Civil law is divided into many subbranches. The labor law, intellectual property law and commercial law have a specific position, distinguishing themselves from civil law, while retaining many of its features.

In the classic civil law, the following subbranches are distinguished:

general part – regulating issues common to all civil law;
property law – relating primarily to things;
contract law – containing norms of property law of a relative nature;
inheritance law – containing legal norms regulating the transfer of property rights of the deceased to other legal entities;
family law – normalizing legal family and property relationships within the family.

This division, modeled on the pandectic structure derived from late Roman law, is not correct from a logic point of view, because it was made according to various criteria. In practice, however, it proved to be the most effective structure.

In addition, there are many narrower branches of the civil law (eg water law, mining law) that usually combine civil law and administrative regulation.

A set of norms, which define the law of which state is appropriate for the assessment of international personal relations in the field of civil law, creates a section called international private law.