Although it is not a new phenomenon, since traditionally there have been second and successive marriages, especially in the case of widows and widowers, in recent times social reality increasingly presents the existence of reconstituted families, in which people with children make new ties, marital or not, with other people, which can be complicated in the case of cross-border families. In this workshop, we aimed to address the main issues arising in family and inheritance relationships between the previous children of one of the parents and the other parent in these cross-border families.

Speakers:

• Elena Bargelli (SIG Co-Chair)
• Francisco Javier Jiménez (SIG Co-Chair)
• Ilaria Pretelli (SIG Co-Chair)
• Dorota Miler (Academic Assistant, Law Faculty of the University of Augsburg)
• Margot Musson (Lecturer-Researcher, Jean Moulin Lyon III University)
• Christiana Fountoulakis (Full Professor of Civil Law, University of Fribourg)

The European Law Institute's Family and Successions Law Special Interest Group (SIG) hosted a panel on the topic ‘Stepchildren in Comparative and Private International Law’. The panel, that was chaired by Francisco Jimenez Munoz as SIG's co-chair, shed a light on stepchildren rights in European and non-European jurisdictions in both domestic and cross border situations. Despite receiving little attention in the comparative legal literature, defining stepchildren status and rights has a great social relevance given the high rate of divorces and family recompositions around the world. 

A first communication, by Margot Musson, offered a comparative overview of the different ways in which the children-stepparents relationship is recognised in European and non-European legal systems.  Dorota Miler, after adopting a clear-cut definition of stepchildren as those born of a parent married to a person other than their biological parent, focused on their succession rights under a comparative perspective. Miller showed that eastern jurisdictions are traditionally more keen to recognise stepchildren succession rights as a legacy of the soviet era, as a consequence of the lesser relevance of the marriage in the light of State atheism and the need to financially support those children. 

Lastly, the SIG's co-chair Ilaria Pretelli, presented the transformations of family models from both a sociological and legal point of view and illustrated the legal needs brought by the 1989 CRC which have not been yet entirely understood, neither implemented by EU legal orders. Pretelli also showed how the 1996 Hague convention and the Brussels IIter regulation are being interpreted in the light of those needs.

After the three presentations, a lively discussion between the speakers and the audience was led by Elena Bargelli, SIG's co-chair.

We are very much looking forward to the promising developments of the researches we presented.

More information on this panel and the Annual Conference, here.