State family policy provision that recognizes a couple as a family only when they are married, is objecting the Constitution, announced the Constitutional Court last Wednesday, delfi.lt reported on 28 September.

Constitutional court ruling said, that constitutional concept of a family can not be based solely on the institution of marriage. According to the court, the fact that marriage and family institutions are set in the same paragraph of the constitution shows an integral connection between family and marriage, however this is only one of the possible family models.

The court ruling has stated that constitution’s concept of the family is based on mutual responsibility, understanding, emotional attachment, help and similar connections among family members. It also includes voluntary decision to take on some rights and responsibilities. All this makes up the essence of a relationship. However the form that a relationship takes up bears no significance on the concept of the family.

“Thus the parliament’s version of the family concept is restricted to previously or currently married man and woman, and their children or adopted children. By narrowing down the concept of the family , the parliament has failed to uphold the concept as a constitutional value, which can be based on things other than marriage”, – said the Constitutional Court.

Constitutional court was addressed on the issue of the family concept by a group of parliamentarians, who claimed, that  by ratifying the above mentioned document, the Parliament has failed to uphold the requirement, stemming from the Constitution, to regulate all family policies using law and not lower level legal acts. The claimants also disputed the definition of the family, embedded in the family concept as being based solely on marriage.

A document, ratified by the parliament in 2008, which recognizes a family only when people living together are married, has raised many disputations and comments in the public. The opponents of the concept  argued that this document will discriminate against children being raised in non-married families. At the same time supporters of the concept defended it by saying that the concept contained a family model which should be pursued, which in turn would crated the safest environment for the child.

For the first time in the history of Lithuania’s legislation, the parliament has confirmed not only the concept of the family, but also defined what is viewed as a cohesive, extended and incomplete family. The concept describes incomplete family as one where “with the end of a marriage the child looses one or both of the parents”. At the same time there is no laws defining the family. Constitution simply says that marriage is formed based on the free will and mutual agreement between a man and a woman, the family is recognized on the social and state basis, however there is no separate description of what is a family and what it should look like.

The civil code does not contain the definition of the family either, however in the chapter about family law there is a list of the rights and responsibilities of the spouses, parents and children. The Ministry of Welfare has prepared family policy framework project, which proposes to consolidate in the laws themselves that family consists of spouses. In this project the family is viewed as “spouses and their children (adopted children), with former having the responsibility to care for and raise the children (adopted children)”.

According to the data from the EU Statistics agency, 28% per cent of all newborns were born to non-married couples, and since 1990 the percentage of children born to non-married couples has quadrupled from 7 to 28 per cent. The EU average is 35.1 percent.

Constitutional Court’s verdict, which denounced the document tying the concept of the family only to married couples, has left many uncertainties in relation to understanding what makes up a family, said Rima Baskiene. In her opinion, because Constitutional Court has declared that there are other possible family models, those that are not solely based on marriage, they have to be legitimized immediately, or “the feeling of responsibility starts to fade away”.

In the meantime, the ruling, which annuls the 2008 document ratified by the Parliament on the grounds of unconstitutionality, it is accepted by heads of the working groups as a fact. “Since Constitutional Court said that this document conflicts with the constitution, it obviously looses its meaning. I accept it as a final decision, which respectively urges us to think about how we imagine a family, because when we draft legislation, we must define concepts”, – R.Baskiene commented on the ruling.

“Such a ruling raises other questions. We must answer the question of what we see as a family. If today there is no legislation on dealing with partnerships, how should we then interpret people living together? It is important to legitimize those other forms of the family, since the one based simply on marriage is gone. Those alternative forms must be legitimized or responsibility towards your spouse, partner, your children simply evaporates.  This mustn’t happen”, – said the parliamentarian. She also expressed her hopes that this ruling will not become a pretext to start seeking to legitimize same sex marriages. “I hope that Lithuania does not become a state, where same sex marriages are institutionalized”, – said R.Baskiene.