The Mexican National Family Code

In Mexico, the family is a key institution for national integrity and progress, which deserves to be protected by an integrated and coherent legal framework: the National Family Code.

This conviction comes from the research carried out by the Observatory of the College of Political Sciences and Public Administration of the Universidad Iberoamericana, which highlights the process of deterioration of the Mexican family in the context of social dissolution in which our country finds itself.

Let me just mention a couple of symptomatic data, from the recent 2020 Population Census, which shows that there is a population of 120 million 514 thousand 839 inhabitants in Mexico, living in 35 million 219 thousand 141 households. However, 46.1% of families do not have both parents heading the household.

In Mexico, in a similar way to other countries of Greco-Latin culture, but in a special way due to our history and socioeconomic, political and even geopolitical circumstances, the family is a fundamental institution for national integrity and progress.

This has been the case even since ancient Rome where Family Law finds its most remote origins.

The need to compile the norms that protect and regulate Family Law is not unique to Mexico. This controversy is present in other countries, both from a legal and political science perspective.

Image: Kanzlei.

In this sense, the foundation abounds in the literature and in contemporary Mexican jurisprudential sources the possibility of the autonomy of Family Law in Mexico; because the rights and obligations related to the family remain integrated into Civil Law and its codes. However, there is an insipient institutionality and a clear ideological conviction that the State is committed to the integral development of the family.

From my point of view, it is clear that Family Law does not belong to private law. Family realities largely escape the jusprivatist principles; its ideological orientation does not coincide with the branch of law where it is located; however, we must be aware that as long as codes, procedures, courts and specialized education are lacking, Family Law will continue without having full autonomy.

Having said the above, I must point out as a personal position that: “The State, and in particular the Mexican State, should not assume legal commitments greater than its effective capacities. In such a way that the law should never be an aspiration or a vision of the future but a reality whose compliance is imperative and unavoidable ”.

IN PERSPECTIVE, I consider that the recognition of the particular nature of Family Law is pertinent, and even from its independent codification, as a guarantee of protection to an institution that, in Mexico more than anywhere else, is a fundamental pillar of the present society and future.

The foregoing, as long as the obligations for the State institutions are accompanied by their indispensable and sufficient budgetary provision.

So for our present and future legislators, here is a complex and central issue to address. What do you think dear reader?

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Article published by Voces México, 06 de abril de 2021.