INSTITUCIONES TUTELARES EN EL DERECHO CIVIL ITALIANO.

Abstract

The power to care for, supervise and administrate the assets of a minor is sometimes assigned to someone other than the persons naturally entitled to perform such functions, i.e., the minor's parents. We refer to all those situations where the parents are unable to fulfil the duties linked with the exercise of parental authority and rights, be it due to death, incapacity or other causes. When any of these contingencies become real, a "phase" is opened for subrogation in the activities of protecting the personal and property interests of the minor, through guardianship as envisaged in sections 343 et seqq. of the Italian Civil Code. From the conceptual point of view, guardianship thus results in a situation of power completely parallel to parental power, exercised with respect to the minor in all of the child's personal and property relationships. Current legislation envisages two types of guardianship, guardianship of minors and guardianship of persons subject to interdiction. The latter, in turn, can be split into judicial guardianship (over individuals considered to have been entirely deprived of their capacity to act due to serious mental illness recognised and declared by the court in interdiction proceedings) and legal guardianship (over individuals whose interdiction is the consequence of a criminal conviction).