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European Section
REFORM OF ITALIAN MATRIMONIAL LAW
Italian men no longer reign supreme, or at least under
the law they don't. One of the many reforms contained
in the important new
Diritto di Famiglia,
a body of
laws concerning the family which came into force late
in September, is that the man is no longer officially
designated head of the household.
Marriage in Italy is now legally a partnership be-
tween equals. The husband no longer decides of right
where the family is to live and the wife is not enjoined
to 'follow' him—these words have been dropped from
the civil marriage ceremony. Husband and wife must
work things out between them and, if they cannot, they
can take the matter to court. Both must contribute to
the maintenance of the family according to their ability.
All their property and earnings are to be held in com-
mon unless they specifically choose to keep them sep-
arate, in which case the decision must be registered
with the marriage. The institution of the dowry is
abolished. The father no longer enjoys the privilege of
patria potestas
over the children; both parents now have
equal rights in all decisions concerning their children's
welfare and education. Both are enjoined to consider
the specific needs and inclination of each individual
child; should they disagree radically they may go to the
courts.
The most revolutionary aspect of the new law is the
establishment of absolute equality between legitimate
and illegitimate offspring. All children are to share
equally in the inheritance from their common parent.
Under the old law, a married man with children could
not legally admit to the parenthood of a child born to
a woman who was not his wife. Now men and women
are legally entitled to recognise children born outside
marriage. This is a startling innovation for Italy. It
finally sweeps away a cruel injustice, already partly
eliminated by the divorce law, which made it impos-
sble for a married woman separated from her husband
to recognise or give her name to a child born to her of
another man.
The minimum age for marriage is raised to 18, this
being now the age at which Italians get the vote and
cease to be minors. In special cases a dispensation can
be obtained from the courts to marry younger, but
never under 16. This new age limit contrasts with Canon
Law which sets the minimum at 14 for boys and 12 for
girls. The women's magazines are advising young people
who have conceived a child to get married in church
and then see if the civil authorities have the nerve to
refuse registration. Obviously this is one point which
will have to be cleared up when negotiations at last
get started for the revision of the 1929 Concordat
between the Italian government and the Holy See.
There are other, lesser, changes. A married woman
keeps her maiden name, adding her husband's to it, a
practice already followed in Italy for the signature of
cheques and legal documents. An Italian woman may
now keep her nationality when she marries a foreigner.
A foreign woman who marries an Italian must bring
her property outside Italy into the marriage pool
unless the couple opt for separate property.
Clearly Italian habits are not going to be changed
overnight; the new laws are ahead of general feeling
and practice in the country, particularly in the south.
What matters is that the law is now there to appeal to.
And experience with the divorce law suggests that
Italians will use this right with moderation; it is unlikely
that the Courts will be bombarded with appeals to
decide where a family should settle or whether the
children should go to a State or a Catholic school.
The economic and fiscal effects of the new law are
more difficult to assess. The clauses concerning prop-
erty ownership, management and inheritance take effect
automatically but their implications have not been
thought out. The reform is the outcome of prolonged
political and legal travail—for years the Christian
Democrats sought to persuade the other parties to
accept the new family law as an alternative to divorce
—but in the end it was hurried through without much
attention to detail or the imagination to foresee the
difficulties of co-ordinating the new measures with
existing laws and institutions.
Now lawyers, magistrates and tax officers are panick-
ing at the difficulty of coping with a mass of entirely
new problems. There have been numerous meetings of
the various experts about what to do. The verdict of a
symposium of Appeal Court Judges at Grottaferrata
this week was that the family law, as it stands, cannot
be implemented. Its application requires the setting up
of new machinery, courts and trained personnel, includ-
ing social workers, to help the judges decide what is
best for individual families. There are no signs, as yet,
that these will be provided. So it is perhaps as well that
most Italian families are so hard-pressed by straight-
forward economic problems that they have little time
for more sophisticated worries.
Proceedings of the Court of
Justice of the European
Communities
Week
of
6 to 10 October (No. 16/75)
At its meeting on 6 October 1975 the Court of Justice
of the European Communities elected the following for
a period of one year from 7 October 1975 :
Judge R. Monaco to be President of the First Chamber.
Judge H. Kutscher to be President of the Second
Chamber.
It elected Mr. H. Mayras to be First Advocate-General
for the period ending on 7 October 1976.
The Court is Composed as follows :
President: Robert Lecourt.
President of the First Chamber : Riccardo Monaco.
President of the Second Chamber : Hans Kutscher.
First Advocate-General: Henri Mayras.
Judges: Andre Donner, Josse Mertens de Silmars,
Aindrias O'Keeffe (First Chamber). Pierre Pesca-
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