On The Estate Without Successors

Subject to the Article 32 of Law of Succession on China,An estate which is left with neither a successor nor a legatee shall belong to the state or the organization under collective ownership.In the justice practice,not only the legitimacy of this institute is in question,the rules are too simple to protect the interest of successors or other interested parties.Therefore,it is necessary to discuss the legitimacy,social significance and legal nature of the ownership of the unclaimed inheritance of the state from the specificity of the uninherited inheritance,combining the basic principles of the property law,the inheritance law and the property rights theory in economics.Based on the judicial practice of our country and the legislation of other countries or regions,we propose to improve the disposition of estates without heirs in China.This paper consists of five parts.:The first part puts forward the problems of the system in the theory and the judicial practice of our country through the analysis of the historical origins of the state's system of unclaimed inheritance and related judicial cases.In terms of institutional origin,the role of treasury inheritance in the Roman law to increase fiscal revenue is negligible in today's society,and feudal escheat,as well as bona vacantia has lost the institutional foundation.The legitimacy of the state's ownership inheritance needs to be further explored.At the same time,because the relevant provisions of the Inheritance Law are relatively rudimentary,there are differences in the application of the judicial treatment of uninherited inheritance in China,and the protection of the stakeholders is not sufficient.The second part discusses the particularity of uninherited inheritance.First,bona vacantia are the result of market discipline,and their value is usually lower than the cost it would cost to trade.Estate without successors arises from accidents,and its transaction costs are usually much lower than its own value.Direct access to ownership by the state can prevent waste of resources caused by the re-establishment of property rights.Second,the generation and distribution of uninherited inheritance are unpredictable.So usually no one has expectations for them.The acquisition of their ownership by the state does not adversely affect the lives of the people.Again,due to the limited effectiveness of the announcement process,the heir may appear and claim rights after the end of the announcement period.Therefore,the attribution of uninherited inheritance has certain uncertainty,and the situation that the heirs appear afterwards should be included in the rule design.Finally,in addition tothe heirs,the inheritance creditor and the estate discretionary claimant have certain interests in the inheritance.The interests of these stakeholders need to be fully protected in programming.The third part discusses the legitimacy of the state to obtain estate without successors.First of all,in order to avoid the excessive waste caused by inheritance to social resources,it is necessary for the state to restrict the scope of legal heirs,and the reduction of the size of the family and the dilution of the concept of relatives make such restrictions not have a substantial impact on the inheritance rights of citizens.Secondly,theoretical defects of first possession and the cost of social resources in the process of preemption make the preemptive rule unsuitable for uninherited inheritance.Finally,the state's ownership on the estate without successors,has the interest to protect the heirs,prevents the inheritance from falling into an unmanaged situation,and prevents improper profit-making behavior of specific subjects.The fourth part discusses the concrete measures to perfect the system of the treatment of unmanned inheritance in our country from the normative level in the light of the problems mentioned earlier.Until the estate is acquired by the State or the collective,these specific measures include the selection of the administrator of the estate,the search of heirs and other interested parties,the establishment of the right of succession reply and the guarantee of the right of claim.After the attribution of the estate to the state or the collective,it is also necessary to expressly represent the State or collective exercise of the subject of ownership and the use of such property.