Family law is undergoing a transformation. A new family law is emerging on the horizon, a law that shows trust in citizens by allowing them to establish familial relationships that were unimaginable in the recent past, such as marriage between individuals of the same sex or having a child through the mediation of another woman, as well as to regulate these relationships largely on their own.

This change also involves the opening of family law to the international environment. A common background of values is a human achievement. Under the influence of these developments, family law sheds its 'national' character and reflects these shared cultural values in its provisions.

Catalytic in this regard is the role of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which, through the creative interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights, adapts its decisions to the new realities of European countries, trying to find the balance among cultural peculiarities.

Thus, sometimes due to preceding socioeconomic changes, sometimes due to technological advances, and always within the context of international cultural and institutional developments, particularly concerning human rights, we have transitioned from the conservative and mandatory family law of the past, which glorified institutions and disregarded individual desires, to a law that is more flexible and open, which reduces state intervention and treats individuals as equal and active subjects with significant capacity for self-determination and self-disposition.

This fact alone is a challenge for the processing of family law, with interpretative approaches that correspond to the philosophy of legislative changes and the reasons that dictated them. And we find these approaches now in the studies that are gathered and unfold in this book, one after the other, following the sequence of the successive transformations of family law.