The Legal Relevance of Post‑Mortem Circumstances in Legal Relations Involving Family Elements

The paper is devoted to the study of the essence and legal significance of post mortem facts for the emergence, change and termination of legal relations of a private legal nature (primarily family law and civil law). The author analyzes doctrinal approaches to this problem, relevant draft laws (regulating the legal protection of the rights and interests of spouses in special circumstances), the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, courts of general jurisdiction related to issues of establishing the fact of paternity of a child born out of wedlock; assumptions (prevention) of fixing parenthood based on the use of assisted reproductive technologies (including surrogacy) with the genetic material of the deceased man; the fact of being dependent as the basis of inheritance of the «surviving spouse». The study proposes options for a fairer and more reasonable legal construction of the legal consequences of this group of facts and conditions both within the framework of the current family and civil legislation, and for situations outside the impact of the law: adjusting the presumption of paternity (taking into account circumstances that obviously exclude it); clarification of regulatory provisions on unilateral recognition of paternity and the rules on its early declaration, on establishing the fact of paternity of a deceased person instead of recommendations of the highest court; prohibiting the use of the genetic material of the deceased man, unless there was an explicit will in the relevant lifetime agreement; expanding the regulatory framework for recognizing the legal consequences of post mortem actual marital relations.

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