O valor jurídico do afeto

Abstract

The legal value of affection is one of the themes that the production in Contemporary Law busy these days. It is a lively multi-disciplinary discussion, which in its scope involves law, sociology and psychology, three areas of study that approach the theme of family in contemporary societies. Contemporary family law focus on the personal realization of affection and the development of the human being, which are fruit of the revolutions occurred along the years, particularly the one that is called the privacy revolution. If the objective of the legal recognition of affection is to respect the individuality of human beings and to offer them, through legal guardianship, their share of happiness, the objective of this work is to contribute to the evolution of the legal recognition of affection in the sense that once recognized, it may become part of Family law. Through the doctrinal research and the decisions pronounced by several Courts of Justice in the Country, an analysis of how affection has been seen by the legal system, between 2002 and 2008, up to the point of being considered by some jurists as a value that deserves legal recognition. However, the fact that there is no unanimity on the issue among civil law jurists served as the base for the development of this dissertation. The conclusion that we get to is that the principles of equality, freedom, privacy, family plurality, personality development, and, particularly, of affection come from the same source: the dignity of the human being. Besides it, they must be considered the only legal foundations for the concession of legal effect to affection. We must then grant the ethics of family relations the importance it deserves, that is, that of something that is actually capable of making someone happy.