Ministry of Justice, Rapid Increase in Single-Person Households... Promoting 'Customized' System Improvements

Redefining the Concept of Family Including Single-Person Households... Revising Related Systems Such as Inheritance and Housing

[Asia Economy Reporter Baek Kyunghwan] The Ministry of Justice is set to review kinship-related systems in response to the increase in single-person households. This initiative aims to reform existing laws centered on multi-person households by utilizing various methods such as operating a task force (TF) and holding public contests to discover improvement measures.

To this end, the Ministry of Justice recently launched the 'Sagong-ilga' (Social Coexistence, Single-Person Household) TF, composed of an open private committee, and announced on the 9th that it is discussing institutional and legal improvement plans.

The proportion of single-person households has rapidly increased since the 2000s, becoming the main household type after 2015. The share, which was only 15.5% in 2000, rose to 30.2% in 2019. This increase is largely due to the rise in the 20s and 30s age groups influenced by higher education, employment, and the spread of unmarried, late marriage, and non-marriage trends.

The Ministry of Justice plans to improve systems in response to changes in household structures. The goal is to fundamentally revise laws and systems rather than simply providing support.

The focus is on five areas: kinship, inheritance, housing, protection, and bonds. The plan is to redefine the concept of family, moving away from the traditional bloodline-centered family model to include single-person households, and to improve legal support for inheritance and housing forms accordingly, as well as to enhance the voluntary guardianship system and the legal status of companion animals.

Currently, discussions are underway on measures to better reflect the intentions of the decedent, such as introducing a system to lose inheritance rights (the Goo Ha-ra Act), expanding the scope of gift revocation (the Prevention of Unfilial Acts Act), and reducing statutory reserved portions. To facilitate the operation of share houses, a representative housing form for single-person households, plans to relax the conditions for transferring lease rights and subleasing are being considered, along with the introduction of an electronic management assembly system that allows single-person households to participate in decision-making regarding the management and modification of collective buildings.

Improvements to kinship-related systems, such as amending the 'Family Relations Registration Act' to facilitate birth registration by unmarried fathers, have already been internally reviewed. During the National Assembly discussions on the partial amendment bill of the 'Family Relations Registration Act,' a revision was proposed to allow unmarried fathers to register births.

A Ministry of Justice official stated, "We will continue to receive various improvement proposals through internal reviews and thesis contests and discuss them within the TF. Specific bills will be shared and opinions gathered to proceed with legislative procedures sequentially."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.