ESTATUTO JURÍDICO DEL MENOR EN EL DERECHO CIVIL ITALIANO.

Abstract

The legislative reality of recent years in Italy forces us to admit that the discipline of family law is destined to undergo constant renovations and updates in order to keep up with the mutations that the country's society is likewise experiencing. The institutional picture of the family has been abandoned, and there is growing recognition of individual rights. These reasons are steering the transformations of family law. Some of these transformations, of course, affect minors in a big way. Minors may be regarded as the protagonists of a specific part of family law, in their capacity as children in institutions such as filiation, parental authority and adoption, and in their capacity as individuals who deserve to be protected in a way that is suited to their particular circumstances, through institutions such as guardianship, whether guardianship is provided through a family or through public institutions. These institutions, however, require us to face beforehand a series of questions that the traditional system used to classify as belonging to the general part of civil law. These questions actually constitute what we have termed «the legal status of the minor». We refer to the concept of the minor, the attention due to the minor's legal capacity and capacity to act, the special capacity of the emancipated minor and the situation of incapacitation of the minor.