Legal Relationships and Rights in Civil Law: Duties & Abuse

Legal Relationship

I. A legal relationship exists between persons whose legitimate interests are considered the subject worthy of protection by a rule of law. It is a relationship between person and person determined by a legal rule. This implies the connection of powers and duties between the two people. A legal relationship can be:

• Material: Comprised of the factual or social relationship suitable for legal regulation.
• Formal: Established by the determination of the law or by legal consequences imposed on a de facto relationship.

Structure of a Legal Relationship

Structure:

• Subjects: The people, as holders of the relationship. Subjects may arise, for example, from a sale or a marriage.
• Re (Object): The social field or thing which bears the legal relationship, such as the subject matter of a contract, the marital bond, or the parent–child affiliation.
• Contents: The set of rights and duties that constitute the legal relationship, for example, the rights and duties in a marriage relationship.

Legal Institution

Legal Institution: The set of legal rules regulating a legal relationship. Examples include the rules governing purchase, marriage, and other civil legal institutions as found in civil law.

Legal Right

The legal right is the power granted by law to a person for the satisfaction of interests worthy of protection.

Structure:

• Subject: The owner of the power. It can be a single person or multiple persons.
• Purpose: The social reality or interest on which the power granted to the subject rests.
• Contents: The power of the subject over the object, which corresponds to or belongs to the owner. This power is what distinguishes and defines one person's right from another's.

Exercising a Right

Exercising the right: This involves the performance of its content: the acts or conduct that the right empowers the holder to perform.

Requirements:

• Capacity to act: An abstract and general suitability to perform legal acts.
• Power provision: The authority of a person to modify, transfer, encumber, or extinguish an individual right.
• Legitimacy: The possibility for a subject to effectively undertake a legal act, arising from the connection between the subject and the object.

Abuse of Rights

* Abuse of rights: The abuse of rights occurs when the exercise of a legal right exceeds the limits of good faith or is directed to an end for which the law did not confer the right. No antisocial exercise of a right is permissible; each right must respect its social function. When someone acts in ignorance of this limit, they are said to incur abuse of rights.

Characteristics of Abuse of Rights

Its characteristics are:

• Act or omission: Abusive behavior may consist of an act or an omission. For negligent conduct to be abusive, there should be a duty to act, and the omission must cause prejudice to a third party.
• Damage to third parties: The damage may be proprietary or moral and is always unnecessary; third parties should not be forced to tolerate it.
• Excess: The conduct manifestly exceeds the normal limits of the right, whether judged by the intention of the author, by the object of the act, or by the surrounding circumstances.