Application of customary law in family matters in the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries
The rights of «free rural inhabitants» granted to the peasants by the 1861 reform were the basis for extending to them the general provisions of the civil laws «On the rights and duties of family members». The social foundations of the peasants, which took shape over the centuries, were stable traditional views, attitudes and ideas about morality. The characteristics of the communal structure, the traditional family economic nature of peasant production, determined the worldview, the value system, and the special rules of intra-family relations. The labor of the peasant family and the natural character of the economy contributed to the formation of large patriarchal families, which ensured large family incomes and proper serving of duties, and was clearly recognized by the peasants and the government. The norms of customary law, the traditions of the family way of life, the requirements of law-glorious ethics have formed an unquestioning obedience to the will of the father-householder by his wife, children, who lead a joint household of relatives, and those employed in the family of workers. With overwhelming ignorance, the rural population did not have any significant idea of formal laws and continued to regulate family relations with customary law. In the area of marriage law, peasant customs also did not coincide with the formal law. The contradictions that arose in the complex family-economic peasant system, rarely assumed an irreconcilable nature due to the awareness of family members of a clear dependence of the economic viability and well-being of each on the number of employees and friendly collective work. The advantages of a large family for the peasants were obvious, therefore intra-family contradictions usually receded into the background. The practice of volost courts, which carried out customary legal regulation in family matters, in dealing with family matters, adhered to the traditional customary law of upholding the power decisions of householders, avoiding complaints about family relations. At the same time, the courts tried to reconcile the parties.