The Legal Regime of Property of De Facto Spouses

Abstract

The applicable laws do not regulate the legal regime of property relations between de facto spouses notwithstanding the growing number of such forms of family structure. The judicial practice follows the logic of regulations and, inter alia, ignores the pressing need to solve the issues related to property protection of parties to such union. Multiple appeals to courts falling within the indicated dispute categories are solved in an extremely formal manner when claimants in need of protection are left without it because of the absence of due regulation. The motive for writing the article was a recent ruling of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, when the court arrived at a bold conclusion extremely dangerous for further use on the a priori gratuitous character of reciprocal grants of de facto spouses. The author provides logical grounds to prove inconsistency of the conclusions proposed by the supreme judicial authority, insists on the need for acknowledgment of the opportunity to change the property regime at the establishment of a de facto marriage relation and application to such persons of the legal provisions dedicated to a simple partnership agreement for legal justification of the origination of the regime of joint shared ownership in respect of property acquired by de facto spouses. It is important to differentiate family law problems that may arise in case of formalization of the cohabitation institution, indifferent civil law spheres and the objective need to create an efficient mechanism of protection of property rights of parties to such union.