Inheritance law is one of the key sub-sectors of all civil law in Russia. It should be noted that the law of succession was literally created by the ancient Roman lawyers who founded its "classical" institutions. Modern civil law has adopted many norms and concepts from the law of Rome. In the same way, Roman law of succession was implemented in the law of succession of the Russian Federation. Naturally, many ancient norms were removed due to their indefensibility and inefficiency, taking into account the developed legal relations within society, however, the form of inheritance law was almost completely taken from the law of Ancient Rome.
In the process of studying the individual institutions of this industry, many questions arise about the inheritance procedure itself. To date, the most important issues for practicing lawyers are the place and time of opening the inheritance. The need to study these institutions is that they can be used not only in the process of inheritance, but also in some fraudulent operations with the inheritance of citizens. Thus, the place and time of opening is given a lot of attention in the process of studying the entire industry.
General concept of inheritance
Before proceeding directly to the question of what a place of opening an inheritance is, you need to understand what constitutes the process of inheritance in general. Based on the provisions of Article 1110 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, inheritance is a process as a result of which property, as well as all the rights and obligations of a deceased person, are transferred to other persons.
It follows that this is a specific legal relationship due to certain legal fact - death of a person, testator. The parties to this legal relationship are the heir and the testator (an individual, because the legal entity does not die, but ceases its activity). The heirs can be individuals, legal entities, if they are included in the will.
Hereditary mass
All property rights, obligations are usually called the hereditary mass, which passes to the heir by virtue of a specific succession. There are no special restrictions on the transfer of rights and obligations, that is, you can inherit any property and rights.
However, article 1112 clearly spells out a ban on the inheritance of rights and obligations inextricably linked to a citizen of the Russian Federation, his personality. These rights and obligations include: the right to compensation for harm to health and life; right to alimony; all duties and rights that cannot be transferred under any circumstances, for example, non-property rights of a personal nature. But the time and place of opening the inheritance are factors that arise in the process of the transfer of rights and obligations from one person to another, which will be discussed later.
Opening an inheritance: procedural characteristic
It should be remembered that the opening of an inheritance is a whole process that has a number of mandatory elements. First of all, for its discovery must occur an obligatory event - the death of the testator.
Only in this case the process of opening the inheritance begins. No other legal fact can “start” this process, except in those cases when a person is declared dead in court on the basis of current legislation. In addition, the process complements the time and place of opening the inheritance, which are mandatory elements.
Legacy Opening Time
For legal relations arising during inheritance, time plays a rather important role. Thanks to this factor, it is possible to determine the circle of people who are calling for an inheritance, as well as the timing of the adoption of the inheritance and other issues significant for inheritance relations. Article 1113 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation determines the opening time or the beginning of the inheritance process:
- Day of death of the testator. This fact must be certified by a special document of a medical professional.
- A separate date when the court ruling on recognizing a citizen of the Russian Federation as dead has entered into force.
It should be noted that with the help of time you can determine the place of opening of the inheritance - another mandatory element of the inheritance process.
That allows you to determine the opening time of the inheritance
The opening day of the inheritance is one of the main components of the legal entry into the inheritance. Also, time allows you to determine other, no less important, components of the process, namely:
- circle of heirs;
- hereditary mass;
- the beginning of the period during which the inheritance is accepted;
- the moment of the appearance of inheritance rights;
- the ability to protect their inheritance rights.
In addition to all these points, using the time of opening the inheritance, you can determine the moment from which the creditor has the right to claim his debts, obligations from the heirs.
Place of opening of the inheritance
In addition to proper time, the process of opening an inheritance contains another equally important element. In the classic version, the place of opening the inheritance is the place of residence of the testator at the time of death. But there is one aspect, namely: the place of residence can be recognized as the territory on which the person directly lives.
In this case, minors will be considered the place of residence of their guardians or parents. In this case, the legislator implies that the place of opening of the inheritance is the place of registration of the citizen. Given this feature, very often lawyers are simply mistaken in the process of determining a specific territorial point.
What if the person’s place of residence is unknown?
In the event that it is impossible to establish the whereabouts of a citizen or lives abroad, the place of opening of the inheritance is the territory of the property or most of it, that is, that which is of the greatest value. It should be noted that the fact of a permanent stay outside the Russian Federation does not matter in the process of opening an inheritance. Two aspects are known in determining the place of opening of an inheritance for finding property:
- When the property of the testator is formed in one place, then this territorial point will be the place where the inheritance will be opened.
- If the property is located in different territorial points, but it includes real estate, then the place where the inheritance will be opened will be the territory where the property is located.
- If the hereditary mass consists of real estate, then the place of opening of the inheritance is the location of the most valuable real estate.
The place of opening of the inheritance is confirmed by various documents, for example:
- extract from the Unified State Register of Rights to Real Estate;
- a certificate from the registration authorities of legal entities;
- certificate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on registration of vehicles;
- certificate from housing communal organizations.
What affects the place of opening the inheritance
The fact that a lot of attention is paid to the opening of the inheritance indicates the importance of this component. As with the help of time, the identification of a place (territorial component) leads to the appearance of some features that are important not only for opening an inheritance, but also for entering into it. Thus, the territorial component directly affects:
- The appearance of hereditary legal relations in accordance with the legislation of Russia.
- Determining the place where the heirs will draw up their inheritance rights.
At the same time, it must be pointed out that registration of inheritance rights can only begin in cases where the heirs have come to a common agreement regarding their part of the hereditary mass.
Controversial issues in determining the time, place of opening of the inheritance
Very often, in practice, controversial situations arise in the process of determining the place and time of opening the inheritance. As we know, a place of discovery is the territory of a permanent place of residence of a citizen. But where will this place be if a person, for example, serves in the army or studies in another city?
In fact, the person constantly lives in the place of her immediate activity. How then to determine the place where the inheritance should be opened? The legislator in this matter gives a clear answer: the territory of the opening of the inheritance will always be considered the place of registration of a citizen. Also controversial situations arise in determining the time. For example, two spouses died on the same day, but different hours. In this case, the one who died later will not inherit from the previously deceased spouse, since the opening date of the inheritance is a specific date, day. However, if at least one of them died in the first minutes of the next day, he is the heir to the previously deceased spouse.
So, we figured out that the process of inheritance is nothing but a system of interconnected elements. The main components are the time and place of opening the inheritance. The Civil Code of the Russian Federation established the procedure for determining these elements, which greatly facilitates the work of practical lawyers.
