Pregledni rad
Legal inheritance of the spouse according to the General Civil Code in the Croatian-Slavonian legal area
Mirela Krešić
; Pravni fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
According to General Civil Code the fact of marital relationship was not equalized with the fact of kinship, so the surviving spouse was accepted as the inheritor, however there were additional specificities regarding his/her legal hereditary position.Thus the hereditary position of the spouse was dependent on a widely defined circle of the testator's relatives as potential legal inheritors, regulating property relations between married couples and subsequently regulating the private legal position of the wife. In view of the fact that the spouse competed for the inheritance with all the testator's relatives, the form and scope of his/her right to the inheritance, i.e. the fructus right or the right of ownership actually depended on which of the relatives put in an application together with the spouse for inheritance. It could happen, therefore, that although the spouses had been working and creating property for years the surviving spouse had far less right to the inheritance than the testator's descendents, especially the testator's distant relatives. The system of separate goods applied to the property relations of the married couple and, unless otherwise agreed, each spouse was the owner of the property he/she brought into the marriage and had no right to the property that the other spouse had acquired during the marriage. However, for property acquired during the marriage, when there were doubts as to whom it belonged, it was considered that it derived from the husband. Considering such regulation of property relations in marriage and the number of limitations which wives encountered while acquiring property, the wife, as the surviving spouse, was often deprived of her inheritance rights and acquired only fructus rights, and possibly an ownership right to a small part of the bequest. This state of affairs was confirmed by an investigation into inheritance records in three district courts. These documents show that the surviving spouse, generally the wife, had acquired the estate together with the testator's descendents, and less often with other relatives. The property from the composition of estate was, as a rule, entered in the Land Register in the name of the husband, and, because of this, the ownership of the entire estate belonged to the descendents, whereas the widow only had fructus right to part of the inheritance. Although some testator's tried to avoid the injustice imposed by such regulations, it is interesting to note that the widows' positions were often improved leaving them fructus rights to a major part of the estate, without necessarily being given the ownership right. Although often disputed, the legal inheritance of married couples remained in force until 1946, and it was only with the passing of the Yugoslav Law on Inheritance (1955) that the legal heriditary right of spouses was significantly amended.
Ključne riječi
spouses; legal inheritance; General civil code; Croatian-Slavonian legal area
Hrčak ID:
51987
URI
Datum izdavanja:
24.4.2010.
Posjeta: 3.354 *