the Centre for Justice Reform (City St George’s) and the LGBTQ Research to Policy Mechanism (King’s College London)
• A one day conference at City St George’s discussing the findings of the event and other work within the field.

Reflecting on the importance of the grant, Dr Maine said:

Same-sex couples were first able to marry in 2014, so looking back on a decade and a half of that marriage is a really important topic, and will help us to see how the this big change in the law affected same-sex couples, and what the challenges are going forwards for LGBTQ people. This project will identify areas of best practice for practitioners and they will also seek to highlights the ways in which this could be improved when working with policy makers and the third sector. I hope this project can lead to a more inclusive family law system.