Procedural Aspects of the Recognition of Inheritance as Escheat

The article aims to analyse the procedural aspects of recognizing the inheritance as escheat, primarily the content of the application for recognition of the inheritance as escheat, the peculiarities of submitting it to the court (including the issue of jurisdiction) and the availability of conditions for opening proceedings in the case. It is established that an obligatory element of the legal composition, which should exist at the time of the applicant’s request with a properly completed statement to the court, is the completion of the annual period from the moment the inheritance is opened. The peculiarities of determining the place of discovery of the inheritance are analysed if the last place of residence of the testator was the territory of another country or the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. The need to extend to cases on the recognition of inheritance as escheat the rules of exclusive jurisdiction and make appropriate changes to civil procedure legislation are proved. The need to provide the court with the authority to request information necessary for the implementation of justice from the Unified State Demographic Register is justified. It is proposed to set in the legislation of Ukraine opportunities for providing information from the Unified State Demographic Register at no cost. The right to access information from the specified register should be guaranteed to applicants in cases of recognition of inheritance as escheat. Among such persons should be both local governments and other applicants. It is found out that such information is necessary to establish and search for possible heirs, on which the content of the decision made by the court in the case of recognizing the inheritance as escheat depends. The issue of informing the testator’s creditors about the owners of the property, which is recognized as an embezzlement in the event of the acquisition of such property by several territorial communities, is investigated. The need to exempt all applicants in the investigated category of cases in all courts from paying the court fee for filing an application for recognition of inheritance as escheat is proven. The legal consequences of the application for recognition of an inheritance as escheat before the expiration of the period of one year from the date of the opening of the inheritance and after the expiration of such a period are analysed. It is established that the content of the court decision in the case of recognizing the inheritance as escheat depends on the fact of the absence of heirs confirmed by evidence or their failure to accept the inheritance. The lack of such information prevents the satisfaction of the application for recognition of the inheritance as escheat.