August 13, 2020 CIVIL AND FAMILY UNIQUE PROCESS CODE
Dear clients and friends:
Everything seems to indicate that soon we will have the so longed for procedural unification in civil and family matters, in which the guild, academic institutions and scholars of law have been insisting for several decades about the complications and zero practicality of our judicial system has 33 different procedural laws in those matters.
This is indicated by the reform to the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States, published on September 15, 2017, through which articles 16, 17, and with special importance, article 73, have been reformed, in a true milestone for the administration of justice and in an adequate step to modernize and make its delivery more efficient.
In effect, the amendment to Article 73 implies the abandonment of a paradigm as old as the Constitution itself, which conferred upon the states the exclusive power to establish the way in which civil and family litigation would be dealt with within their territories. Now, this faculty is attracted by the Congress of the United Mexican States with the clear purpose of issuing a National Code of Civil and Family Procedures. In this way, from now on the way in which a lawsuit should be aired in which they demand, for example, alimony, inheritance rights, rescission of a sale or the termination of a lease, will be the same if the lawsuit is aired in Baja California Norte as if it is aired in Quintana Roo.
Without a doubt, the present reform is an excellent moment to make domestic and external trust in the Mexican justice system prevail, since in view of this new civil and family procedural legislation, many issues should be analyzed that could be the solution to the humiliations to the rule of law that contemporary civil and family procedures currently imply, in whose context delays in the administration of justice, unnecessary and impractical delays, unenforceable sentences and procedural formalisms that play in favor of the condemned parties occur.
Some initial steps have already been taken, as evidenced by the reform of Article 17, which has been added to raise to constitutional rank the prevalence of the rights discussed by the parties over the procedural formalisms, i.e., when studying the litigation and provided that the equality of the parties is not affected, the judge must opt to resolve the dispute raised, even if there are procedural obstacles that might prevent him from doing so.
The referred unification and beginning of effect of these reforms will be given in 180 days from the publication, term that will also serve so that the state Congresses reform their Constitutions and secondary laws to adapt them to the scheme now proposed in the Federal Constitution.
We cannot fail to comment on the amendment to Article 16 of the Constitution, which apparently implies an adaptation so that new technologies may be used for the purpose of, among other things, issuing orders of authority. However, the addition is not entirely clear, since it could involve videos or recordings, even mere e-mails, which could trigger controversy in this regard.
We remain at your service in case you require further information.