Legal Regulation of Family Relations Involving Foreigners in the Russian Federation: Results and Prospects

Abstract

The article analyses the results of the regulation of family relations involving foreign citizens and persons without citizenship in Russia. There is some imperfection of the rules of Section VII of the Family Code of the Russian Federation, their non-conformity to modern needs in the legal regulation of family relations involving foreigners. It is noted that there are some gaps that require correction. The author draws attention to new types of marital and family relations, as well as the significant complication of property and personal non-property relations of family members, and highlights the importance of the problems of unification of family law, as well as account of new developments on choice of applicable law and the application of foreign law. The article formulates conflict-of-laws rules that would establish an effective system of legal regulation of family relations involving foreigners. In particular, it is proposed to amend and supplement Art. 161,163 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation, consolidate the conflict-of-laws rules, identifying the law to be applied to the surrogacy agreement.