In Hungary, similarly to other post-socialist countries, during communism a socialist family law had been forced on the legal system. This had broken with the previous civil law tradition, building on a socialist ideology, and although the dictatorship ended more than 30 years ago, a similar break with socialist law has not happened in this area. One relic from the socialist era is the structure the Hungarian Civil Code adopted on marriage law. After regulating the existence and invalidity of marriage it goes on to regulate the dissolution of the marital bond. Rights and duties, financial and personal consequences of marriage are left for later. This reflects an attitude towards conflict management unlike any other legal institution not only in the Family Book but in the entire Civil Code. There are a few grounds of invalidity of marriage that are conspicuously missing from Hungarian family law. The reasons behind the terminological confusion in marital property law also has its roots in history. Socialist family law has also left its mark on marriage stability with early no-fault divorce rules. The socialist separation of family law from civil law might also explain the fact that cohabitation is regulated in contract law rather than family law. How is it possible that these mistakes made their way into a Code that was accepted in 2012, 22 years after the democratic transition? The paper argues that the consequences of this historical inheritance for family law contribute to the lack of elaborated dogmatics in this field, especially in comparison with classic civil codes of western legal systems.