Article 1 — Legal Personality of Natural Persons

1. 1.

   Every living human being possesses legal personality from the moment of live birth until death.

2. 2.

   Legal personality is the capacity to be a subject of rights and obligations under the law.

3. 3.

   No person may be deprived of legal personality. Any act, agreement, or decree purporting to deny or extinguish the legal personality of a living person is void.

4. 4.

   Where the law accords rights to a conceived but unborn child, such rights are contingent upon live birth; if the child is born alive, those rights are deemed to have vested from the moment of conception. In particular:

   1. A child conceived before the death of a person from whom it would inherit is treated as already born for the purposes of succession, provided it is subsequently born alive.
   2. A gift or bequest made in favour of a conceived child is valid, subject to the same condition.
5. 5.

   Live birth is established by evidence that the child, after complete separation from the mother, showed signs of life, however briefly. The burden of proving live birth lies on the party asserting it.

6. 6.

   The death of a natural person extinguishes legal personality. Upon death:

   1. Rights and obligations that are transmissible pass in accordance with the law of succession.
   2. Rights and obligations that are personal to the deceased are extinguished, unless the law provides otherwise.
   3. The remains and memory of the deceased are protected by law against abuse and indignity.
7. 7.

   In this Code, “competent authority” means the Royal Chancellery or such other organ as the Sovereign may designate for the purpose in question.

8. 8.

   Where two or more persons perish in the same event and it cannot be determined who died first, they are presumed to have died simultaneously; neither is deemed to have survived the other for the purposes of succession or any other right dependent on survivorship.