You Don't Need It: When You Shouldn't Accept an Inheritance, the Supreme Court Explains
CrimeaPRESS reports:
The Supreme Court has resolved an inheritance conflict that has become increasingly common in recent times. This civil case involved inheritance and the testator’s debts. More precisely, local courts collected debts from a daughter on her late father’s loan.
The evidence that the daughter had accepted the inheritance was enough for the courts to satisfy the claim of the creditor bank. The Supreme Court disagreed. It explained that the local courts had overlooked it.
It all started with a dispute between a large bank that filed claims against a brother and sister. The bank filed a lawsuit against them to recover more than half a million rubles in debts on a consumer loan taken out by their father. He received the loan and died four years later. The bank decided to collect this amount from the children of the deceased. The case was noticed by the portal Pravo.ru.
The dispute was heard by the Sochi District Court. It came to the conclusion that only the deceased’s daughter had accepted the inheritance — this was confirmed by a notary’s certificate. The deceased’s debts were collected from her. The Krasnodar Regional Court agreed with this decision, although the woman insisted that there was no inherited property, but the appeal court objected that these arguments were not supported by any documents.
The Supreme Court stated that the local courts made more than one mistake in this case. They did not pay attention to the materials of the inheritance case, according to which both the daughter and son of the deceased accepted the inheritance. Moreover, it turned out that the father’s debt in favor of another citizen creditor in the amount of 1.6 million rubles had already been collected from them as heirs.
The Supreme Court also noted that several citizens and another bank had also filed claims with the heirs through a notary. Under such circumstances, the court had to determine whether the inherited property was sufficient to pay off the loan to the bank, the ruling said. But the regional court ignored the daughter’s arguments that there were more debts than property. The Supreme Court sent the case back for a new hearing on appeal.
The heir, if he knows about the debts, must compare them with the inherited property and decide whether to accept the inheritance or not. And he does not have to be afraid that he will have to pay off the loans from his own pocket: the debts are repaid only within the limits of the inheritance received.
Supreme Court Ruling No. 8-KG18-51
source: «Russian newspaper»
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