Civil Death

Concept

The civil death is the “suspension of any participation in the civil laws” '. It consists of the extinction legally marked, for a nobody of his legal Personality, which carries a general deprivation of the rights. The person is famous not to exist more, although it is alive physically. It is thus about a legal Fiction.
Civil death could be a additional sorrow for the people condemned to custodial sentences with perpetuity or in authority of a capital execution.
Civil death could also be a legal Fait for the people entered the Clergé, justified by their disengagement in the laic company .
Civil death is not used any more nowadays, because it is considered that it undermines the human dignity. However, the loss of the legal personality can still exist in positive Droit, letting think of a very attenuated survival of this civil death.

History

In Greek Right

A citizen could be condemned to the civil capital punishment.

In Roman law

The Roman law was the first to invent the concept of legal Personality, idea independent of the human person. Civil death was envisaged by the Romans only if one citizen were maintained in captivity by the enemies. The medieval novelists added the case of the entry in religion, the imprisonment in a Léproserie, and certain penal judgments.

In Old right and modern right

Until the middle of the XIXe century, a category of quite alive individuals physiologically were regarded as " died for the monde" and treaties juridically like such. It acted:

of condemned to died by Contumacious or in authority of execution,
of condemned to the forced labors with Perpetuity,
of the deportees.

The people thus condemned famous had died taking into consideration right.

The consequences of civil death were taken again by article 25 of the Code Napoleon. The struck individual of civil death was regarded as having lost his legal Personality. Its Succession was immediately opened, its well S were removed to him to be allotted to his/her children at once. Moreover its possible former will, though established time of its Legal capacity, was cancelled, so that it was always a succession Intestate which opened. Condemned the famous one having died, its Mariage was dissolved. Its spouse, become free could remarier with another person. If the spouse continued to live with civilian death, there was cohabitation and either marriage and the children who could be born in the future were illegitimate.

Although article 25 of the Civil code French did not speak about it, it dead civilian lost his political and civic rights. He could be neither voter any more, neither candidate, neither civil servant, neither sworn, neither expert, nor pilot.

Civilian death lost also certain civil laws: right to marry, right to act as justice, right to recognize his/her natural children, parental rights, right to be a tutor, right to make or receive liberalities, the right to collect a succession.

Civilian death however preserved the right to sign from the contracts subject to payment, which made it possible to earn money while working, to buy, sell, become creditor or debtor. Only, when it had left to a lawsuit, it could plead only via a special Curateur which was named him by the court and when it died of natural death, the goods which it had been able to acquire since his civil death returned to the State by Droit of déshérence.

The principle of civil death was criticized. One especially reproached him for injuring the innocent ones (the woman and children of the culprit), and, by opening his succession immediately, for making benefit his family from a Crime. Moreover, while seizing the goods that condemned left with its Décès, the State practiced a true spoliation of the heirs.

Abolition of civil death at the XIXe century

the Belgium, subjected to the Napoleon Code, was the first to abolish civil death in 1831.

In France, the Loi of the June 8th 1850 removed it only for the condemned political ones to the Déportation. The law of the May 31st 1854 abolishes it definitively.

Abolition of civil death at the XXe century

It was abolished in 1906 with the Quebec.

It was abolished in 1943 with the Chile.

A form of survival of civil death?

The supervision and the loss of the right policies

The absence

In the current system, the declaratory judgment of absence pronounces the shape of civil death of a person who can be physically alive. The judgment of absence (10 years after the discovery of the absence) then involves the transmission of the inheritance to the heirs and authorizes the spouse with remarier.

However, the positive Droit envisaged a reversibility: it was necessary to envisage the possibility of a return of absent, pronounced then by the Court of Bankruptcy. The renewed attribution of a legal personality to that which returned is very precisely called by the common lawyers a Résurrection . At the conclusion of this judgment, the absent income enjoys again its full and whole legal personality.

If the individual died before the declaratory judgment of absence, it is on the contrary an opposite situation which prevails: its legal personality survives its terrestrial existence until the date of the judgment.

Shells of the legislator

In France, if the concept of civil death disappeared, it nevertheless remains quoted in certain articles in force of the Civil code, in their original drafting of 1804, where civil death still existed.

For example, article 617 of the Civil code French, in its drafting always into force, taken today in its first two subparagraphs, lays out:

“the Usufruit dies out:

“By natural death and civil death of the usufructuary; ”

Differently, but in the same spirit, it should have been waited on July 1st, 2002 so that article 718 of the Civil code, is repealed, while at the same time it laid out:

“the Succession S open by natural death and civil death . ”

These provisions can be regarded as implicitly repealed: it is about shells which made place of no formal abrogation on behalf of the legislator, but who referent more with any legal concept in positive Droit.

Various information

Condemned famous to civil death

Jacques Edouard Stuart (1688 - 1766), was taken along in Exil to the French court of Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer when his/her father was driven out capacity by the Second Revolution of England. In 1701, with died of his/her father, Louis XIV proclaimed it official successor of the throne of England. But the English opinion remained opposite in Jacques Edouard because of his catholic faith. The English Parliament thus voted the Attestation of inheritance, then a decree of confiscation of the goods and civil death against him.
Jules de Polignac, Prime Minister at the time of the revolution of 1830, was condemned to the prison with perpetuity and civil death.

Quotations of lawyers

“ the people who are the object of our laws is those which enjoy the civil life. The civil life is other thing only the participation of a person in the rights of the civil society. Civil death is the cutting off of this company, and the deprivation of these rights. ” - Robert-Joseph Pothier

See too

Random links: