THE SPANISH FAMILY OF THE 21ST CENTURY: NEW REALITIES IN THE MORTIS CAUSA SUCCESSION OF THE SURVIVING SPOUSE

Abstract

This paper aims to address various aspects related to the recognition and exclusion of succession rights to the surviving spouse from a renovating perspective, considering the transformations of the Spanish family of the 21st century in such relevant issues as intra-family solidarity, common coexistence, and the growing detachment in relations with blood relatives. Therefore, a new marital and family model can be seen in which the marital relationship is becoming increasingly important as opposed to relationships with ascendants or descendants and which, on the contrary, from a legal point of view, has a deficit recognition that has failed to provide an adequate legal response to social reality. This progressive prominence currently achieved by the marital relationship —true protagonist of family and conjugal solidarity— within the family nucleus determines the need to consider a review of both the position in the order of succeeding intestate and the scope of the legitimate rights and otherwise of the spouse widower in the inheritance of the pre-dead.