Legal Nature of the Contract of Succession as a Special Institute of Civil Law of the Russian Federation

In this paper, the authors analyse a new institution for the Russian legal system, namely, the contract of succession institution. It is a qualitatively new way to transfer property, which was legislated as a supplement to the existing grounds of succession. It is noted that one of the advantages of this type of succession is that this type of agreement enables a property owner not only to outline the circle of successors during his/her lifetime but also to stipulate clear conditions for their entry into rights of succession. That is, thanks to this agreement, it becomes possible to determine to whom and what kind of property will be transferred after the death of the owner, and what conditions must be met for this. In this paper, the authors correlate a contract of succession with mixed categories: they compare (only by some criteria) a contract of succession with a unilateral transaction - a last will and testament. The authors conclude that the institution of the contract of succession is a symbiosis of succession and contractual legal relations (mixed nature), which may lead to certain problems in the future during the enforcement of the current legislation.