The Gazette 1975

European Section

REFORM OF ITALIAN MATRIMONIAL LAW Italian men no longer reign supreme, or at least under the law they don't. One of the many reforms contained in the important new Diritto di Famiglia, a body of laws concerning the family which came into force late in September, is that the man is no longer officially designated head of the household.

Clearly Italian habits are not going to be changed overnight; the new laws are ahead of general feeling and practice in the country, particularly in the south. What matters is that the law is now there to appeal to. And experience with the divorce law suggests that Italians will use this right with moderation; it is unlikely that the Courts will be bombarded with appeals to decide where a family should settle or whether the children should go to a State or a Catholic school. The economic and fiscal effects of the new law are more difficult to assess. The clauses concerning prop- erty ownership, management and inheritance take effect automatically but their implications have not been thought out. The reform is the outcome of prolonged political and legal travail—for years the Christian Democrats sought to persuade the other parties to accept the new family law as an alternative to divorce —but in the end it was hurried through without much attention to detail or the imagination to foresee the difficulties of co-ordinating the new measures with existing laws and institutions. Now lawyers, magistrates and tax officers are panick- ing at the difficulty of coping with a mass of entirely new problems. There have been numerous meetings of the various experts about what to do. The verdict of a symposium of Appeal Court Judges at Grottaferrata this week was that the family law, as it stands, cannot be implemented. Its application requires the setting up of new machinery, courts and trained personnel, includ- ing social workers, to help the judges decide what is best for individual families. There are no signs, as yet, that these will be provided. So it is perhaps as well that most Italian families are so hard-pressed by straight- forward economic problems that they have little time for more sophisticated worries. Proceedings of the Court of Justice of the European Communities Week of 6 to 10 October (No. 16/75) At its meeting on 6 October 1975 the Court of Justice of the European Communities elected the following for a period of one year from 7 October 1975 : Judge R. Monaco to be President of the First Chamber. Judge H. Kutscher to be President of the Second Chamber. It elected Mr. H. Mayras to be First Advocate-General for the period ending on 7 October 1976. The Court is Composed as follows : President: Robert Lecourt. President of the First Chamber : Riccardo Monaco. President of the Second Chamber : Hans Kutscher. First Advocate-General: Henri Mayras. Judges: Andre Donner, Josse Mertens de Silmars, Aindrias O'Keeffe (First Chamber). Pierre Pesca- .271

Marriage in Italy is now legally a partnership be- tween equals. The husband no longer decides of right where the family is to live and the wife is not enjoined to 'follow' him—these words have been dropped from the civil marriage ceremony. Husband and wife must work things out between them and, if they cannot, they can take the matter to court. Both must contribute to the maintenance of the family according to their ability. All their property and earnings are to be held in com- mon unless they specifically choose to keep them sep- arate, in which case the decision must be registered with the marriage. The institution of the dowry is abolished. The father no longer enjoys the privilege of patria potestas over the children; both parents now have equal rights in all decisions concerning their children's welfare and education. Both are enjoined to consider the specific needs and inclination of each individual child; should they disagree radically they may go to the courts. The most revolutionary aspect of the new law is the establishment of absolute equality between legitimate and illegitimate offspring. All children are to share equally in the inheritance from their common parent. Under the old law, a married man with children could not legally admit to the parenthood of a child born to a woman who was not his wife. Now men and women are legally entitled to recognise children born outside marriage. This is a startling innovation for Italy. It finally sweeps away a cruel injustice, already partly eliminated by the divorce law, which made it impos- sble for a married woman separated from her husband to recognise or give her name to a child born to her of another man. The minimum age for marriage is raised to 18, this being now the age at which Italians get the vote and cease to be minors. In special cases a dispensation can be obtained from the courts to marry younger, but never under 16. This new age limit contrasts with Canon Law which sets the minimum at 14 for boys and 12 for girls. The women's magazines are advising young people who have conceived a child to get married in church and then see if the civil authorities have the nerve to refuse registration. Obviously this is one point which will have to be cleared up when negotiations at last get started for the revision of the 1929 Concordat between the Italian government and the Holy See. There are other, lesser, changes. A married woman keeps her maiden name, adding her husband's to it, a practice already followed in Italy for the signature of cheques and legal documents. An Italian woman may now keep her nationality when she marries a foreigner. A foreign woman who marries an Italian must bring her property outside Italy into the marriage pool unless the couple opt for separate property.