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Research 

Research currently focuses on: national and international law of descent; legal consequences of medically assisted reproduction; adoptive, step, and foster children; children’s rights; joint custody; nonbinary gender; national and international law of names; international divorce law; treatment of cross-border surrogate motherhood; dealing with foreign private divorces; and recognition of foreign court decisions and civil status registrations.

Professor Helms is coeditor for Zeitschrift für das gesamte Familienrecht (FamRZ) [Journal of Comprehensive Family Law] and editorial director for Das Standesamt (StAZ) [Journal of Vital Records Registrars]. For the 71st German Jurists’ Conference in Essen in 2016, he wrote the expert opinion “Rechtliche, biologische und soziale Elternschaft – Herausforderungen durch neue Familienformen” [Legal, biological, and social parenthood: challenges posed by new forms of families]. Interview with Prof. Dr. Tobias Helms on the television show Nano on cable channel 3Sat from 26 September 2019 about the need to reform the law of descent.

The DFG [German Research Foundation] project titled “The Significance of the Shared-Custody Model for Child Wellbeing after Parental Separation or Divorce” has been running since early 2018 in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Anja Steinbach (Chair of Sociology at the University of Essen-Duisburg). You can find detailed information on the project website about the background, process and project team.