What is Family Law?

What Does Family right Mean

The right of family or family law is the branch of the civil law that studies the rules and regulations regarding personal relationships and heritage of the whole household . 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 the family patrimony , to the types of marital union and the rights enshrined by it.

In many respects, family law has to do with duties and obligations that are incoercible , that is, that cannot be forced by the State , and its fulfillment lies in ethics and custom . This branch of law is often handled on that fine line between the guidelines of public order and family relations .

It can serve you: Private law

Marriage and marital relations

Marriage and filiation are the pillars of family law, since they are the legal concepts available to the State to regulate the formation of a family. Thus, the first family unit is constituted by the spouses, whether or not they have descendants .

In fact, there may be a family without it, or there may be offspring outside of 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 should be remembered, biology and religion intervene very little , since marriage and its legal definitions are clearly a human, subjective and cultural (if not ideological) concept. Marriage is considered a contract like any other defended by law according to specific regulations and regulations.

More in: Marriage

Parental-family relationships

In a similar way, family law deals with filiation, which is the legal formalization of the offspring, that is, the legal and legal bond between parents and descendants. This link carries rights and duties, such as:

• Parental authority. That is, the parental authority over the rights, assets and the destiny of their descendants, until the moment when they themselves reach the age of majority and are legally capable of representing themselves.
• Mandatory maintenance. That assigns parents (especially in the event of divorce) the task of financially supporting their descendants until they are of legal working age.
• The identity familiar. That grants the surname and full social and legal recognition to the descendants of a person , whether biological or not, in accordance with legal and juridical norms that protect the identity of future generations.
• The inheritance . That it 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 the assets are inherited, but also the debts and obligations.

Divorce and separations

Just as the family is constituted by the decision and the union of the spouses, it can also be separated according to 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 the rights of anyone. It tries to protect especially the descendants, since the ties of filiation survive the family disintegration : the parents remain 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 the law so that a child without a family can be incorporated into a new one , even if biologically it is not the child of the couple. This process is usually reserved for de facto families, that is, for couples who wish to take over the guardianship of a needy minor.

Adoption is usually a complex process, in which the State is concerned with the rights of the minor, verifying the good faith and the economic, psychological and social solvency of the adoptive home. If the process is finalized, the family receives the parental authority of the minor from the State , from then on becoming his descendant legally and formally.