We explain what family law is and how it regulates marital and parental-family relationships. Also, divorce and adoption.
What is family law?
Family law or family law is the branch of civil law that studies the rules and regulations that concern the personal and property relationships of every family unit. In other words, it is the law applied to the affairs and interests of the family, understood as the nucleus of society.
Family law has as its axis the family, marriage and filiation, which are central institutions and processes in the composition of modern societies. This ranges from the legal definition of the family and what are the forms of constitution of family assets, to the types of marriage union and the rights enshrined by it.
In many respects, family law has to do with duties and obligations that are incoercible that is, they cannot be forced by the State, and their compliance lies in ethics and custom. This branch of law is often handled on that fine line between the guidelines of public order and family relationships.
Marriage and marital relations
Marriage and filiation are the pillars of family law, given that they are the legal concepts available to the State to regulate the formation of a family. So, The first family unit is made up of the spouses, whether or not they have offspring.
In fact, there can be a family without it, or there can be offspring outside the constitution of a family, so that it is the conjugal union (marriage, civil union, concubinage or any other) that gives rise to families.
Similarly, family law contemplates what kind of conjugal unions are possible and recognizable before the law: marriage, cohabitation, equal marriage or in some cases civil union, depending on the legislation of each country and especially its cultural background.
In this, it is worth remembering, biology and religion intervene very little, since marriage and its legal definitions are clearly a human, subjective concept of cultural (if not ideological) origin. Marriage is considered a contract like any other defended by law according to specific regulations and regulations.
Parent-family relationships
In a similar way, family law deals with filiation, which is the legal formalization of offspring, that is, the legal and juridical link between parents and descendants. This link entails rights and duties, such as:
- Parental authority. That is, paternal authority over the rights, assets and destiny of their descendants, until such time as they themselves reach the age of majority and are legally capable of representing themselves.
- Mandatory maintenance. Which assigns parents (especially in the event of divorce) the task of financially supporting their descendants until they are of legal working age.
- Family identity. That grants the surname and full social and legal recognition to a person's descendants, whether biological or not, in accordance with legal and legal norms that protect the identity of future generations.
- The inheritance. That transmits the assets and capital of the deceased parents to their descendants in the event that there are no wills that contradict it. In many cases, not only assets are inherited, but also debts and obligations.
Divorce and separations
Just as the family is constituted by the decision and union of the spouses, it can also be separated in accordance with legal provisions that regulate the distribution of what was, until then, a conjugal economic community.
In this way, guidelines or methods of mediation and negotiation are established to guarantee that the dissolution of the couple does not violate anyone's rights. An attempt is made to especially protect the descendants, since filiation ties survive family disintegration: Parents are still parents even if they are no longer a couple.
Adoption and guardianship
Apart from the biological way to have offspring, Adoption is a mechanism enshrined in law so that a child without a family can be incorporated into a new family although biologically he is not the couple's child. This process is usually reserved for de facto families, that is, for couples, who wish to assume guardianship of a minor in need.
Adoption is usually a complex process, in which the State is concerned about the rights of the minor, verifying the good faith and economic, psychological and social solvency of the adoptive home. If the process is completed, The family receives custody of the minor from the State becoming his legal and formal descendant from then on.
Continue with: Blended Family
References
- “Family law” on Wikipedia.
- “Family Law” in Legal Encyclopedia.
- “Family Law” in Wolters Kluwer Legal Guides.
- “Family Law” in Legal Dictionary.
