LAW1211: Family Law

Welcome to the Module of Family Law!

The Module of Family Law aims to introduce the students to the complex legal rules governing persons and family with a view to guiding them on how to develop independent and critical thinking, and the ability to formulate legal arguments and solve legal issues related to persons and family. It therefore provide students with a critical and comprehensive appreciation of the main features of Rwandan law governing persons and family.

It has two components: the First component treats the essential legal aspects of the person from birth until death. It first precises the notion of legal personality, how it begins and ends and what it entails. It also examines how persons can be individualized, identified or distinguished from others, and studies the status and capacity of a person from a legal perspective. The Second component of the Family Law Module studies the person as a member of the family. It examines family relationship aspects namely kinship and alliance and their legal impacts. It analyses the marriage contract, its conditions of validity and legal consequences, its dissolution by divorce and legal separation and their legal consequences. The second component lastly explores legitimate filiation and establishment of filiation for children born out of wedlock and attached legal consequences.