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NEW CHANGES IN MAINTENANCE RELATIONS AFTER THE REFORM OF PRIVATE LAW IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC – THE MAINTENANCE AFTER DEAD OF BREADWINNER

Bruncko, S.

Abstract

This contribution deals with the issue in the field of the maintenance as a part of the reform of private law in the Czech Republic, specifically with the implementation of the right of an authorized person to the provision after a death of an obligated person. The issue is examined by using systematic methods (the right to provision after the death of the breadwinner is viewed as a system composed of sub-elements), then by using the analytical method (analysis of the legislation and the knowledges in the literature), and the conclusion is compiled by synthesizing and generalization of the obtained results. The first part of contribution dealt with the general conditions for granting any right to provision in the Czech Republic and is found that the basic condition is the existing family law status between obligee and obligor which is terminated by the death of any of them. The new right for provision in a case of obligor´s death breaks this basic condition. Then contribution identifies a purpose of this new type of maintenance and finds that this change should help to reduce existential threats of the persons authorized to provision in a case of a sudden social event such as the death of a breadwinner. Furthermore it determines that this right to provision is not completely new in the Czech law history, because it was regulated by the Austrian Civil Code from 1811 and was in force until 1950. In the main part are analyzed the individual subtypes of this legal institution in the Act No. 89/2012 Coll. (Czech new Civil Code). Right to provision can be divided according to the groups of the obligees, who have the right to provision from the deceased´s estate: the children of the testator or their descendants (\S 1655 NCC), the spouses of the deceased (\S 1666, par. 1 and 2 NCC), the surviving unmarried pregnant women (\S 1666, par. 1 and 2 NCC), the parents of the deceased (\S 1668 NCC), the persons who lived with the deceased in the same household and to whom the deceased provided free maintenance (\S 1668 NCC). The paper specifies conditions for granting each sort of the right to provision, the extent of this provision, and eventually the time limitations of its performance. In conclusion of this contribution all the detected knowledge is summarized. It recognizes there are two kinds of the right to provision after the death of breadwinner in the new Czech Civil Code – the first kind of the provision is provided at a relatively large extent and the right to performance is then strictly time-limited to the period of weeks and the second kind of the provision is not time-limited and thus the provision is of lesser extent. The paper concludes that the analyzed change is found outside the narrow scope of family law. It caused that maintenance cannot be analyzed separately by a narrow prism of family law theory, but it is necessary to proceed to a broader perspective, which in turn is the only way to protect the rights of persons in the need of maintenance.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2014/B21/S5.091

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