Research On The Marital Tort Liability For Damages

Torts between spouses are common things since ancient time, even today there exists one traditional opinion holds that husband and wife is one entity, they cannot sue each other for damages. Nowadays people are put great emphasis on protecting their legal rights through lawsuits, even the torts are committed by their spouses, all of these resulting in a large number of marital tort suits. Some courts support the claims of plaintiff while other courts are not, and the current Marriage Law has not admitted marital tort liability for damages explicitly, and judicial interpretation of the Marriage Law also seems reject to support claims for marital tort damages. In view of the needs of civilians claims,the different judgments made by different courts and unclear legislation, this article is aimed to discuss whether to support the damages claims for marital tort and how to achieve these claims in reality.At first,this article start from the different judgments of marital torts,summed up the marital tort cases happened in recent years in China and study the legal reasons behind these cases, just come to find that the main reason leading to different judgments is the different understanding of law, so grasp the real meaning of current law is really necessary. Secondly,define what is marital tort theoretically, and comparing marital tort damages to divorce tort damages in order to distinguish the differences between them. Thirdly, introduce foreign country’s attitudes and solutions towards marital tort damages, then realize it’s the general trend to recognize marital tort liability. At last,this article proposes several suggestions for the marital tort damages liability: the Marriage Law should explicitly permitted marital tort lawsuit; special legislation like Against Violence Act should also put marital tort damages compensation into account; the elements of marital tort should be settled according to the characteristics of marital life, the tort must have caused serious consequences, and the tortfeasor’s fault doesn’t involved in slight negligence; adopt a variety of ways to achieve the marital tort damages in reality according to the property status of the parties, such as use tortfeasor’s personal property to compensate, abnormal couple property system and credit certification.