Annotation: family is a key concept of the family law. However, today there are different views with regard to the questions of what a family is and whether a family or its individual members are subjects of legal relations (including property relations) in the professional literature and in the legislation. At the same time, the answers to these questions are of scientific and practical importance, since without having a clear understanding of the subjects of property relations in the family it is impossible to understand the mechanism of their legal regulation. The subjects of legal relations significantly determine their features. Interacting with the participants of social relations, the law forms the specific nature of legal relations based on their participants. The doctrinal approaches to understanding of characteristics of the family as a legal phenomenon are analyzed; the problem of determining the legal personality of the family is discussed; the conclusion that the family is not an independent legal subject, but is a legal fiction that makes it possible to unite individual subjects of property relations in the family, i.e. family members, is made and explained in the article.