The origins of Ukrainian family law in the context of the reception of Roman- Byzantine law in the Kyivan Rus

The article examines the peculiarities of the formation of family law in the Rus state through the prism of the reception of the relevant provisions of the Byzantine legislation. To achieve the validity of theoretical propositions and conclusions, the author used a set of philosophical, general scientific and special scientific methods, namely: historical-legal, comparative-legal, historical-functional, formal- legal, hermeneutic-legal, etc. The article emphasizes that the reception of Roman-Byzantine law took place through the translation into Church Slavonic of Byzantine legal texts (Eclogue, Prochiron, etc.), their thoughtful processing, subsequent rewriting and distribution. It is proven that during this process the provisions of Roman-Byzantine law are not blindly copied, but creatively reinterpreted, changed, adapted to Rus legal, political and socio-economic realities. It was determined that during the creation of local written sources of law (Russkaya Pravda, Church Statute of Prince Yaroslav), Byzantine legal acts were a kind of standard. It has been proven that the norms of Byzantine marriage and family law were most actively adopted in Rus. It was established that for most branches of Rus law, except for marriage and family, the reception of norms of Roman-Byzantine law had a limited character, and the provisions of Byzantine law often acted as «subsidiary» law. The author came to the conclusion that thanks to the Christian Church, provisions establishing the age of marriage, conditions for the validity of marriage, grounds for divorce of each spouse, etc., were adopted into Rus law. It was established that provisions borrowed from the Eclogue and Prochiron gave a woman in Rus the right to divorce, and the reasons for it were fixed by law. The thesis that the Byzantine institutions of family law adopted in the Rus era have become an integral part of the Ukrainian legal tradition is substantiated.