Reading it all in one breath seems complex: community institute of co-responsibility. In everyday life it translates into the possibility of choosing certain kinship ties regardless of relationships that are of a loving nature. Translated: it is possible to legally formalize relationships with close friends, who become in effect “family”. This is what is foreseen in the draft law (scheduled for 2023) presented by the German government coalition which has all the declared objective of revolutionizing family law.
“The biggest reform of family law in recent decades”, the German minister of justice, the liberal Marco Buschmann, defined it. And he is in all respects. The modification envisaged by the coalition in fact provides for the recognition of elective kinship, therefore that not of blood.
“When the law recedes from rigidities to leave room for the protection of conscious and responsible emotional relationships in the various forms they may have, we are faced with a right without prejudice and open to the modernity of affections. In a country like ours that still foresees disparities, if we think, for example, of the ban on full adoption for same-sex couples, we certainly have a long way to go “, he comments. the lawyer Grazia Cesaro, President of the National Union of Juvenile Chambers.
The direction taken by the German government is to create a legal container, of rights and duties, which includes not only forms of union such as marriage but also communities of several people, who choose to take care of each other. “So friends become family,” he explains lawyer Alexander Schuster.
How will the German measure work?
“This is primarily a commitment made by the coalition that currently governs Germany to significantly influence German family law. There are different perspectives for reform, the one concerning adoptions is of two types: on the one hand there is the intention to favor recognition, that is, the creation of bonds between parents and children, not necessarily only through the institution of adoption which to date it already exists but with new rules that allow the recognition of a child even outside the context of marriage or in any case of a birth from a heterosexual couple. This is certainly a positive reform already present in all states except Italy. In this case, Germany adapts to all the western states of Europe, with the exception of Italy ”.
Is there something similar in Italy?
“In Italy we have the institution of adoption in special cases, better known as stepchild adoption, or the adoption of the partner’s child but it is not a full adoption. In Germany we have the will to provide for a reform of the right of custody that, even beyond the fact that a person is a parent or not, allows to share the care of a child, from a legal point of view, beyond two people . It is not a real adoption that is envisaged in German law, where full adoption is already foreseen even today by singles, cohabiting couples and married couples “.
The bill speaks of “elective kinship”.
“We want to introduce the institution of the community of co-responsibility, which wants to be a way to give a legal framework to those people, two or more, who live together in a sexual sentimental dimension but also people who live together as deep friends who help each other each other”.
Can you give us some examples?
“The situations that are presented are those of elderly people, whose families no longer exist or maybe they exist but their children are distant and cannot take care of their parents, of their closest relatives. The idea is to provide a flexible institution that allows adults who live together and care for each other to regulate their rights and duties. For example, the right to care decisions or inheritance rights “.
Does something similar already exist in other countries?
«The model that is recalled is inspired by the French pax which is effectively a civil solidarity pact which was subsequently interpreted as a sort of light marriage. In Italy we have coexistence pacts which are agreements that could be an embryo of what is a discipline of coexistence relationships that goes beyond sexual sentimental relationships “.
Other stories of Vanity Fair that may interest you:
-5 years of civil unions, Piergiorgio and Marco: “We” united “a minute later”
-Leo Gullotta: “That’s why I married my lifelong partner”
Source: Vanity Fair
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