Civil cases, in the broad sense, relate to the various legal relationships between private persons and the rights that flow from them.
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What is civil litigation?
Justice may be called upon to rule on disputes between private persons. These civil disputes can be of several kinds:
they can involve contesting the relationship between people and things: ownership, the right to pass over land, etc. ;
they can affect the relations between the members of a family on the occasion of a birth (action relating to filiation), a marriage and its consequences (divorce, pensions), the education of children (conflicts relating to the exercise of parental authority) or death (distribution of the estate);
they may relate to obligations between several people: unregulated debt, badly executed contract, accident whose consequences must be repaired, etc. ;
finally, they can take place within the framework of labor relations (disputes relating to the formation, execution and termination of the employment contract are brought before the industrial tribunals) or commercial relations (these disputes between merchants are brought before the commercial courts).
All of these different cases likely to be brought before the civil judge, and which cannot all be listed, form what is called contentious civil matters
What is gracious civil matter?
Not all civil cases that are the subject of legal proceedings come under this contentious matter. The judge may have to rule in the absence of any dispute, when he is seized of a request which the law requires that it be submitted to his control. It is then said that he rules in gracious matters. This is the case, for example, in matters of action for the purposes of adoption, rectification of civil status documents or declaration of absence.
