CIVIL LIABILITY FOR PARENTAL EMOTIONAL ABANDONMENT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF HUMAN DIGNITY

Abstract

The present work analyzes the civil liability for parental affective abandonment from the perspective of the principle of human dignity, examining the evolution of the concept of family in the Brazilian legal system, the consolidation of affectivity as a legal value and the constitutional and infra-constitutional foundations of the parental duty of care. The research adopts a qualitative methodology, based on a bibliographic and documentary review, covering legislation, doctrine and jurisprudence. It is demonstrated that the Federal Constitution of 1988 operated a paradigmatic transformation in family relations, shifting the axis of Family Law from the patrimony to the person and imposing the full protection of the child and adolescent as a shared duty between family, society and the State. It analyzes the jurisprudential evolution of the Superior Court of Justice on the subject, from the initial resistance to civil liability to the express recognition of the possibility of compensation for moral damages resulting from affective abandonment, consolidated in the judgment of Special Appeal No. 1.159.242/SP, in 2012. It also examines the normative framework represented by Law No. 15,240, of October 28, 2025, which amended the Statute of the Child and Adolescent to expressly characterize affective abandonment as a civil offense subject to reparation of damages, providing greater legal certainty to the subject. It is concluded that the dignity of the human person constitutes the axiological vector that grounds and legitimizes the civil liability of parents who fail to comply with the objective duty of care, coexistence and emotional support in relation to their children, and that civil liability, exercised with proportionality and evidential rigor, is a legitimate and necessary legal instrument for the realization of the fundamental rights of the child in the Brazilian legal system.