The Limits of Individual Regulation of Marital Relations based on a Marriage Contract

The paper examines the qualifying features and elements of a marriage contract under the provisions of the Civil and Family Codes of the Russian Federation, as well as the specifics of legal regulation of relations arising in connection with its conclusion. The author critically investigates limitations of freedom of the marriage contract provided for by the mandatory norms of the Family Code of the Russian Federation and the definition of the marriage contract. The author justifies admissibility of determining the shares in the right to the common property of spouses or specific property belonging to them in the event of death or bankruptcy of one or both spouses. At the same time, special attention is paid to incompatibility of the marriage contract with involuntary creditors and creditors to whom its terms were not disclosed, as well as ex post control of the fairness of the terms of the marriage contract. According to the author, the regulatory potential of a marriage contract should not be limited mainly to the disposal of the spouses’ property belonging to them. The author brings up for discussion the possibility of using a marriage contract not only as an administrative, but also as an obligatory transaction, through which it is possible to regulate all property and personal non-property relations arising between spouses, including spouses with common children, in connection with marriage, in marriage and in the event of its termination. The paper highlights that a marriage contract may contain the terms of a corporate agreement defining the procedure for one of the spouses to exercise corporate rights. The author comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to develop dispositive (discretionary) principles regulating relations arising from a marriage contract and defining it as an agreement to family creation and functioning as a non-subjective entity, which would allow considering a marriage contract as a kind of a simple partnership agreement.

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