Topic 7.The civil legislation

1. The essence of civil legal relations and their types

2. Participants of civil legal relations

3. The personal non-property rights of citizens and their protection

4. Property rights of citizens and legal bodies

5. The right of property and its constitutional protection

6. The copy right and neighboring rights

7. The concept of civil legal transaction and civil legal agreements.

8. The concept and types of security for the obligation fulfillment

1. Civil legal relations

Civil law is a branch of law of Ukraine, regulating property and personal non-property relations of natural person and legal entities.

The bases of civil law of Ukraine are fixed in the Constitution of Ukraine and other legal acts, e.g. Civil Code of Ukraine, which was adopted in 2004.

Civil law relations are public relations, settled by rules of civil law, which participants are careers of the civil rights and duties.

Civil law regulates a wide range of following relations:

1. Property relations (serve the economic relations sphere of human activity, the satisfaction of its material needs. These are relations of the property, relations following from contracts and also from causing of property harm.

2. The personal non-property relations connected with the property (such relations are connected with a copy rights, the rights to invention; such rights show that the authorship generates intellectual property and the right to compensation).

3. The personal non-property relations which have not connected with the property (these relations are connected with protection of civil rights, e.g. name, honor, dignity.

Civil relations have the following structure:

1. Subjects. They can be natural persons (citizens of Ukraine, foreign citizens and citizens without citizenship), legal entities (organizations, enterprises and institutions), state of Ukraine, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, territorial communities, foreign states and other subjects of the Public Law.

2. Object (material or non-material wealth in which occasion legal relation has arisen).

3. Content of civil legal relations (subjective rights and corresponding to them legal duties).

2. Participants of civil legal relations

The participants of legal relations must have following characteristics:

legal ability;

legal capacity.

The legal personality includes two legal characteristics of the person:

Legal ability – possibility of the person to possess the subjective rights and legal duties;

Legal capacity - is ability of a person to get rights and duties with their actions.

Legal ability of natural person arises when s/he is born. Legal ability of natural person shall stop in the moment of his/her death.

Citizens of Ukraine have full legal ability.

Legal ability of foreign citizens and person without citizenship are little narrowed, e.g. they have not right to privatize housing, cannot own of land.

Legal capacity depends on the age and mental condition of the person.

Depending on the age legal capacity divided into:

till 14 years natural person have minimal legal capacity (they have the right to make independently only small household transaction). All other civil legal acts from their name and for their benefit commit parents, adoptive parents or guardians;

from 14 till 18 – a partial capacity. They have the right to make any civil law acts with the permissions of parents, adoptive parents and guardians;

after 18 – full legal capacity.

Depending on the health:

limited dispositive legal capacity (substances abuse);

general disability (a person suffering mental illness or dementia).

Such persons can be carriers of rights and duties, but their realization is carried out by other persons guardians appointed by the court.

Legal ability and legal capacity of the legal person (legal entity) arises from the moment of state registration and stops with liquidation.

Legal entity is an organization established and registered according to the procedure specified by the law. Legal entity is vested with legal capacity and capability and may act as a plaintiff or a defendant in the court.

Sings of legal entity are:

1. Organizational unity. The legal entity has certain structure (departments, managements and others) management, definite purpose and aims (fixed by the status or other constituent document).

2. The existence of a separate property. The organization should have the property, separate from the assets of the founders or other legal entities. Legal entity owns them as property, full economic activity (this applies to state-owned enterprises) or operative management (this applies to state-owned enterprises - the kind that cannot be privatized). In addition, the entity must have independent financial documents (balance sheet or budget, bank account);

3. independent property responsibility. Legal entity is independently responsible for the contracts concluded by it, for the debts and other liabilities, e.g., the state is not responsible for the debts of state-owned enterprises;

4. participations in civil relations on its own behalf. Legal entity has its own name, fixed by the state registration. It has the right to acquire civil rights and duties, defined by the status or other constituent documents. For example, legal entity may to acquire property, personal property rights, concludes various agreements;

5. the ability to be a plaintiff or a defendant in the court. On its own behalf the legal entity has the right to be the participant of a judicial or economic process.

Legal ability and capacity of the legal entity arise simultaneously - at the moment of state registration and its entering into the Uniform State Register of the Enterprises and Organizations of Ukraine.

Civil legal personality of Ukraine, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and local self-government is defined Constitution and laws of Ukraine. Accordance with art. 13 of the Constitution of Ukraine the state bodies and local self-government shall exercise the rights owner of the land, its minerals, air, water and other natural resources of Ukraine.