780 articles
Negotiorum gestio
Negotiorum gestio, or unauthorised management of another's affairs, is a Roman-law source of non-contractual obligations in civil-law codes, where a benevolent gestor may recover expenses subject to limits, but the common law never adopted the doctrine.
Net lease
Net lease: commercial lease where the tenant pays base rent plus property expenses. Triple net (NNN), the most common form, passes taxes, insurance, and maintenance to the tenant, typically on 10-15 year single-tenant leases.
New Life Children's Refuge case
New Life Children's Refuge case: January 2010 arrest of ten American Baptists led by Laura Silsby at Malpasse, Haiti, trying to take 33 non-orphaned children to the Dominican Republic without documents; child trafficking charges, Silsby convicted of lesser charges.
New York divorce law
New York divorce law (Domestic Relations Law) requires residency and one of seven grounds; the seventh, no-fault irretrievable breakdown for six months, was added October 12, 2010, making New York the last state to adopt no-fault divorce.
Nikah halala
Nikah halala (tahlil) is the Islamic-law practice requiring a thrice-divorced woman to marry another man, consummate that marriage, and be divorced before remarrying her first husband; pre-arranged halala is condemned, and in India it remains undecided before a Constitution Bench.
NNN lease
NNN lease (triple net, net-net-net): commercial lease where the tenant pays base rent plus property taxes, insurance, and CAM, versus single (N) and double (NN) net leases; roof/structure allocation depends on lease wording.
No-contest clause
A no-contest clause (in terrorem clause) in a will or trust penalizes a beneficiary who challenges the document by forfeiting the gift. Most U.S. states enforce them subject to probable cause exceptions; Florida bars them by statute.
No-fault divorce
No-fault divorce ends a marriage on grounds of irretrievable breakdown without proving wrongdoing. California pioneered it in 1969; all 50 US states and, since April 2022, England and Wales now offer it.
Non-disclosure agreement
A non-disclosure agreement (NDA), or confidentiality agreement, is a contract keeping specified information confidential. Covers trade secrets, employment and settlement uses, the US Speak Out Act, UK Employment Rights Act 2025, and research on NDAs' labor-market effects.
Noncustodial parent
Noncustodial parent: the separated or divorced parent without primary physical custody, typically paying child support and exercising parenting time. Covers US custody terminology, federal support guidelines, and the rise of shared placement.
Nordic family law
Nordic family law is the family law of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, governing marriage, cohabitation, parental responsibility, and maintenance in the five states.
Notice period
Notice period: the advance warning a party must give before ending an employment or tenancy contract. UK statutory scales run from 1 week to 12 weeks; the US has none under at-will employment.
Novation
Novation (Latin novatio) is a contract-law mechanism that extinguishes an old obligation and replaces it with a new one, often substituting a new party who takes over both rights and duties while the departing party is released, unlike assignment or delegation.
Nuisance
Nuisance, in law: a tort and former common law crime covering unreasonable interference with land use and enjoyment (private nuisance) or public rights (public nuisance); key cases Sturges v Bridgman, Coventry v Lawrence; UK common law public nuisance abolished 2022.
Nuisance abatement and remedies
Nuisance abatement and remedies is the private-law treatment of nuisances: self-help abatement, injunctions including interim relief, and damages, with damages in lieu of an injunction since 1858.
Nuisance in English law
Nuisance in English law is a common law cause of action addressing undue interference with land use. It includes private nuisance, which is a strict liability tort.
Obligation
Obligation (law): a duty to do or not do something binding an obligor to an obligee, a civil law concept arising from contract, tort, quasi-contract, or statute, central to the law of obligations in Roman, civil, and common law systems.
Obligations ex delicto
An obligation ex delicto is a personal obligation imposed by operation of law, binding a wrongdoer to compensate or desist; it descends from Roman law and parallels common-law tort.
Offer and acceptance
Offer and acceptance is the contract-law analysis of agreement: a sufficiently definite offer showing intent to be bound, accepted by the offeree. Covers invitations to treat, the postal rule, revocation, objective versus subjective assent, and electronic contracting across common law, civil law, and Islamic law.
Office of Child Support Enforcement
Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), now Office of Child Support Services (OCSS): federal HHS/ACF agency overseeing the Title IV-D child support program created in 1975, which locates parents, establishes paternity and orders, and collects and distributes support.
Office of Children's Issues
Office of Children's Issues (CI), CA/OCS/CI: State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs office, created 1994, serving as U.S. Central Authority for the 1980 Hague Abduction Convention and the 1993 Hague Adoption Convention, handling abduction and adoption casework and prevention.
Open adoption
Open adoption is an arrangement in which biological parents have some contact with the child and the adoptive parents, now the most widespread form in the United States.
Owens v Owens
Owens v Owens [2018] UKSC 41 was a UK Supreme Court case in which Tini Owens was refused a divorce from Hugh Owens in 2018.
Ownership
Ownership, in law and philosophy, is the legal right to use, possess, and give away a thing, tangible or intangible; usually analyzed as a bundle of rights (possession, control, enjoyment, exclusion, disposition) with exclusion the key stick, contrasted across common law and civil law.
Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co.
Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., 248 N.Y. 339 (1928), New York Court of Appeals negligence case; Cardozo's 4-3 duty holding (foreseeable plaintiff) versus Andrews's dissent; fireworks, falling scales, and duty doctrine.
Parallel divorce proceedings and forum shopping
Parallel divorce proceedings are suits on the same divorce in courts of two states or countries, and forum shopping is choosing the forum whose rules favor a spouse.
Parent
Parent: a person legally recognized as holding parental rights and responsibilities toward a child, through gestation, genetics, marriage, intention, function, or adoption; also called legal parentage, distinct from parental responsibility.
Parental alienation syndrome
Parental alienation syndrome (PAS), a proposed child disorder defined by Richard Gardner in 1985 in custody disputes; excluded from DSM-5 and ICD-11 and rejected by major professional organizations as pseudoscience.
Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act
Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act (PKPA), 1980 federal law codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1738A, sets national jurisdiction standards for interstate child custody and requires full faith and credit to compliant sister-state custody orders.
Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property
Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (Convention de Paris), 1883 WIPO treaty on patents, trademarks, designs, and unfair competition; national treatment, 12/6-month priority right, 181 members, revised six times through Stockholm 1967.