On July 6, 2019, The Seminar on the Marriage, Family and Inheritance part in Civil Code and the Fourth Seminar on "Defense for Civil Law" were held in Zhejiang University Zhijiang Campus. Scholars from Zhejiang University, Peking University, Tsinghua University and other university and educational institutes gathered together to have discussions on issues related to the Marriage, Family, and Inheritance part in Civil Code.
Prof. Zhang Gu, the host of this seminar, expressed warm welcome to participants and attendees. He reviewed the former three seminars on “Defense for Civil Law” and illustrated the theme of the seminar, trying to seek consensus on Identity Law in Civil Code.
Associate Prof. Zhu Hu from Law School of Renmin University of China and Associate Prof. Long Jun from Tsinghua University Law School illustrated the legislative situation and the main changes of the draft between the first one and the second one. Associate Prof. Zhu Hu stated that compared to the first draft, the second one had made a large-scale revision on the aspects of spouse joint debt, confirmation of parent-child relationship, and visitation right, as well as the guardianship. As for the Inheritance part, there were changes on the validity and process of forgiveness, the concept of parent-child, and the validity of non-curative will, as well as the rights and obligations of village committees on managing the inheritance. Afterwards Associate Prof. Long Jun pointed out three keys questions that should be discussed in depth.
The first question was about the effectiveness of the marriage law behavior, the severability, invalidity, revocability, and other fields in the existing provisions of regulations. Also Whether or not there is a need to introduce and clarify the general provisions of the civil law concerning the marriage.
The second question was about the regulation of matrimonial property system. There were many discussions on the specific expression of legal property system in legislation, and several different options were discussed by the participants.
The third is the provision of joint debt between husband and wife. The participants discussed about whether the current provision can solve the problem in the long run, and whether a better solution needs to be found. In the inheritance part, the issue was focused on the succession system.
In the final session of the seminar all experts combining their research experience and judicial practice, had dynamic discussion covering many issues of the Marriage and Family, such as general provisions, marriage, family regulation, divorce. In detailed they discussed about definition of fundamental concept involved in marriage, family and inheritance such as close relatives, family members, marriage severability determination and solutions, heritage distribution sequence.
Finally Professor Zhang Gu made a summary of the conference and the seminar ended in anticipation of the coming conference on “Defense for Civil Law”.
Ms. Cai Lixuan and,
Mr. HA Charles
Zhejiang University Guanghua Law School
July 21, 2019
