Rethinking And Perfecting Our Country's Legacy Debt Settlement System

Legacy Debt Settlement system is closely related to our life as the property liability system solving the problem that how to pay off legacy debt of a natural man after he or she died.The legacy debt and the expenses for settlement of it will become a question of interest measurement between the heir and the debtor due to the loss of civil subject qualification after the original debtor died.In this paper,the current Legacy Debt Settlement system in China is taken as the research object,and the shortcomings are summarized by the investigation of its theory and judicial application.Firstly,abandoning the inheritance causes the liquidation subject to be unknown but becomes a means for heirs to avoid paying off their legacy debt.Secondly,the current scope of legacy is too narrow and it is not identified in the trial,which makes the disputes over the settlement of legacy debts become a formalized trial.Thirdly,the scope of legacy debt is not clear in legislation,resulting in frequent phenomenon of different judgments in the same case.Fourthly,unconditionally restricting the limited liability for liquidation under the mode of legacy makes the heirs hide,embezzle and falsely report the value of legacy without fear,which seriously infringes the legacy creditor's right.Fifthly,there are no relevant provisions in the current Inheritance Law of our country on the liability for the settlement of inheritance debts in joint inheritance,which makes it difficult to protect the rights and interests of the parties by fuzzifying the relevant types of disputes in judicial practice.Sixthly,our country has not set up the procedure of settlement of legacy debts.When many legacy debts coexist,it is difficult to achieve fairness and justice to realize the creditor's rights of inheritance creditors.Based on the above six shortcomings,the author puts forward her own suggestions on the improvement of the system on the basis of the theoretical research of Chinese scholars,combined with the inheritance custom of our country and the ways of solving the related problems in the countries and regions of continental law system.First,perfecting the relevant provisions on abandoning inheritance;Second,expanding and examining the scope of inheritance;Third,clarifying the scope of legacy debt;Fourth,establishing a conditional system of limited inheritance;Fifth,explaining the problem of settlement of legacy debt in joint inheritance;Sixth,adding the procedure of settlement of legacy debt.The full paper is divided into three parts:introduction,text and conclusion,and the text is divided into four chapters.The first chapter mainly introduces the basic theory of the Legacy Debt Settlement system.Through combing the historical evolution and basic content of the Legacy Debt Settlement system,the paper clarifies the changes of the Legacy Debt Settlement system from identity inheritance to property inheritance,as well as the basic contents of the Legacy Debt Settlement system,including recognition and abandonment of legacy,determination of legacy and legacy debt,legacy debt settlement liability and legacy debt settlement procedure.The first chapter delineates the basic framework for the discussion of the full text.The second chapter mainly introduces the inspection and shortcomings of the Legacy Debt Settlement system in China.By investigating the theory and judicial practice of the current Legacy Debt Settlement system in China,this paper sums up the deficiencies of the current Legacy Debt Settlement system in China.The third chapter mainly introduces the comparative study of the Legacy Debt Settlement.Based on the comparative study of the Legacy Debt Settlement system in the countries of continental law system(Germany and Japan)and regions(Taiwan region of China),the author tries to find some reference for the improvement of the Legacy Debt Settlement system in China through the relatively perfect legislation of continental law system.The fourth chapter is mainly to put forward suggestions for the improvement of Legacy Debt Settlement system in China.Through the above three parts,this paper summarizes the shortcomings of the existing Legacy Debt Settlement system in China,and puts forward some suggestions for perfecting it in the light of the existing theoretical suggestions,the solutions of civil law countries and regions and the inheritance habits of our country.