On The Matrimonial Property System In The Marriage Law

Marital property system, which has been undergoing a long developing process, is an important issue of marital property relationship. As a key part of upper construction, it not only adapts to a certain social and economic basis, but also is impacted by legislative traditions, customs, and thoughts and cultures. Therefore, there are some great differences among countries: influenced by rationalism, in the civil law countries in legislature of marital property regime code law is adopted; while influenced by empiricism, in common law countries case law is adopted. Though differences exist in legislature between two kinds of law systems, they share the same Legislative spirit, which provide legislature on marital property with implication on various aspects. For example, our country's legislature on marital property can be improved with reference to specified and systematized practices in civil law and specially standardized practices in common law system, thus increase the proportion of it in the section of marriage and family to meet the reality's need. The revised Marriage Law focuses on Chinese condition. And with the principle of contract superior to legal procedure, equality in marital property's rights and obligations, protection of the benefits of vulnerable groups, safeguard the combination of the legal marital property and interests of the third person, three kinds of marital property systems were laid down: common legal possession, special property ownership and contracted property systems. The new Marriage Law has much improved than the previous in specificity and application. But with the development in market economy, the constantly changes in socio-economic aspects, the increasingly richness in people lives and means of production, great changes also take place in the sources and quality of citizen's property. Owing to the new changes in people's social life, the current marital property system cannot satisfy the demands of judicial practice and some problems are gradually revealing. These problems mainly reflect in three aspects: first, incomplete structures in marital property system; second, defects in legal property system; third, inadequacy in contracted property system. The author holds the view that in order to solve these problems, suitable marital property system for our country should be established by using the foreign legislation experiences as a reference, perfecting integral structures and enriching the contents of legal and contracted property system.