Family law is an area of the law that deals with family-related issues and domestic relations including the nature of marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships; issues arising during marriage, including spousal abuse, legitimacy, adoption, surrogacy, child abuse, and child abduction; the termination of the relationship and ancillary matters including divorce, annulment, property settlements, alimony, and parental responsibility orders (in the United States, child custody and visitation, child support and alimony awards).
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. The area borders Needham, Massachusetts to the south/southwest, Wellesley, Massachusetts to the west, the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston to the extreme southeast, and the Newton villages of Waban, Newton Highlands and Newton Center to the north and east. The village is served partially by Eliot "T" station, part of the Green Line "D" Branch of the MBTA, with rapid light rail service inbound into downtown Boston and outbound to Riverside. Major roads that serve the village are Route 128, and Route 9 (Boylston Street), which provides a direct, 6 mile commute into downtown Boston. Newton Upper Falls is home to the Hemlock Gorge and Echo Bridge, a large aqueduct turned pedestrian walkway over the Charles River. It is said to be the only village that has retained its original name from when the area was founded in the 1600s. It has over 150 homes on the historic register despite its small area. Sullivan Avenue, an unpaved private road in Newton Upper Falls is the last remaining portion of the ancient highway connecting Boston and Cambridge with Newton and points west in the 1600s (back then it was called Cambridge Village). Also on Sullivan Avenue is a famous pothole; not the kind you avoid with your car, but a geological anomaly where a boulder that was originally pushed down the cliff by a now extinct waterfall got caught and became round. The boulder spun around in its place carving a shaft over thousands of years. Since then half the shaft collapsed and now all that can be seen is half of a cylindrical shaft through the cliff at the corner of Sullivan and Elliot Streets.