Trends in the Development of Russian Family Law

The objectives of family law regulation include strengthening the institution of the family, preserving traditional family values, and ensuring the exercise and protection of the rights of family members. The legal protection of both public and private interests in the family sphere has led to a differentiation of regulatory concepts applicable to various types of family relations, resulting in an artificial fragmentation of the subject matter of family law. Legal norms governing the personal non-property relations of family members are undergoing a process of constitutionalization, which entails a reassessment of their content through the prism of constitutional values. At the same time, the regulation of property relations within the family reflects an increasing reliance on civil law principles aimed at ensuring the stability of civil circulation, a trend that reduces the degree of legal protection afforded to the property interests of family members. Given that the institutions of family, motherhood, fatherhood, and childhood are protected as constitutional values, such protection should be accompanied by the development at the legislative level of an effective system of family law guarantees safeguarding the property interests of family members. The unification of value-based approaches to the regulation of both personal nonproperty and property relations among family members—directed toward achieving the objectives of family law regulation—will not only preserve the integrity of the subject matter of family law as a distinct branch, but also promote the harmonization of private and public interests within the family law sphere.