Family Law on ExcellentWiki - Legal Encyclopedia

Chinese Family Law

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Sources of Chinese Family Law

Chinese family law is now codified in Book V of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China, which entered into force on 1 January 2021. Book V, comprising Articles 1041-1118, is entitled Marriage and Family (婚姻家庭编 — Hūnyīn Jiātíng Biān) and replaces the Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China of 1980 (as amended in 2001) and the Adoption Law of 1991. The incorporation of family law into the Civil Code represents the culmination of a decades-long codification project and marks a significant modernisation of the legal framework governing marriage and family relations.

English Family Law

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Sources of English Family Law

English family law is derived principally from statute, supplemented by the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court and by an extensive body of case law developed by the Family Division. The foundational statutes are the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, governing divorce and financial relief; the Children Act 1989, the principal legislation on parental responsibility, child arrangements, and local authority intervention; the Family Law Act 1996, which provides remedies for domestic violence and reformed divorce procedure; the Marriage Act 1949, which consolidated the law on the formalities of marriage; and the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, which opened marriage to same-sex couples. The Human Rights Act 1998, incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law, requires courts to interpret family legislation compatibly with Convention rights, including Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) and Article 12 (right to marry).

EU Family Law

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The Limited Competence of the European Union in Family Law

The European Union possesses no general competence to legislate in substantive family law. The regulation of marriage, divorce, parental responsibility, and the property relations of spouses remains within the exclusive competence of the member states. The Union’s role is limited to measures concerning judicial cooperation in civil matters having cross-border implications, authorised by Article 81 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Article 81(1) provides that the Union shall develop judicial cooperation in civil matters having cross-border implications, based on the principle of mutual recognition of judgments and of decisions in extrajudicial cases. Article 81(3) specifically provides that measures concerning family law with cross-border implications shall be adopted by the Council acting unanimously after consultation with the European Parliament.

French Family Law

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Sources of French Family Law

French family law (droit de la famille) is codified in Book I of the Civil Code (Code civil), which originally entered into force on 21 March 1804 under the title Des Personnes. The 1804 provisions, deeply influenced by Napoleonic patriarchal conceptions of the family, have been almost entirely replaced by successive reforms. The modern law is found principally in Articles 144-515 of the Civil Code, supplemented by specialised statutes and by the jurisprudence of the Court of Cassation (Cour de cassation).

German Family Law

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Constitutional Framework

German family law (Familienrecht) is grounded in Article 6 of the Grundgesetz (GG), the Basic Law of 1949, which places marriage and the family under the special protection of the state. Article 6(1) provides that the state shall protect and promote marriage and the family, imposing a positive obligation on the legislature to create conditions favourable to family life and a negative obligation to refrain from measures that harm the family. Article 6(2) recognises the natural right of parents to the care and upbringing of their children as both a right and a duty, with the state authorised to supervise its exercise. Article 6(5) mandates that children born outside marriage enjoy the same conditions for physical and intellectual development as children born within marriage, a provision that prompted the gradual dismantling of discriminatory legislation over successive decades.

Russian Family Law

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Sources of Russian Family Law

Russian family law is codified in the Family Code of the Russian Federation (Semeyniy Kodeks Rossiyskoy Federatsii), adopted by the State Duma on 8 December 1995 and signed into law on 29 December 1995, effective from 1 March 1996. The Family Code replaces the earlier Code on Marriage and the Family of the RSFSR of 1969, which itself succeeded the first Soviet family codes of 1918 and 1926. The Family Code has been substantially amended, most notably by the Federal Law No. 140-FZ of 3 June 2018, which introduced amendments to reaffirm traditional family values, and by subsequent amendments addressing the rights of children and the protection of the family.

US Family Law

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Constitutional Framework

Family law in the United States is principally a matter of state law, reflecting the federal structure of the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment’s reservation of powers not delegated to the federal government to the states. Each of the fifty states maintains its own family code, subject to constitutional constraints imposed by the Supreme Court of the United States, which has recognised certain fundamental rights touching upon marriage and family life under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.