Theoretical and practical in matters of crime of abandonment by family

The family is the most precious element of a human society. It is really based on mutual love and affection. Family relations represent the most important social relations and enjoy a special protection being regulated by moral and legal norms, which provide rights and obligations for the participants in these relations, rights and obligations through the realization of which the permanent consolidation of the family is ensured.


The protection of the family is achieved by the criminal law by sanctioning the crimes against the family. This paper aims to study one of the crimes that affect life and the relationships that exist between family members. Abandonment of the family is a crime provided by art. 305 of the Criminal Code and by incriminating it, the aim is to bring to criminal responsibility those family members who violate their legal maintenance obligations compared to the one entitled to maintenance. In order to discourage the commission of this crime, the minimum limits of the prison sentence were increased by 6 months imprisonment by Law no. 197/2000.

The present paper aims to analyze the crime of family abandonment, using for this purpose aspects of special criminal law, general, but also family law, as well as judicial practice in criminal matters.

The first chapter entitled "General considerations on the crime of family abandonment" presents the meaning of the notion of family abandonment, the way in which the crime was incriminated since 1936, when it was first provided by law and changes in the legal text that occurred by -over time. Also in this chapter is presented the way in which this crime is incriminated in the legal systems of other states, respectively in the section entitled "Elements of comparative law". In order to achieve these objectives, we processed and systematized the materials collected from books that reproduce the legal texts of article 305 starting with the Criminal Code from 1936 to the present. Also, the information gathered from the accessed sites was useful to us, in connection with the incrimination of this crime in other legal systems, without which we could not have made a comparative analysis with the crime in our Criminal Code.

Chapter II of the paper entitled "Family Crime - in particular" contains four sections in which they are presented: legal content, pre-existing conditions, the constitutive content of the crime, methods, forms and sanctions that apply to the commission of acts that constitute the material element of the crime.

In the study of the crime of family abandonment, it is important to know the procedural aspects of the crime. In the third chapter, the following aspects are specially analyzed: the initiation of the criminal action, aspects regarding the trial, the conditional suspension of the execution of the sentence and the revocation of the conditional suspension of the execution of the sentence. This chapter is entitled "Procedural aspects in the matter of the crime of family abandonment".

The crime of family abandonment, affects the relations of social coexistence, family relations and especially the person entitled to maintenance. For this reason, it is necessary to know the causes that generate the commission of criminal acts and the consequences that affect family members, but also the ways in which abandonment is prevented and combated. These aspects are analyzed in Chapter IV "Preventing and combating family abandonment".

In view of the special importance that the family represents in the human society, we considered a topical problem the wide treatment of one of the crimes that affect the family relations. The protection by the norms of the criminal law of the family relations, regarding the maintenance obligation, attracted our special attention.

In order to carry out the work, we systematized the information collected from the specialized literature. A special contribution to the originality of the work was brought by the novelty materials, as well as the judicial practice in criminal matters.

This paper is intended to be an approach in which vigilance over the human being is an important dimension and considers family relationships, the most important relationships of a human society, and how people who harm these relationships are sanctioned. .