The Constitution of 1988 broke new ground in the Brazilian legal when in its Article 226 increased the Stable Union to the status of family, including ordering that the law facilitates its conversion into marriage. How could it be, this innovation has brought many questions to legislators and enforcers of the rule, why were enacted two specific laws on the subject, which will be dealt with below. 

Law 8971, published in 1994, came to speak about the food and location the companion as it pertains to the field of succession. She guaranteed the right to participate in the surviving partner of succession open, whether as tenant or as heir, occupying the third place in the order of heredity. 

Already the Law 9.278/96 established the right of real housing to mate surviving residence in the property for the family, respecting the bonds emotional and affective created by the couple who cohabited together, intending maintain a family. 

The Civil Code of 2002, the constitutional agreement, enshrined in its legislative body the following articles on the Union Stable: 

"Art. 1723. It is recognized as a family unit the stable union between the man and woman, set in the living public, continuous and lasting established with the goal of starting a family. 

Art.1725. In the stable, unless a written contract between the partners, applies to property relationships, as appropriate, the regime of communion partial property. " 

However, in a discriminatory manner when dealing with the legitimate succession, not fits in the order of heredity, only allowing their participation in succession on the property acquired onerously during the marriage, competing with the children of both spouses and other heirs. Only in case there are no relatives successors can the surviving partner to receive inheritance in its entirety. 

Therefore, property acquired before marriage onerously, and after that, free of charge, will be excluded from the list of assets that may belong to fellow survivor by inheritance. These laws represent a return of law over years of jurisprudence and doctrine creations, because clearly assigned different values of Union between the institute of marriage and stable, despite CF of both qualify as family offices. 

Although civil law available to the contrary, the majority of authors believes that surviving partner is entitled to half the inheritance left by the deceased. Therefore, it was expected that decisions would put in a situation of equivalent to a spouse, for example, in the case decided in TJRS that considered art. 1790, III unconstitutional, giving the entire inheritance to the surviving spouse. The reason? The application of the principle of equity, since the family built under the aegis of the Office of the stable should be treated the same way as one formed under the bonds of marriage. 

And so it has been the understanding of the judgments of the family courts and sequences other states and the Federal Council of Justice in its Journey of I Civil Law, which approved the statement No. 117 regulating that "The right real housing must be extended to the spouse, either because it was not repealed the provision of the Law 9.278/96, either through an analogical interpretation of art. 1831, informed by art. 6, caput of CF/88. 

Unfortunately the civil law was born addicted when treated differently the institutions of marriage and stable relationships in the field of succession. That situation has caused many conflicts jurisprudence and doctrine, although most of this review the situation with observance of what was said in CF in his art. 226.