Judicial Protection of the Rights of a Territorial Community to a Deceased Person’s Inheritance

The relevance of the study is determined by the new legal position of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court, expressed in its ruling of 14 December 2022 on the appropriate means of protecting the rights of the territorial community, which radically changed the practice of recognising inheritance as escheat and reclaiming illegally alienated inherited property from bona fide acquirers. The purpose of the article was to analyse the practice of the Supreme Court and scientific research on relations with escheated inheritance in order to determine whether a comprehensive system of inheritance succession had been established in Book Six of the Civil Code of Ukraine (which, in the event of a dispute, allows for the application of general civil and special means of protecting inheritance rights, as directly defined by the Civil Code) or to establish that Book Six of the Civil Code does indeed contain gaps that require the application of analogy of law to protect the rights of the territorial community to escheat inheritance. The main research methods used in this article are systematic, analytical, sociological, and comparative-historical methods. An analysis of the practice of the Supreme Court’s cassation courts shows that the courts understand escheated inheritance as a category that is identical to inheritance. The author argues that the transfer of escheated inheritance to the territorial community is universal succession, and that the court’s recognition of inheritance as escheated has retroactive effect to the time of the opening of the inheritance. The author provides a detailed analysis of the Supreme Court’s rulings that raised the issue of applying the position of the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court expressed in its ruling of 14 December 2022, as well as the rulings of the Civil Court of Cassation, in which the court concluded on the applicability or inapplicability of the legal position regarding the refusal to recognise the inheritance as escheated and the reclamation of inherited property in favour of the territorial community. The need to distinguish between claims for recognition of inheritance as extinct and claims for recovery of property in favour of the territorial community is well-reasoned. The recognition of inheritance as extinct is a separate, special means of protection that establishes the inheritance-law status of the territorial community and is the basis for bringing any other claims to protect the rights to extinct inheritance and protect the rights of the testator’s creditors. The author argues that the violation of the stage of protection of inherited property by a local government body and the refusal to take measures to protect inherited property indicate the loss of ownership of the property by the will of the territorial community and are grounds for refusing to reclaim inherited property from bona fide acquirers.