Social and Values-Based Foundations of Functioning of Family-Law Agreements

The paper analyzes the social and value-based foundations that determine the implementation of family law contracts and their integration into social structures. The study has established that each contractual function possesses a social basis, which manifests in the following ways: 1) the contract is a natural and inevitable outcome of human interaction and information exchange; 2) it serves as a means to achieve compromise, thereby contributing to the ordering of relationships; 3) it implements the result of either a search for or an independent development of a legal framework by the parties; 4) it acts as a tool for harmonizing the interests of participants, defining and recording a common objective, consolidating their efforts to achieve that goal, as well as economizing various resources and ensuring security; 5) it constitutes a mechanism for delineating rights and obligations arising from the parties’ agreement; 6) it serves as a factor for ensuring and protecting the rights and legitimate interests of both the participants in contractual relationships and third parties; 7) it represents a resource for preventing and resolving conflicts. The author demonstrated that the value-based foundation for the functioning of family law contracts encompasses: 1) the sovereignty and autonomous will of the parties, as the contract represents a form of the manifestation of legal capacity, the indicators of which are freedom and responsibility; 2) the autonomy and independence of the family as a social institution; 3) the limitations of contractual freedom governed by considerations of public benefit, safety, and prevailing ethical norms; 4) the equal moral dignity of the parties, taking into account the factual differences between them and the potential dependency of one family member on another; 5) the acceptability of a retributive justice framework within the family law sphere, characterized by a humanistic orientation, manifesting in two aspects: a) the proportionality of punishment to transgressions with a possibility for mitigation in the interest of the family; b) the principle of responding with good to good, which fosters altruistic behaviors within family legal relationships; 6) justice as the achievement of a balance among the interests of individual family members; the consideration of family interests as a social group; the alignment of family interests with those of society and the state; and the assurance of harmony between individual (personal) values and family values.

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