Legislative proposal to defend property rights of minor property owners

On January 5, 2018, the Parliamentary Committee for Legal Issues was authorized to discuss the legislative proposal of Human Rights Center “About Amendments into the Civil Code of Georgia.”

The legislative proposal of the organization aims to defend property rights of the minor owners. In accordance to the Civil Code of Georgia, minor may receive property through different methods: gift, succession, or other. The property may be movable or immovable. In case of the purchase of the immovable property, the minor becomes lawful owner of the property and she/he will be registered in the Public Registration Agency as a property owner. Together with and/or separately from the immovable property the minor owner may purchase expensive movable properties based on the abovementioned grounds and his/her parent shall not have right to administer this property.

The purpose of the submitted proposal is to defend the property rights of the minor. Nowadays, even one parent can sell, mortgage or/and otherwise administer his/her minor child’s property. The proposed amendments to the Civil Code will guarantee better protection of the minor’s property rights.

Article 1198 of the Civil Code of Georgia determines duties of parents with respect to children. In accordance to the Part 4 of the Article parents shall be obliged to protect the rights and interests of their minor children, including managing and using the children’s property. Human Rights Center believes it is important to elaborate norms to restrict the activities of the parent which may harm the interests of the child. Apart to that, it is important to institutionally regulate this component, namely create control mechanism – to determine the entity and procedure, which will evaluate compliance of the agreements with the third party with the interests of the child.

The formulation of the proposed amendments to the Civil Code of Georgia: parent is prohibited to give property of his/her minor child as a gift or otherwise administer it, except the case when it is caused by extreme necessity of the child and serves the best interests of the child. In similar cases too, the preliminary consent of the guardianship and custodianship body is required.

Human Rights Center