THE RIGHT OF MINORS TO THE COMPULSORY SHARE IN THE INHERITANCE LAW OF EU COUNTRIES – DEVELOPMENT PROSPECTS AND EXPERIENCE FOR UKRAINE

Abstract

The issue of inheritance became very important with the beginning of a full-scale war in Ukraine and the mass migration of Ukrainians to the countries of the European Union. А significant share of emigrants are minors, who have additional legal guarantees in receiving an inheritance. One of these guarantees is the right to the compulsory share, that became the subject of this research. The author indicates that legal consolidation of minors’ right to the compulsory share in the inheritance is caused, first of all, by the lack of full legal capacity, as well as the need to ensure their adequate standard of living after the death of the testator. In this article attention is centred on consolidation of the right of minors to a compulsory share of the inheritance in the law of the European Union countries. The author considered the institutes of ‘reserved’ and ‘compulsory’ share with the help of a systematic comparative legal analysis of the legislation of the European Union countries, characterized their common and distinctive features. In the article the impact of these institutions on the freedom of the will is analyzed. Considerable attention is paid to researching the prospects for further development of the institutions of ‘reserved’ and ‘compulsory’ share in the legislation of European countries. Studying the right of minors to the compulsory share in the legislation of the EU country, it is taken into account that the law of inheritance is deeply rooted in the culture and traditions of each state, reflecting the influence of such on the current regulation of actual problems of inheritance. At the same time, attention is focused on the importance of achieving a certain unification of law in the sphere of the exercising the right to a compulsory share by minors at the international level. The constructions of ‘usufruct’, ‘inheritance agreement’ and ‘suit for reduction of the size of the property transferred under the will’ are also elaborated in the article. They are studied as an opportunity for the testator to choose who will inherit the property, even in the presence of the reserve share. These all indicates the relevance of the chosen issue and the task of the conducted research – based on the analysis of the inheritance law of the EU countries regarding the compulsory share in the inheritance to single out those features of legal regulation that can be introduced into the national legislation of Ukraine. The purpose of the study is to harmonize the norms of inheritance law of Ukraine in terms of the inheritance of the compulsory share by minors with the norms of the law of EU countries. It is suggested to improve the national law regarding the exercising by minors the right to the compulsory share, taking into account the studied models of European countries, such as France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Poland.