Donations Inter Virum et Uxorem in Medieval Portuguese Law

Abstract

When writing the Portuguese collection of Ius proprium, in the first half of the fifteenth century, the compiler of King Afonso V booked an exclusive title for the donation made by the husband to his wife and the wife to her husband. It is a medieval theme in evidence in most of the old continent legal systems, inevitably conditioned by the legal revival of Roman law (12th century). Although the Portuguese Ordinances dispensed the primacy of the Justinian principle which prohibited donations between spouses, they did not stop taking this into consideration and falling into a highly conditioned validity, rooted in customary and Castilian fragments, as well as in the current legal regime inheritance in the kingdom.