Civil Law Institute for the Emancipation of Minors: Doctrinal Approaches to Understanding the Essence

Abstract

The article considers one of the problems of legal capacity of minors - emancipation. Emancipation is a complex civil law institution that has become a novelty for Ukrainian civil law, which needs to be comprehensively studied and improved. The formation of this institution is due to several objective reasons: the rapid growth of modern youth, both psychologically and physically; developed market relations that involve minors; mass media that promote the dissemination of information. Given the above, at the legislative level, this institution was introduced into the Civil Code of Ukraine. In foreign law, the institution of emancipation has become quite widespread and is seen as the declaration of minors fully capable of reaching adulthood, the actual receipt of the person the opportunity to acquire rights and responsibilities. The nature of different types of emancipation is determined both by the grounds for its occurrence and the scope of those rights and responsibilities that a minor may acquire. Emancipation has a sectoral nature and does not apply to the full capacity of an individual, ie an emancipated person is deprived of a set of certain rights to reach adulthood. In other words, emancipation can be complete or partial. The institute of emancipation has been studied in detail by modern scientists since its introduction, but is ambiguously evaluated by them. Some scholars believe that it contributes to the acquisition of economic independence by minors, the development of their abilities in employment, that giving minors a real opportunity to exercise civil rights in full - an area that claims special relevance in the implementation of state legal policy to protect the rights of minors, others - that such a procedure can be resorted to only in exceptional cases.