Court overturns laws mandating inheritance for family members
Published: 25 Apr. 2024, 18:53
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- MICHAEL LEE
- [email protected]
![Justices enter the main chamber of the Constitutional Court in Jongno District, central Seoul, on Thursday afternoon. The court issued a ruling that invalidated minimum family inheritance provisions in the Civil Code. [YONHAP]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2024/04/25/cd54ce8d-1717-47b3-9bdd-4e1669b47db1.jpg)
Justices enter the main chamber of the Constitutional Court in Jongno District, central Seoul, on Thursday afternoon. The court issued a ruling that invalidated minimum family inheritance provisions in the Civil Code. [YONHAP]
The Constitutional Court on Thursday struck down inheritance laws that reserve minimum portions of a deceased person’s estate for family members.
The court’s ruling overturns a half-century-old inheritance system that was initially established to guarantee the welfare of a deceased person’s surviving kin. The system has come under increasing fire for preventing people from disposing of their estate as they see fit or from totally disinheriting estranged and abusive family members.
Under the current Civil Code, a dead person’s spouse, children, parents and siblings are guaranteed predetermined portions of their estate should they die without a will.
Even if the deceased wrote a will that excludes their surviving family members, their spouse and children are still entitled to half of the legal minimum assigned to them by the Civil Code, while parents and siblings are entitled to one-third of the portions they would have received in the absence of a will.
In its ruling, the Constitutional Court gave the National Assembly until Dec. 31 next year to amend clauses 1-3 of Article 1112 of the Civil Code, which reserve minimum amounts of inheritance for parents, spouses and children. After the deadline, these provisions will become void.
Although the court said the Civil Code’s provisions on inheritance reflect the strength of “most bonds that tie families together,” it said it decided to invalidate the principle of minimum inheritance to rectify the current law’s failure to account for family members who have neglected or betrayed their familial obligations.
“Reserving a minimum amount of inheritance for people who have habitually committed immoral acts, such as neglecting or abusing the dead by psychological or physical means for a long time, contravenes public sentiment and common sense,” the court said.
The court in its ruling also struck down clause 4 of Article 1112 of the Civil Code, which guarantees a minimum amount of inheritance for siblings of the deceased, but did not call on the National Assembly to devise a replacement or amendment for that law.
Although opponents of the Civil Code’s provisions on family inheritance have long criticized the law for infringing on personal property rights, the Constitutional Court upheld the principle of minimum inheritance enshrined in Article 1112 in two previous rulings issued in 2010 and 2013.
BY MICHAEL LEE [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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