Search

The Civil Procedure Code of the Republic of Lithuania that has come into force on January 1, 2003 (hereinafter referred to as CPC of LR) presents a new party to a trial - curator - that temporally and under certain conditions provided by the law performs the functions of legal representative in a civil procedure. Following the request of the opposing party seeking to perform urgent proceedings, the court has a right to temporarily assign by its decree a curator to the party possessing neither legal capacity for civil proceeding nor representative by law, or to the party having no representative body, or to the party whose residence or work place is unknown (Art. 39 of CPC of LR). Curator can also be assigned either when it is needed to hand over procedural documents to the party whose residence or work place is unknown or to the party that has got no representative body (Art. 129 of CPC of LR). There also exists a particular, and therefore provided in a separate article, assignment of a curator on a stage of execution of a judicial decision, when debtor's residence is unknown but there exists some property of the debtor (Art. 601 of CPC of LR). Since the institution of curator in civil process appeared, quite a lot of urgent questions concerning application of this concept into practice have still been unsolved. Even today, while applying legal provisions of civil process law regulating curator's activity, there are still not clear some aspects such as curator's procedural status, permission to act in civil process, succession of his empowerment etc. There is no doubt that these circumstances have negative impact on the system of guarantees of judicial defence as well as depreciate the quality of dispensation of justice. It is noted in the article that CPC of LR does not provide any requirements for the person of curator, i.e. who can be assigned a curator. In the authors' opinion, when choosing a candidacy for a curator, a priority should be given to members of party's family and relatives, because they better know the absent person; that doubtlessly ensures better protection and defence of his interests. Further in the article it is analysed who has a right to propose a candidacy for curator, when it is impossible to assign a curator, and other questions concerning this matter. Authorisation of a curator, differently from that of legal representative, is limited to the particular civil case; curator acts only in civil process, his empowerment cannot be broadened to the sphere of legal relations of representation regulated by material law. The authors analyse what particular empowerment is possessed by a curator in civil process as well as what the succession of such empowerment can be. Much attention in the article is paid to the analysis of peculiarities of application of specific events of curator's assignment in civil process and to solutions of theoretical and practical problems concerned. The main conclusions are presented at the end of the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]