Civil Legal Capacity of Minors

The article outlines some aspects of the civil legal standing of minors in international law and the national law of individual states. The authors came to the conclusion that special rules are fixed in international legal acts and in national law regarding the legal status of a minor in the civil law sphere. At the same time, there are significant differences in the national legal systems regarding: 1) the categorical apparatus that designates the civil legal personality and its elements; 2) the moment of a juvenile's civil legal personality appearance and its correlation with the moment of the right to life (the respect for human life); 3) the scope and the content of the civil capacity of minors; 4) the possibility of a minor emancipation, its conditions and legal consequences. Given that the civil legal capacity and the legal capacity of a natural person is determined by his personal law, the revealed differences can cause certain difficulties during the application of the rules on the legal standing of a minor who is a foreign citizen or a person without citizenship. The attention is drawn to the need for a clear delineation of the categories "minor" and "child", "minor person" and "incompetent person".