The End of the Civil Capacity of the Natural Person

Abstract

The phrase "natural person" is basically a conventional name given to man as a legal entity, as an individual participant in legal relations in general. It is therefore a qualification given by law to the individual, and not a separate qualification or vocation of him. However, such a vocation must necessarily exist, because otherwise, the physical person would be a form devoid of content. This necessary vocation found its expression in another concept, that of legal capacity, consecrated especially doctrinally and jurisprudentially and which designates the vocation or aptitude of the natural person to participate, in general, in legal relations and to acquire rights and obligations. When we refer to civil legal relations, to the rights and obligations included in their content, we are dealing with the civil capacity of the person, regulated in the Civil Code under the aspect of the capacity to use and the capacity to exercise. The ability to be a subject of law, respectively, the capacity to use for civil law, presupposes, as I mentioned before, an existing human being, conceived or born, alive, which constitutes precisely the human support of the capacity. Consequently, knowing the date of the end of the physical person's capacity to use means establishing the date of his/her death. Through this article, we will analyze the two hypotheses regulated by the civil law by which this date is established. The first hypothesis is the one in which the death of the person is ascertained directly, through the examination of the human corpse, which constitutes the "physically ascertained death" hypothesis. The second hypothesis is that in which the examination of the body is not possible (because it cannot be found), although the death of the person is certain, or almost certain, which constitutes the hypothesis of "legally declared death".