Definition of Civil Code

At the request ofRighta Code it's a set of laws or regulations on a certain and specific subject. Therefore, the Civil Code, which is the one that will occupy us next, is the ordered systematized and unitary set of norms on the private right.

Code that regulates relationships between people. It intervenes in matters of family, patrimony, contracts, marriage ...

Especially, the Civil Code, deals with regulate civil relations through the different norms that it proposes in its sheets, whether they are natural, legal, private or public persons.

The law is divided into various branches, including the civil law, highly relevant, since it is up to regulate the private activity of individuals, whether physical or legal.

It basically contains a series of norms and provisions that regulate relationships between individuals, while it focuses especially on institutions so important to societies such as the family, the people and the assets of those people.

Civil law is then considered as the main branch of private law and so its norms and Institutions are committed to the code that concerns us, regulating the rights and obligations between people private.

Damage compensation

The objective of civil law is to compensate that individual who suffers damage, that is, it will ensure that the person who suffered damage can, through the courts, achieve a compensation that he restores that damage caused and that allows him to reestablish his situation in the way that it was previously to the damage.

While its main difference with criminal law is that the latter aims to find a criminal punishment, prison for example, for the one who executed a damage, while civil law points to a monetary recomposition for that damage received.

Within civil law are included all subjects of law, inherent to the responsibility civil, family law, contracts, inheritance, among others.
So it is that civil law will understand in marriages, in the sale of a property, in hereditary successions, divorces, parental authority, among other issues.

For example, divorce, which implies the dissolution of the marriage, is contemplated and regulated by the civil code as well as the marriage itself.
Then, when the case is that the spouses, both, or one of them, want to end that bond, they must resort to the law to raise this situation and start the due process that will put an end to the marriage in question.

We must say by the way, that when the divorce claim is initiated, in addition to dissolving the union, civil law must understand the division of the common heritage of the couple, and Likewise, if there are children in common, minors, the legal definition of with whom the children will live must be given effect and a regime of visits must be given to the parent that corresponds.

History and evolution of the civil code

It was just in the XIX century that a good part of the countries belonging to Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa and Oceania promulgated their respective civil codes in order to regulate the civil relations of their citizens.

However, a time before, more precisely in the year 1756 would be the Codex Maximilianeus Bavaricus Civilis the first body of laws to which was given the name of Civil Code.

The first Civil Code recognized as modern and that in some way closely resembles the Civil Codes that currently govern us was the Code Civil promulgated by Napoleon Bonaparte at the beginning of the century XIX (1804). What Napoleon did by giving entity to the Civil Code was to bring together in the same and only legal body the various branches of the tradition French legal system, thus making the legal structure proposed by the Old Regime.

The Civil Code, later, would become the inspiration and the model followed by many of the civil codes that Today they govern the civil relations of the citizens of the whole world, Europeans, Americans, Ibero-Americans, among others.

Although it is a fact that the Civil Code of one country will present differences with respect to that of another, for the most part, this code deals with the law of people, obligations, such is the case of contracts, also things, such as property, inheritance law and the right of family.
And regarding their structuring we find that they also tend to respect the following model people (personam), things (res), that is, things that are bodily and things that are not, successions and obligations, and actions (actiones) the common of the two parts.

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