The Federal Supreme Court (STF) has rescinded a ruling from the Minas Gerais Court of Justice (TJMG) and acknowledged the stable union of an elderly couple after the death of one of the comrades.

Minister Luiz Edson Fachin, rapporteur, understood that there is no distinction of age or sex in the recognition of a stable union. “Based on the factual premises adopted by the contested decision, the conclusion reached by the court hearing differs from the dominant jurisprudence of this Federal Supreme Court, which does not restrict the age or sex of the partners for the purpose of recognizing the stable union “He said.

In the decision dating from November 2015, the TJMG did not recognize the relationship of the couple due to lack of “robust evidence” of the elements that characterize the stable union. The mining court also said that “stable union is seen as a mockery, a simulacrum, a caricature, a decal” in relation to marriage.

In its decision, Fachin cited the judgment of RE 646.721, according to which the “STF already recognized the ‘lack of hierarchy or difference of legal quality between the two forms of constitution of a new and autonomized domestic nucleus'”, not being legitimate ” for the purpose of succession, the spouses and companions, that is, the family formed by marriage and formed by a stable union. ”

For the lawyer of the case, Wagner Dias Ferreira, the decision of the TJMG was biased regarding the age of the couple and the institute of the stable union. “They considered that older people in stable union would not be family. And that the stable union itself is a ‘mockery’ or ‘mockery’ of marriage and not as an autonomous institute created by the Federal Constitution, which has opened up to contemporaneity and to the future that points to a greater diversity of human relations. Bringing to the right greater dynamism in this field, “he says.

For the lawyer Maria Luiza Póvoa Cruz , president of the Commission of the Elderly of the Brazilian Institute of Family Law – IBDFAM, the decision of the TJMG is “extremely prejudiced”.

“Age, if the person does not have the physical mental hygiene committed, in no way reduces the autonomy of the parties nor the dignity of the human person. Only in case of a compromise of physical or psychic hygiene, which weakens cohesive reasoning, does it become necessary for the person to have someone to decide for it, in this case a healer. In fact, I am totally against the regime of compulsory separation for those over 70 years. This is an invasion of the autonomy of the parties to elect a matrimonial regime, which in turn will have repercussions on the right to inheritance at death, “he reflects.

For her, the decision of the STF ratifies the “greater principle” of human dignity. “We live in a democratic state of law, in a secular state, in which the question of family law has been secularized, which does not claim that union is always made to procreate. I only see as a step forward the decision of the STF for family law, which has been very well grounded in this new 21st century and represented by the illustrious professor Edson Fachin, “he says.

Source: Ibdfam