REFORM STEPS IN INHERITANCE LAW REGULATION IN THE PRE-DRAFT OF SERBIAN CIVIL CODE - HAS THE COMMISSION FOR CODIFICATION DONE A GOOD JOB?

Abstract

It’s been almost twelve years since the Commission for drafting the Civil Code of the Republic of Serbia was established, but the society and the scientific community in Serbia have not yet met the new Civil Code. It came only to the Pre-Draft, on which a public hearing was opened in mid-2015. Some reform steps have been taken in all areas of civil law, and certainly in the area of inheritance. However, the impression is that the legal doctrine neither is satisfied with the scope of the reform in the field of succession, especially because in this civil law area legal interventions were least made, as well as with some proposed solutions. Given the fact that the regulation of inheritance law is mostly similar in countries on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, because it has the same foundation - The Federal Inheritance Act of 1955, we believe that the scientific community in these countries should be notified with the ideas of Serbian codifier, in order to be potentially considered in the case of amendment of inheritance acts. Therefore, in this paper we will point out new solutions proposed by the Commission for codification and briefly analyze some of the proposals that deserve special attention. But, we will not stop there, full stop won’t be put there. We will try to answer the question: whether the codifier stopped halfway, i.e. whether it at all reached the halfway point that should be crossed at this moment - the moment when the work on such monumental legal edifice as the Civil Code has been finalizing? This is particularly important if we take into account recent reform steps in the sphere of inheritance law in contemporary comparative legislatures, especially in the EU member states. Therefore, this paper will have strong critical dimension, in terms of some of the proposed solutions, as well as in regard of failures of the Commission for drafting the Civil Code.