CrimeaPRESS reports:
After a person’s death, his heirs receive his property. If a person lived alone, did not make a will, and according to the law he has no heirs, the property remaining after him becomes escheat and is transferred to the state. In 2023, notaries issued more than 6 thousand certificates of the right to inheritance under the law for escheatable property, which is 18% higher than in 2022 and 61% higher than in 2021.
Among the regions where the most certificates for “escheated” inheritance were issued last year, in addition to the two capitals, were also the Kirov, Sverdlovsk, Saratov, Volgograd and Chelyabinsk regions, Tatarstan, Krasnoyarsk and Krasnodar Territories.
How does it all work? Unclaimed real estate becomes municipal property, and money from accounts and deposits goes to the federal budget through the territorial departments of the Federal Property Management Agency. As a general rule, they can contact the notary with a request to obtain the appropriate certificate on an indefinite basis.
Also, notaries proactively contact government agencies with information about escheated property known to them and offer to register the rights to it. And thus they contribute to the replenishment of the housing stock and the state treasury. A notary can obtain information about the real estate of a deceased person upon request to Rosreestr. And data on the accounts of single deceased citizens is thanks to electronic interaction with such large banks as, for example, Sberbank and VTB.
Requests may be sent to various credit institutions. Also, information about all accounts that are opened in the name of a certain person in any Russian banks is available from the Federal Tax Service — and we can obtain this data— Moscow notary Ekaterina Leksakova shares her experience, she identified more than 20 million rubles in the accounts of deceased single citizens, and registered inheritance rights to receive these deposits with the territorial department of the Federal Property Management Agency in Moscow.
It is important to note that property left without an owner and without claimants to inheritance often attracts the attention of swindlers. There are different schemes. One of them is that criminals find out about the death of lonely citizens and bring fake documents to notaries. For example, there is a known case when a young woman tried to receive the inheritance of her mother’s partner. The couple died at the same time in an accident, and an enterprising girl got hold of fake documents about their marriage. I wanted to use this “bridge” to get to the inheritance left behind by the man, which in fact was escheat.
There are craftsmen who present fake birth certificates or even adoption certificates. Some try to refer to fake wills, for example, once certified by local governments. Another scheme: an attacker impersonates a deceased lonely person, forges a passport, and tries to sell his apartment. Or a real passport is used, and instead of the deceased, criminals find a person similar to him. Sometimes entire criminal groups hunt for escheated property.
Notaries try to prevent criminals from misappropriating other people’s real estate and money, using the available tools for this. Government agencies are notified of the identification of escheated property and suspicious persons showing interest in it.
Separately, it is worth saying that notaries often contact law enforcement agencies with information about facts of disappearance of funds from the accounts of deceased people. True, in the case of money there is another problem — “orphaned” savings can simply hang in the bank.
Credit institutions have a certain algorithm of actions in relation to deposits and accounts of deceased clients. So, for example, the execution of orders for the transfer and issuance of money is stopped, unless these are testamentary and other orders provided for by law. Powers of attorney, instructions for transferring funds and auto payments are also terminated.
What if the bank doesn’t know that the client has died? Forgotten money can, for example, be transferred to a demand deposit with symbolic interest. If we are talking about accounts on which there have been no transactions for a long time, the bank has the right to close them in court. A credit institution cannot appropriate unclaimed funds. True, she also has no obligation to transfer them to the state budget.
As a result: money lies unclaimed in bank accounts instead of becoming a source of income for the state treasury. Notary chambers of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation periodically raise this issue. For example, this year at a meeting of the board of the Moscow City Notary Chamber, a specialized working group was formed. Its goal is, in cooperation with the territorial administration of the Federal Property Management Agency for Moscow, to create an optimal mechanism for transferring escheated inheritance in the form of bank deposits to the legal heir — the state.
source: Federal Notary Chamber
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