Two approaches have dominated the way elder abuse is explained and defined: the intrapersonal and interpersonal approaches. More recently, an environmental approach is emerging that takes into account contextual factors. This approach also meets the perspectives of older individuals themselves better. They describe how they feel abused or neglected by the system – by the way in which we organize our institutions. Institutions mirror our society and are shaped in interaction with societal norms and expectations. This influences the way in which older individuals are looked upon, are being approached, and how they see themselves within these institutions. This system abuse is currently beyond the scope of the most commonly used definitions and approaches of elder abuse. However, it is important to acknowledge system abuse, because it makes explicit how older individuals feel abused by and within our institutions. The distress and harm that they experience can therewith be acknowledged and prevented.

This article gives a compact overview of developments in national and European law regarding same-sex partners. Over the last decades, new legal family formats (such as registered partnership and de facto union) have been made available in a growing number of countries. The number of countries that have opened up marriage to same-sex couples is also growing. Authors of comparative family law have proposed various classifications of the new legal family formats. Meanwhile, an increasing number of EU laws now acknowledge non-marital partners. The European Courts have been asked several times to rule on controversial differentiations between different legal family formats or between same-sex and different-sex partners. In the case law of the European Court of Human Rights one can find examples of affirmative eloquence which suggest that more steps towards full legal recognition of same-sex families could be expected.