Children's Rights in the Dissolution of Parents' Couple: Considerations on the Fundamental Principles in the Perspective of Italian Family Law

In the frame of Italian family law the theme of children’s rights in the dissolution of parents’ couple has crucial importance. The paper aims to highlight that in Italian family law the relationship between children and parents is guaranteed as an original relationship in which child isn’t seen as a passive subject of the educational relationship, but is considered as the active subject of this relationship, as a human person holding inviolable rights. In this perspective, the affective relationship of filiation – both in the physiological phase of the relationship of parental couple and in the pathological one –, complies with a concept of family community meant in the broad sense and understood as the natural nucleus for the highest development of human personality. Children rights refer to the child, intended as born individual, and they’re not susceptible of diversifications due to the natural origin or the legitimate origin of the filiation relationship. Particularly, on one side, parents have to bear the burden and the responsibility of providing to the child all kinds of care and appropriate family and domestic environment, as they are required to have a direct and personal commitment which involves physical presence and affection; on the other, children have the right to a double referential parental figure. The paper aims also to highlight that in Italian family law, in line with the unifying tendency of the main European countries and of the international conventions on minors’ protection, child’s moral and material interest represents the fundamental principle that has to permeate any judicial decision relating to minors.