Entwicklungen im internationalen Familienrecht Japans

Abstract

The underlying article aims to describe and analyze recent developments in Japanese international family law in light of the following three topics.

First, this paper examines the envisaged legislation on international jurisdiction regarding status and family matters with a particular focus on divorce. With a view to clarifying the background of the reform, the article discusses two major Japanese Supreme Court decisions that have thus far caused considerable uncertainties in Japanese legal practice.

Second, this paper reports on Japan’s acceptance of the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention. In particular it seeks to clarify the reasoning and background of Japan’s acceptance and to detail some characteristics of Japan’s Implementation Act on the Child Abduction Convention.

Third, this contribution deals with issues surrounding cross-border surrogacy and the parentage resulting from it. While the state of the discussion has not yet advanced in Japan, recent developments in European countries have been remarkable. The German Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) decided on 10 December 2014 to recognize a Californian court decree that granted parentage to two German male intended parents living in a registered partnership. This German Supreme Court decision largely followed the reasoning of the judgment rendered by the European Court of Human Rights on 26 June 2014, which ruled that France’s denying the intended father all manner of paternity violated the children’s right to respect for their private life. Among European countries, however, the precise conditions of recognition and the scope of case law have not yet been clearly defined. This paper tackles this problem in light of the on-going project of the Hague Conference on Private International Law on this subject.