Criminal offences against marriage, family and children are incorporated into Chapter Twenty-One of the Slovene Penal Code KZ-1. It follows from this that marriage, family and youth as important social values thus enjoy criminal law protection but not in an absolute sense. Matrimonial and family relations being intimate, not even the regulations of family law as the main area of law codify all relations in all respects, but rather regulate only legal relations in a marriage and family. And it is important to know that the object of criminal law protection is even more narrowly-defined. It follows from the foregoing that the state can only intervene by imposing criminal sanctions when all the other available legal measures fail to establish or preserve healthy relations in a family and marriage.
“Defining the consequences of violating certain obligations imposed on individuals by family law regulations as criminal offences, criminal law attempts, first and foremost, to protect man as a family member and consequently family as a basis for a healthy development of society as a whole”. On the basis of the above it can be established that the objects of the criminal law protection in this chapter are marriage, family, minors and children. As Selinšek notes, the law can in no way restore the weakened emotional connections in a family; it can only use various, coercive if need be, measures to ensure family obligations are being honoured in cases when individuals, for various reasons, do not wish to fulfil them of their own accord.
Despite the fact that criminal offences in Chapter Twenty-One are statistically negligible this is an important part of the Penal Code, which deserves a significant amount of attention due to the sensitive nature of the objects of protection.
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