Basic rights and obligations of family members of the owner of a dwelling

Introduction: the paper provides classification of status rights of a family member of the owner of a dwelling, a list of his basic obligations, and analysis of the kind and limits of his legal responsibility. All this taken together characterizes the legal status of this subject of civil legal relations and derivative housing relations. It is stated that not all rights and obligations of a person form his legal status, but only those which characterize features of the corresponding subject of law. The author provides a detailed analysis of the current legislation defining the factual content of the status of a family member of the owner of a dwelling, offers suggestions for its improvement. The research also relies on studying the experience of foreign countries and analysis of judicial practice. Methods: general scientific (formal and dialectical logic, comparison, description, structural-functional analysis, synthesis, classification, interpretation); specific scientific (legal-dogmatic); theoretical (formal and dialectical logic, structural-functional analysis, legal-dogmatic), empirical (comparison, description, classification, interpretation). Results: classification of approaches to understanding the right to use a dwelling, its nature and limits; proposals to introduce changes into the current legislation, particularly, in the art. 17 and 35 of the Housing Code of the Russian Federation, art. 292 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation; a list of status rights and obligations offamily members of the owner of a dwelling developed by the author. Conclusions: it is proposed to complicate the procedure for a person in the status of a family member of the owner of a dwelling to be moved into such a dwelling; particularly, the owner must be forced to define the legal status of each person moved into by him and the list of obligations of that person within the limits permitted by the legislation. The author considers the right to use a dwelling (right of residence) of a family member of the owner of this dwelling to be a right of obligation with some features of the in rem nature. It is proposed to understand this right as the one providing a family member of the owner with the opportunity to use a certain dwelling with the aim of living there or with some other purpose specified by law due to the statement of the owner’s intention to consider this person to have a family law relationship with the owner and also consequent opportunities to satisfy the person’s social-cultural and household needs through using the features of the dwelling.