Table of Contents

TITLE V – OF MARRIAGE CONTRACT

  

CHAPTER I – GENERAL DISPOSITIONS

Art. 1. Husband and wife may regulate their matrimonial agreements as they please, provided they stipulate in it nothing contrary to good morals, and provided likewise it be done under the modifications hereafter prescribed.

Art. 2. Husband and wife may even stipulate that their matrimonial agreement shall be regulated by the laws, statues, customs and usages of any state or territory in the union, as they may deem proper, provided they formally declare by their said agreement, that they submit themselves to the law of the state or territory by them mentioned, and that they renounce in this respect, the benefit of the laws of this territory.

Art. 3. Nevertheless husband and wife can, in no case, enter into any agreement, or make any renunciation, the object of which may be to alter the legal order of descents, either with respect to themselves in what concerns the inheritance of their children or posterity, or with respect to their children between themselves, without any prejudice to the donations inter vivos or mortis causa which may take place, according to the formalities and in the cases determined by the present code.

Art. 4. Neither can husband or wife derogate by their matrimonial agreement, from the rights resulting from the power of the husband over the person of his wife and children, or which belong to the husband as the head of the family, nor from the rights granted to the surviving husband or wife by the title of father and child, and by the title of minors and their tutors and curators, nor from the prohibitory dispositions of this code.

Art. 5. Every matrimonial agreement must be made by an act before a notary and two witnesses.— The practice of marriage agreement under private signature, is abrogated.

Art. 6. Every matrimonial agreement can be altered by the husband and wife jointly, before the celebration of marriage. But it cannot be altered after the celebration.

Art. 7. The minor who is capable of contracting matrimony, may give his consent to all and every the agreements which this contract is susceptible of, and the agreement entered into and donations he has made by the same, are valid, provided that if he be not emancipated, he has been assisted in said agreement by those of his ascending relations whose consent is necessary to his marriage.

Art. 8. If there be no marriage agreement, nor any special conventions, the rights of the husband and wife are determined by law and by the rules contained in the following chapters.

Art. 9. The most ordinary conventions in marriage contract, are the settlement of the dowry and the various donations which the husband and wife may make to each other, either reciprocally or the one to the other, or which they may receive from others in consideration of the marriage.

Art. 10. The partnership of community of acquests or gains, is a necessary consequence of marriage, within this territory and needs not be stipulated in the marriage contract in order to take effect.

Art. 11. From the various conventions which are customary in marriage contracts, or which are a consequence of the marriage, result various distinctions with respect to the estate which may be the object of these conventions.

Art. 12. The first distinction is into dotal effects, and paraphernalia or extra dotal effects.
We understand by dotal effects all such effects as the wife brings to the husband, to support the charges of wedlock.
We understand by paraphernalia or extra dotal effects, all the effects of the wife which are no part of her dowry.

Art. 13. We understand by effects proper or heriditary, all such as either husband and wife brings in marriage or which he or she inherits or acquires during the marriage by will or lucrative contract.

Art. 14. In fine we understand by common effects or gains such as the husband and wife acquire during the marriage by their labor, industry, purchase or any other similar way.

 

CHAPTER II – OF THE VARIOUS KINDS OF MATRIMONIAL AGREEMENTS

 

SECTION I – OF DONATIONS MADE IN CONSIDERATION OF MARRIAGE

Art. 15. Husband and wife may by their marriage contract, make reciprocally, or one to the other, or receive from other persons in consideration of their marriage, every kind of donations, according to the rules and under the modifications prescribed in the title of donations inter vivos and mortis causa. 




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