THE DISCOVERY OF THE CIVIL STATUS IN ASIA PACIFIC AREA.

Notaries without borders

                                        My name is Adila BERRAMDANE

 

Young Notary, i have decided to make a legal trip in the Asia Pacific area, to discover the civil status and to analyse the organisation and working of the registration service.

I want also to discover the notary function and its practice of the civil status.

 

WHY DO I DO THIS PROJECT ?

                

For a French notary, it is essential and fundamental to verify the identity and the legal capacity of his clients. Indeed, in his quality of public officer, he guarantees the content of the authentic deeds he writes, which has the same effect as a judgment.

Maître Tilman Götte, President of the CNUE, truly underlines that « in that current time of uncertainty, the notary is an institution which inspires confidence and guarantees legal security (…)». (Full quotation on the website www.notaries-of-europe.eu)

 

But, by the time of globalisation, the question of the proof has been asking more precisely, the risk of fraud becoming very high. An ID card is not sufficient today. To sell alone a flat belonging to the community in order to steal the price, to falsify one’s identity in order to inherit, to hide one’s legal incapacity to make an operation, are some examples of dangers which are faced to the notary.

 

That’s why, France has signed international conventions in the area of civil status, as for example: Convention of Luxembourg on September, 26th 1957, about exception of legalization of extracts from register (French JO of, September 2sd, 1959); Convention of Vienne on September, 8th 1976, about issue of multilingual copies and extracts from register (French JO of April, 24th 1987).

                                                                                                                            

Moreover, France is a member of the International Commission of civil status (CIEC), which aim is to develop the international cooperation between the member’s States and to exchange of information between registration services.

 

The European Union has started to think about this subject in order to facilitate the free movement of the documents of the civil status in Europe.

MY OBJECTIVES

 

My aim is to gather theoretical and practice information about civil status, in order to share it with the French notaries and lawyers in general. The objective is to ensure the notary’s deeds and to improve our practice of the civil status.

 

My project won’t consist in studying the family law of each country, even if a basic knowledge of the local law will be necessary.

 

Indeed, my project will consist in :

 

  1. On the one hand : discovering the organisation of the registry office, that is to say more precisely :

-       The running of the department,

-       The rules of issue of copies or extracts from the civil status’s registers, for example : a birth certificate, a death certificate a marriage certificate or a family record book

-       The evidential value of the document,

-       The question of information possibly annotated or mentioned on the record, the register or the certificate,

 

  1. On the other hand : studying and comparing the profession of notary and its practice of the civil status

 

 

WHY THE ASIA PACIFIC AREA ?

 

This area is currently rapidly expanding not only in the economic field but also in the legal field. In some countries, the common law is the base of the legal system, but the influence of the continental law is growing.

 

What’s more, none of the chosen countries is a member of the International commission on civil status, except the New Caledonia which is a territory linked to France