La famiglia di fatto tra corsi e ricorsi storici

The author starts from the analysis of the new figure of 'de facto cohabitation', governed by the law of 2016, n. 76, emphasizing how it evokes the Roman conception of marriage unaccompanied by the 'conventio in manum' which, practiced with increasing frequency in Rome, gradually supplanted the 'cum manu' marriage; and this, even in that reality, following the change, between the end of the Republic and the Principality, of social needs. She then goes on to illustrate the evolution of marriage from the late Empire to the Justinian age. She then dwells on the birth, spread and evolution of the phenomenon of concubinage which, condemned by the Church and considered a crime even in our legal system until the 1960s, had already been seen in the late empire and in the Justinian law as a union relevant in option to marriage which, at that time, was characterized by the publicity and intervention of Catholic ministers in its celebrations. In similar terms, the union between two adults permanently united by emotional ties of couple and mutual moral and material assistance, not bound by a marriage, was regulated by our legislator, who wants to make the union concubine between people not linked by precedents ties an alternative institution to marriage, civil and of concordat.